this... and my absence...

There is, somewhere, a trail of emails that lead down down down to the rabbit hole and to a horrible place called Wonderland. It’s not anywhere you want to be. Go ask Alice, I think she’ll know… or so said Grace Slick. She was right. A friend asks me, What do you mean you “quit”? Do I have to explain this? What I mean is this: I quit. I quit everything. I quit being me. It’s become too something. I can’t quite put my finger on it – wait, I think I know… too expectedly disappointing with a lot of build up (cue the orchestra) and potential that ends in “fin”. So I wonder, what’s the point? (That’s rhetorical).

I want to be Yoko and John. I want to be that motivated, that everything. I want to effect change. I want people to give peace – and each other – a chance. I want to be sitting at a peace protest and doing something I believe in. I want to write some fantastic poem about it all the way Dylan did and does because damn it, that’s how I feel, but even as a poet, which I have been my whole life, I am failing (and I have never failed to write as a poet: the poems themselves may not “hit” but I have never failed to write.)  These days see me with a blank page. Send me to a show, I can cover it. Give me a topic, I’ll write about it. And pray, I do a good job. But at the end of the day, the work feels to me bloodless and flat, no matter how much I am into it.

I went to see Dylan at the MGM Grand and wrote up a review of the show and shit, it was a great show. I think the review was good. It certainly captured the moment – what it was to be there. But the things I left out were the real blood of the moment. Did I forget to mention that from where I sat, I could see the perspiration on Dylan’s face and more, that I could smell him. I could actually smell soap and Dylan. Not anyone in front of me – I checked. They weren’t perspiring. Just Dylan. My friend M. says, “Pheromones….” I laugh because he’s right. There I am picking up on Dylan’s pheromones, but, being bloodless these days and not sweating at all (for that would take some life), I give nothing back. You have to understand, I’ve been writing about Dylan and following Dylan for a long time now. To actually be so close as to smell Dylan, this is something I can’t quite find the words for. It was utterly intoxicating. An utterly human moment, quietly exchanged that no doubt, he did not notice. I did. But I am a ghost, la la la…

It’s a ping sent with no ping back. We talk about Elvis Presley. We talk about Elvis doing Dylan, Dylan doing Elvis, any rivalry there may have been. Then I remember Dylan saying at one point that he wanted to be “bigger than Elvis” but I can’t remember the source and it could be a misquote or total fabrication. I know I heard it, but that doesn’t make it true. Someone heard that I’m a Carroll scholar. Yes. I felt I was, but then I realized that none of us know anything. At least I haven’t just dumped myself in this heap. I am taking everyone along for the ride. You think you know Carroll? Bullshit. You think you understand his books: bullshit. You think you ‘get’ Dylan: bullshit. You think you understand what a song is about: bullshit. Nobody understands what anything is really about unless it is about themselves. That’s just a fact. There’s no way to know the inner-truth of someone unless you are them (and even then, we can be profoundly lacking in self-insight), or they are in love with you and you with them some profound way (again, I refer to John and Yoko), because any other love feels cheap to me. Who said, Cheap is how I feel? Yeah, Sun comes up…

I’m not feeling particularly “nice’ but then, must I be? It’s not that I am feeling vindictive or cruel or any of these things. I’m just feeling rather blank about it all. My friend who teaches me Arabic words wants to know what I want to learn today. I tell her, “Slut”. She tells me, “Sharmootz”. Good.  Now I know should - or when - the occasion arise.

God. I’m so macabre. Someone tells me he has a template for self-pity he can send me. How pithy of him. I don’t need a fucking template. I don’t need anything, because this isn’t self-pity it’s something entirely different that is real and tangible and horrible and dark and I feel myself falling hard into it and there is nothing I can do. Hell, I don’t want your help, or an email of cheap validation telling me how accomplished I am. I suppose I could just Google myself for that, but then, my agent tells me that the Internet means nothing. That really, the only work that “counts” is in print. Which means that everything I’ve written about Dylan (and it’s a book on Dylan they want from me) is really moot. Never mind that each piece averages around ten thousand hits (so far today, the MGM Grand piece has several thousand hits and has only been up for seven hours). “It’s different for a book,” they tell me. Yes, yes, I have worked my whole life in publishing and I still disagree. It’s a simple matter of taking the raw material that is there, putting it together in a proposal, and promising more of the same. That much is easy. I can do that. For some reason, we keep stalling at the gate. I want to say, Why are we fucking doing this? Or more to the point, Why are we not doing this? Why are we just sitting on our hands???

The book that I am working on – a novel – this one is not really welcomed yet, yet I’m not privvy to the reasons why. It’s just not right yet. Maybe I have everything all backward. Maybe I’ve spent years of my life excelling in pubishing only to find I know absolutely nothing. Thing about that is I’ve done very well. So I must have known something at some point. Clearly, those days are gone. I am surrounded by naysayers and I have finally caved. It was never easy for me to be an optimist. I’m the sort of person who has to feel that physically: some chemical thing. It either happens or it does not. I’m feeling it, but it’s too far, and I am feeling alone. A simple twist of fate. That’s the trouble here. It all comes down to a simple twist of fate, anyway, and nobody knows that better than Bob Dylan. Fate deals a light, and a heavy, hand. As C.S. Lewis said, You play the hand you’re dealt. In the end, the game’s still worthwhile.

I’d like to believe that. I’d like to believe that something is worthwhile, but I’d also like to believe that it’s not a game, because I hate games and they are a waste of time and let’s face it, most of us suck at game-playing anyway and it becomes nasty and political and stupid. As a friend said to me, Americans need more mirrors. Yup. I couldn’t agree more. So quick to judge, so long in seeing the true self, if ever.

I’m not about to go holding mirrors up to people so that they can see themselves. I hope that they do. I really do. I think for me, my mirror is one of too much magnification: I am seeing every flaw, every minor pore, every little and last thing and I am displeased with the reflection. But it’s MY reflection and I live with that. Plato said, Know thyself, which he also knew was impossible. It is essential to know yourself to understand your environment and the world in which you live, so we are on a lifelong quest to know ourselves but ultimately, the quest is a futile one, thus making our lives rather absurdly existential. It’s almost comical. Good thing I believe in reincarnation – at least enough to trust that I have lived before the now: that I have been to this place before and that I still have lessons to learn, but yes, I am an old soul… waiting for that “right” time around. No more simple twists of fate. I’ve been there (here) done that (this). It’s boring. Lesson learned. Let’s move on. See Jane run…

Likely it is not helping that I am listening to “I Wish You Love” (a terrific song, if you do not know it. There are many versions. A good one is by Natalie Cole. Frank Sinatra also has a version, but there are many in between. I think Cole’s version is better… or at least, for me right now it is better. This song really needs a woman singing it, I think). It’s a song about a friendship on the edge that never quite goes to where it naturally wants to go. Love unrequieted. But she is gracious. She realizes nothing will happen. She quits. She wishes him “bluebirds in the spring”… and ultimately, she wishes him love.

Then what? That’s what I want to know. What happens then. Now that he’s all well and fine and absolved of doing absolutely anything, what happens to her? Her words are selfless, loving, they are everything. They mean everything. But then what? What comes after you wish that person love? How do you put one foot in front of the other and leave behind something so good and walk forward knowing you are leaving what really, is your fate. You walk away from your own destiny – sometimes you have to do that. I’ve done it. I want to know what happens after I wish you love… I want to know who gives me love… I’ve enough good wishes to last a lifetime. They aren’t helping. Too many of these well-wishers are pin-boys in the final account. Yes, Something is happening and you don’t know what it is…. Do you, Mr. Jones…

I wish you bluebirds in the spring… This is the best I can offer. This and my absolute absence.

Thanks for reading,

s.r.p.