all the things we could never say
as we roll into the final week of this three week period of generally looking backward and taking care of old business, one of the things i am noticing is that this is definitely part of the zeitgeist.
on a macro scale as well as on the personal level, this energy is playing out enough to offer worthy examples that there are times in life when it is the wisest course of events to stop pushing forward for a moment, however badly you want to be getting some traction, and just take care of some things from the past that may be slowing, if not outright stopping, your ability to get to that place that you want to get. whew!
all the things we could never do
so the first and most obvious thing i noticed in the past week, aside from the events of my own life, was the series of executive orders signed by president obama.
- ethics commitments limiting the influence of lobbyist on white house officials.
- opening up presidential records to easier scrutiny by the public and the press.
- ensuring lawful interrogations.
- review of detention policy options.
- closure of guatanamo detention facilities.
all of these actions are reversals of the policies of the former administration, and they all pave the way for forward action by the current president in a direction he has previously expressed great desire to travel. and a direction he would be unable to travel if he didn’t first take care of this old business.
all the things we could never feel
on a closer to home level, meaning the playing field i generally inhabit, daily life, lacking the grandiosity of the white house and yet impacting me ultimately as deeply as anything initiated by larger than life characters like the president of the united states, my friend joely black has been experiencing some trials and tribulations brought on by a conflict between her current chosen path and a decision she very consciously made many years ago.
i won’t give you the details of her particular situation, because she will do that much better than i could, and you can read it in her own words any time now…and i bring it up because in communicating with her about it i came to the realization of a similar event in my own life which is still impacting me 20 years later.
all the things that were not real
one of the magical things that has been happening to me over the past two weeks is that simply by turning my attention to clearing up things from the past, which i in my naïveté thought was simply going to consist of going through old stacks of paper and such, and which turned out to be much more visceral and gut wrenching than that.
yes it started out with a great and grand cleaning out of the old emails…and now it is up to happy things like how to be a functioning human being in relationship as father and lover when i can’t seem to get my head off-line and my partner complains daily that she doesn’t really feel wanted. ack! ironic that one of my big issues with rowan is the amount of time he spends watching tv and surfing the web (he’s 3 and a half years old!).
and even more scary is that thing that surfaced when i was offering some insight to joely about her own ghost from the past; a little song lyric that i wrote 19 years ago and have sung close to a thousand times since then:
and now forever i will sleep alone
even with your body at my side
well that bodes well for successful intimate relationship, doesn’t it?
wrap it up in a neat little package
so as any reader of this blog who can read between the lines knows, i have been out of the house the past two months, while randi and rowan have been carrying on single mom style. oh i spent a lot of time with rowan, picking him up from pre-school, taking him to music class, giving him dinner and bedtime ritual.
and i was sleeping in other people’s houses. doing as little as possible with randi. it seemed that we had come to the end of the road as far as an intimate relationship goes. something was just too tough for us to get over.
put it in the attic and forget about it
not that we hadn’t danced around it and therapized about it yelled and cursed and cried about it. and all those other things that you do when you are not actually getting any traction and working through it to get to the other side of it.
- we lived with it.
- we tried to ignore it.
- we pretended that it wasn’t there.
and yet it was there. and still is. all those things that we could never say, feel, do, or make real.
carry on carry on living living
and so in the midst of this deep disconnect, two people who love each other, who both grew up in violent households, attempted to create something different without even really looking at the elephant in the middle of the room, because they were spending most of their waking hours and available energy trying to pretend it wasn’t there.
“hey, this part feels like a wall”
“yeah, and this part over here is a pillar”
“excellent…i was getting a little bit nervous that maybe we had an elephant in our living room.”
“silly you…”
one day it’ll blow a hole in our heads
so anyway, yeah. we had that day. wow. more than one of them actually. and yes, one day i will actually tell that story. all will be revealed i promise. yet when walking through a room full of dynamite it is probably better to curse the darkness than to light a candle! patience, patience. and remind me to tell you about my impersonation of emperor norton! good stuff!
does that scare you?
so this week, without fear or trepidation, i am walking deeper into whatever universe offers me in this further unraveling of the past that has brought me home to my family, my bed, my son, and my lover. i don’t expect it to be easy. what is vital oftentimes is not. and i won’t turn down easy when it stares me in the face, that’s for sure.
either way, challenging, or cardomon carrot cup cakes (did i mention that the cccc is working overtime on this case?), i’m going to make the most of this next week. and i encourage you to do so as well!
and in terms of concrete action? that physical thing that’ll get the big crazy cosmic ball rolling? well…i’d really like to get the car cleaned out.
















{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Joely Black (@TheCharmQuark on Twitter) 01.26.09 at 9:25 am
Great post! And I shall definitely get to writing that decision-making post today. Been doing other things.
My brother has just been through a similar thing with his partner. It’s very, very tough getting past that past to see what’s happening in the present.
Joely Black (@TheCharmQuark on Twitter)´s last blog post..A post about the benefits of giving myself the permission to f*ck up
James | Dancing Geek 01.26.09 at 10:59 am
Yes, yes, yes and more yes.
Mine’s less dramatic, but the whole I ain’t going anywhere until I clear up some of this mess and unhook some of the stuff I’ve been dragging around with me is a good way to describe my change in tack this year.
So happy that you’ve had your heads blown open, cause, you know, better out than in, and then the healing can happen.
Sending the whole family love and hugs.
James | Dancing Geek´s last blog post..The fun stuff I’ve been up to
Joely Black (@TheCharmQuark on Twitter) 01.26.09 at 11:09 am
Finally! Wrote that post for you. Commentluv should link to it below.
Joely Black (@TheCharmQuark on Twitter)´s last blog post..Thoughts on the recovery from dark decisions
chas 01.26.09 at 9:41 pm
@ joely yes…past present, present past…where one ends and the other begins? now, i guess…and then it slips away! congrats on getting that post out btw…you are being super productive!
@james i’m pulling for you to get some unraveling done…and remember that sometimes it’s fine to be going nowhere, as long as you are actually being now here!