I woke up wet with sweat. My body stank and my nose wanted to disown it. I got up to go to the restroom and while in there, looked at the clock. 5:00 a.m. I used to keep the clock on the desk next to my bed, but I'd reach over in my sleep and turn it off. Apparently, my brain really did not like to get up. Once I moved the alarm clock to the restroom, I won. In fact, apparently my brain did not like the aggravating sound of an alarm so much that after moving it, I usually woke up a half hour before it was set to go off at 5:30. That day was no exception. Apparently my brain believed it was better to wake up on its own a half hour before that tortuous noise than to have that awful repetition reach deep down into my sleep, the mechanical fingers slithering through dreams like metallic snakes. So, unlike most people, including myself, my brain was proactive. Once it could no longer simply send my arm over to hit the snooze button at first beep, it made a new plan.
As a result of that new plan, I found myself bleary-eyed, standing taking a pee, looking at the clock on the cluttered bathroom vanity. 5:00 a.m. I thought about making good use of that extra half hour by working on my novel. But the room was still out of focus, my eyes caked over with crud. Besides it was cold now that I was no longer under a heap of blankets. And unlike my brain, I am not proactive. I'm lazy and luxury-seeking to the core. Avoidance is my most prominent quality. It stands high above the rest of me like a black volcanic plug rising high above the surrounding forest, a fire look-out resting precariously atop its rutted basalt cliff walls. I often picture some little man in there who looks out through binoculars scanning for danger. What threatens me most? Action. So when he sees the need to get up and do something on the horizon, he zips across the look-out on a rubberized rolling office chair to the little desk there and immediately takes the receiver off the red telephone. "Hello, Avoidance, this is Look-Out One. We have a situation. I need an excuse immediately."
The little man in the watch tower was provided one. I said to myself, You won't even be able to see the computer screen through all that eye gunk, and then I went back to bed.
I was glad to get back in bed because although I'd woken up wet with sweat, it was actually quite cold. It was December after all, and even though it was an unusually warm year, as most all years were in recent years, it was still plenty cold, especially in the bathroom, where I just was staring at myself in the mirror though a gunky-eyed blur.
I laid in bed and drifted off to sleep. There was a song, a slow rambling-rolling song. It went swoosh back and forth like slow blue jazz. There was a moonlit bay and water slapped against rounded boulders. Nothing big. Not Big Sur or anything--just a gentle slap against the rocks. Maybe it was more like the north shore of Lake Superior.
The water seemed to stretch out forever, glazed in moonlight. A cool breeze bit at my arms as I walked out on a stony jetty towards a light house. The silhouettes cold-weather pines jutted up into sky that circled the shore. If there were hills, they were low, for the pines poked right up into turquoise-black night. A few stars could still be seen even with the intense moonlight.
Crickets chirped. I could see campfires across the bay.
All of the sudden, I heard "Good Gandhi, What is happening here?" I couldn't tell where it was coming from. It seemed to come out of the moon, as if the moon was a big, dangling speaker, and I was in the Truman Show.
"Is the devil actually inhabiting you? Are you capable of that level of evil? Oh, no--No, No, NO! Michael, you idiot!"
At that point, the shell of the moon exploded into tiny fragments of computer-screen substrate that fell to earth like a hard sleet. I ran for the trees to take cover, but I was hit by a sharp shard that penetrated my scalp, sank through my brain, and landed on the roof of a fire lookout I had so often imagined. It hit with a great thud. The little man on a rubberized rolling office chair zipped over to the red phone, picked it up, and screamed, "Get up!" That was not his usual motif..
So I did. I staggered out into the living room and found my son Rio at the desk, shutting down the computer.
"When did you get here?" I asked, trying to sort things out.
"11:00."
"What time is it?"
"6:10."
"Why are you up so early?"
"Never went to bed. Michael and I were playing League of Legends. Dumb butt lost the game."
"Are you out of school for Christmas vacation already?"
"No, I just quit. That's all."
"You quit? That's all?"
"Yea, don't worry Pops. It'll all work out."
I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing. That's not true. I knew exactly what to say, I just didn't believe that I had what it took to deliver it effectively. I also wasn't sure Rio had what it took to take it all in effectively. I pictured the normal father/son drag out argument unfolding and knew how absolutely ineffective those were on me. Although I now agreed with almost everything my father ever told me outside the political realm (where I still disagree), at the time, all it did was put distance between us. I think I would have taken the same road no matter what he said. All it managed to do was further crush my already low self esteem. So, perhaps saying nothing was actually best. Still, I didn't really believe that. Walking back to bed, I wrote the speech in my head that I should have delivered to him:
Fear flattens us. Big skyscraper Resistance with a capital "R" seeks to squelch our dreams with a big, cow-crud covered boot. We scatter before the capital "R," leaving our innate paths to happiness behind and find other ways to busy our time.
As I got back into bed, I realized that here I would take a long pause for effect, and then continue:
Your grandma was a concert pianist who spent her life vacuuming. Your cousin was born to be Bono and blow the mind of millions at stadiums across the globe, and he's filling little pill bottles at the local pharmacy, making good money, yet yearning to be back stage, on a stool, guitar in hand, while the crew cleans up everything. I have spent my life teaching, and I'm an adequate teacher. No, I was born to teach. I'm a good teacher. But out of fear, I chose the wrong venue. I don't know why, but when I write, I have this power that doesn't come from me, that I didn't earn, that I don't necessarily deserve. Yet, I know I have it. It isn't ego. It isn't conceit. It's just there. Something God granted me to make up for all I'm lacking. Books should be my medium. Words sent out on a page like gospel. Not because I have anything special to say, not because I have some unique wisdom, but because the words come--as long as I don't deny them. Resistance knows that. Resistance worked like hell to stop it. I listened. I let Resistance win. Like your grandma, and perhaps like your cousin. Your uncle didn't do that. He paid a big price for it, but he knows he has done what he came to earth to do: paint. He will leave a legacy behind, a record of his successful war against Resistance..
Laying in bed, even while living out this imagined scenario in my head, I paused, not because I wanted to, but because my words wanted to go in another direction--a direction I did not want them to go:
Still, perhaps it is alright to let Resistance win. True, the defeat leaves a great, undeniable hole. But, maybe it doesn't matter. If Grandma became that concert pianist, what would my life have been like? I'm not sure. Your cousin has all those wonderful girls of his. What would their lives be like had he pursued the path of musician? I know that although I wrote well when I was younger, I was also miserable and hated my life and my God. Would that softening, that opening, have happened if I had successfully fought Resistance and pursued what I came here to do? Thwarted dreams create complex, compassionate people. Maybe God has set up a win-win situation for us, and it's pretty difficult to leave this life not a better person than when we got here, no matter what mistakes we make along the way. Of course, there are exceptions. There are miserable old people that just drag everybody down. But not many. Wisdom is attached to age for a reason.
At this point, I stopped my imaginary speech, realizing I didn't have any worthwhile advice to give him. Then, I continued because, well, parents don't know how to shut up when lecturing their children, even when the lecture is only taking place in the mind:
Hell, I don't know; you'll just have to live your life and see what happens. I think it's stupid to drop out of school, but who knows, it may be the best damn stupid thing you ever do. You may end up homeless. But then that homelessness may give you the guts later to accomplish what you really are living for. Maybe you need to face foraging through a dumpster for your next meal to realize what life is all about. I just don't know.
Then, going through this imagined scenario, I realize that there was one thing I do know for sure:
This I can tell you. No man finds complete happiness until he makes peace with his maker. True peace. True connection. It can't be out of blind obedience. It can't be out of fear. It must be out of love. Love for life. Love for being here. Love of living. Gratitude for being born and experiencing life. Not because it is easy, but because it is. Once one truly gets that, nothing else really matters. If you win over Resistance and write that novel you were born to write, play that piano at Carnegie Hall, fill that stadium with adoring fans at the greatest rock show of the decade--fantastic. But you'll still be happy vacuuming, or teaching, or filling out prescriptions at the local drug store. It won't matter. If you don't get that, if you don't come to terms with your maker, learn to speak to him, learn to listen, then there will always be a hole. You will always be looking for something better. There will be an unquenchable thirst always driving you to do more, more and more. You will be attracted to drugs, alcohol, sex, or just being in the spotlight. You may obtain much, but you will never fully obtain a complete sense of self. That hole is built in, a beacon, a yearning to steer you home. Some, however, never do listen. It is they who die miserable, consumed by the self in a house of mirrors.
I reached over to where my alarm clock used to be, looking for a piece of paper and a pencil. My fingers couldn't locate paper. So, I grabbed a book, The Wind up Bird Chronicles, by Haruki Murakami, turned on the lamp, and wrote in the front cover, Speak to Rio, turned off the light and went back to sleep for the third time that same morning.
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