Enlightening Nonsense

© August 21, 2011

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I was given a small spoon

And started to dig

Knowing that you were under there somewhere

And with enough digging

I would find you

.

With dirt-lined nails

I dug deeper

Into a hole that might have proven to be my grave

Rocks bent my spoon

And soon my only tools of excavation

Were my hands…

and my heart

.

Through cuts and calluses

I never stopped digging

At times wondering if you were indeed buried below

Or if I had gone crazy

…digging a well in the desert

And then I hit something

That was not board or bottle cap

Root or rock

I saw a glimmer

And I knew that I had struck gold

That the treasure that had started to uncover

Was a love that I had long left

But never forgot

.

My beard long

My face weather worn

My vision strained

My joints swollen

From 20 years of digging

As if possessed

…in vain

But with thoughts of seeing you again

My heart started to beat

Like a man 20 years my junior

And I prayed it didn’t break

Before I got close enough to touch you

Kiss you

Look into your eyes

And see forever

.

I went to my cabin to rest

Planning for the next day’s dig

When I would uncover all of you

And remove the final accumulations

Of years apart

And there she was

The girl from a nearer past

Whose lips I never kissed like yours

Because of obstacles

of boyfriends and health challenges and life

that buttressed the wall that I could not break through or climb

She asked if she could come inside

And I felt powerless to refuse her

Controlled by an inner drive

That had been rendered useless from years of isolation

.

She told me how she found me

And we took turns telling stories of our past together

…and apart

Laughing our way through the night

Periodically touching a knee or an arm

In a way that was as guilty as it was innocent

.

It got late and I invited her to spend the night

To which she agreed

I held her in my bed

Intimacy without intercourse

As sleep entered the cabin

And covered us like a blanket

When I woke up

I was in my bed alone

Passing through a moment of confusion

As I questioned whether last night’s connection

Was only a bond between my imagination and my weariness

…until she called out to me from beyond my cabin walls

I jumped out of bed and burst through the door

Fighting through the blinding flood of daylight

And into her awaiting arms

The sun shined down upon us

from a clear blue sky that seemed to be painted by a heavenly master

as a background for our embrace

And, just like my waking confusion

I questioned whether we, too, were part of a painting

Created by an artist and hanging on a wall in someone’s home

Frozen in contentment

But without the ability to step out of the canvas

And suddenly my eyes broke from the high of the perfect portrait

As I looked over her shoulder

my heart stopped beating

my breath disappeared

my face went pale

The hole I had spent the last 20 years digging was completely filled in

I ran to the loose dirt and dropped to my knees

“What have you done?” I cried

In one morning’s work

She had erased 20 years of effort

.

“What’s buried beneath that dirt

No amount of resuscitation

Will bring back to life

.

“What stands before you

Is alive and ready to embrace

Relax into me

And feel my beating heart”

I realized what I had preserved

In the mausoleum of my mind

Would rot and decay if released

from it’s airtight chamber

That it was unable to breathe the air

That keeps the heart beating

Without the help of an pacemaker

Surgically implanted by the doctor of imagination

.

I took my first deep inhalation

In 20 years

And filled the lungs of the heart

Unassisted

.

After 20 years of digging

I had finally found my treasure

And now standing in front of me

Her presence covered completely my buried love

Whose bones crumbled to dust

And left my mind

.

I got off my knees and went inside the cabin

And washed my face

And shaved my beard

And cleaned under my fingernails

.

When I reemerged I was a new man

Ready to live the life that was present

And not the one that was past

A memory that had spent 20 years

Trying to escape the prison of the mind

Had finally been executed

Perhaps in 20 years

Having lived a full life

Through my heart

And not my imagination

I will join my buried love

But only as a corpse

.

Discarding my body for the worms

My soul will have left for Heaven

.

One day in Rome

Sitting on a couch

In a room

A group of about twelve

Italians and Americans and English

And when our eyes locked

It was like staring directly at the messiah

As all the disciples faded into the white of your light

Providing a frame to a masterpiece that entrapped my eyes

And promised me salvation

.

You were my savior

If only for one night

Maybe even a single moment on the couch

Reminding me that my heart could feel like breaking

That magic was real

And reality was magic

.

After touring with a show

That took us to seven countries

And uncountable cities

I was weary and desperate for rest

I found my home in your eyes

And I didn’t want to leave it

.

You didn’t speak much English

And my Italian was limited to

“Que belle culo”

Which would either get me a smile

Or slapped

But our eyes and smiles and glow

Spoke a language that needed no translation

Leaving me so full

That I was ready to renunciate from speech altogether

.

I indicated in charades for you to meet me outside

And I left the room

Praying that there was a God and he heard my prayer

Which was not for riches

Or power

Or eternal life

But for you to walk through that door

And be with me

Free from background noise

So I could hear the angels singing through your presence

…And you did

And I was no longer an atheist

.

We smiled and without hesitation kissed

No thought or planning or map or radar needed to bring our lips together

Your body sandwiched between a blank white wall

And the rainbow of colors

That were emitting from my heart

.

You melted into me

And I had to open my eyes to make sure that I was not alone

That I wasn’t onstage or in a bus to somewhere new

Always in a moving play

Wishing I could be motionless in reality

Constantly surrounded with cast and crew and a paying audience

Longing to be alone playing serious with you

To my delight…and awe

You were still there

As my heartstrings played their sonata

To an audience of one

.

I was ready to confess all the darkness inside of me

For there was nothing I wanted to keep to myself

Everything that was mine was yours

And so I told you how I was dating a girl in the cast

And saw your expression drop

As if you had just drunk

A cup of poison from my hands

And once again two star-crossed lovers

Were prevented from crossing those stars

.

We went back into the room

And now you smiled politely

But the spark behind the eyes had burnt out

And only a faint puff of smoke remained

You looked at me through cloudy eyes

From what only moments before were clear enough to see to your soul

.

Suddenly the background noise

Became the foreground

And the room started spinning

And I wanted to escape from this nightmare

And go back to the dream in the hallway

Where there was peace in the stillness of your embrace

And never wake up again

And as suddenly as you appeared in my life

Your were gone

.

The tour bus took us to the next city

Away from Rome

Away from you

To perform—

always acting and never just being me

like I was in the hallway

when I didn’t have to perform to impress

.

I wrote you countless letters and postcards

Telling you that you were all I could think of

And I was ready to drop all pretending

To step off the stage

And leave my character and costume in the dressing room

And take your hand as my Self

.

But my letters went unanswered

And days became weeks became months became years…became decades

My tour of duty was long over

And I was shipped back home

Leaving my foreign lover overseas

Wondering if there was a little magic growing inside of her belly

Waiting to be birthed into existence

Proof that I existed and our love was real

.

I’ve wondered how the years have been to you

If you’ve married

Had children

If you are happy

But endless Internet searches came up empty

And those questions remained unanswered

.

Another several years and I joined Facebook

And tried one last time

To locate the piece of my heart that I lost on the battlefield of my European Tour

.

I came across a picture of you

The face that I remember as smooth in perfection as a green-eyed china doll

Now lined from the years

A dog, two kids and two decades

And tears fell quietly from the same eyes that had gazed upon you in Rome

For I wished that I could have been there

And shared with you the time

That transformed your body

But left your soul’s beauty untouched

.

In the fiction of theater

Out of the ethers

Music is pulled into existence by instruments

And words are drawn off a dead page and projected from mouths resuscitated

And choreography is staged from a dance born in the mind’s ballroom

And relationships are formed and destroyed

As quickly as the stage is set up and broken down

.

In each city you come like a circus

And leave like a ghost town

There is music and monologues and motion

But just as quickly they disappear

There are ladies and love and lewdness

But only one Katia

.

And while she has disappeared

Like the last piece of scenery from the set

She has remained forever in my mind

Waiting for a chance to work her way down to my heart

To take her place in the seat on my inner couch

That I have kept vacant for her

All these years

Only this time I will not let her get away

Time can do what he will to our bodies

But he will not take her from me again