Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of John
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
John Prine, You Wrote My Life
a life unstuck in time (to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr),
so this story can go on and on in dis-order, added to at any time the whim (or need) arises
Chapter 11
He Was in Heaven Before He Died©
---Common Sense
Now the harbor's on fire
With the dreams and desires
Of a thousand young poets
Who failed 'cause they tried
For a rhyme without reason
Floats down to the bottom
Where the scavengers eat it
Washed in with the tide
"You are going to write a book." That's what she said. And I didn't even let her get the sentence finished before I was shaking my head.
I'd started and stopped several times already, and I knew I didn't have it in me. Sometimes I'd think, maybe it's time to write that book. If you don't try, you won't know. But that's not what was stopping me. The problem was, if you do try, you will know.
It seems like it must be important how I got where I am. At least I think about it sometimes. Like the times I've spent soaking in the tub.
Soaking in a hot bath really is overrated. It feels good for about two-and-a-half minutes, and then it's just hot. My grandmother used to send me to the tub at night insisting that it would make me feel clean and good for bedtime. But it was always a little scary to me. Her bathroom was an add-on to an old farmhouse - kind of a porch that felt quite separated from the rest of the house. It was always closed off by the door that led to it, and at night it seemed almost like it was in another building altogether - far away from anyone who would hear me if I needed them. It was the mid-zone between the bad man world outside and the safe home inside. Between, and unsettling.
That border world exists in reality. I found it again a few years ago. Aboriginals and shamans have long known about one borderland that lies between our waking reality and our dream reality. Modern Western civilized man only accepts the one as reality and discounts the other two. Limited vision. In the late 20th Century, however, that vision is slowly being expanded.
"Sorcerers believe that until the very moment of the spirit's descent, any of us could walk away from the spirit; but not afterwards." So says Carlos Castaneda's don Juan Matus. And a North American Elder named Leon Shenandoah says, "There are no coincidences. Only paths. Only one path. Got to follow it even if you can't see it. Only path you got."
When my path led me into the borderland, I had no idea what a difficult place it is to navigate. Nor did I know that don Juan was right. Some times I would simply have to write things down to get them out of my head and my heart and move on. As though thoughts were sticking places in the borderland, and until you were able to fully express them, you were bound to them. So I have a series of scribblings that act as mementos of various places I've visited in the borderland. Snapshots of my journey. Such as:
August 14, 2000:
Every step I take leads me further and further away from anything resembling solid ground.
Sometimes I stand still. Out of fear I guess. And yet sometimes I think it's because construction on the bridge that leads across the chasm is slow, and the space for my next footstep has not been made. In those times, a great weight settles in my chest and the sounds rising from my heart get trapped and bound within my throat.
I feel like if I'm not walking, I become stuck, bound in embalmers cloth, crying in the desert. But the tears are unable to release the songs trapped in the tunnel of my throat, knowing the sound they make is only a song if they get out.
Fortunately, very early into my immersion into the borderland, there was a moment of realization that all is perfection as it exists in every moment, whether that moment be subjectively experienced as good or bad. And during that moment of realization, all desire or need to struggle in life fell away.
Now a realization is, after all, a real-ization. So the question arose: Why can't spirit, which gave me that realization, sustain it for me, or give it to me constantly? And the answer came: Because in that state of rest, the world that we experience would not exist. This world requires waves to and fro, positive and negative - vibrations - in order to exist.
In other dimensions, the larger part of me must care to maintain this world. But the me that I am here doesn't care and would prefer a state of oblivion over the state of this existence. In the blink of an eye, on some days with no thought at all, I would end the world. End the game. And maybe never create a new one.
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