2006: Goodbye to all that

I need a good New Year's celebration.

As this year draws to a close, I find myself trying to make sense of the past year; it seems unavoidable. A particular and vivid image keeps coming to mind: a massive landslide of coastal headland falling into the ocean.

My life this past year has been like that. A year ago, I was in an entirely different phase of my life. I was in a relationship -- one in which I made that transition from young adult to middle age in many respects. I co-owned my first house. I was settled down, living with dogs, feeling financially secure and just rather confidently finishing my first term in graduate school.

It is all gone. All changed. All not what it was a year ago.

On New Years Eve a year ago, I attended a concert with XGF, followed by a late meal at The Montage. I think we got home shortly around midnight. The dogs were in a panic over the fireworks, so we sat with them. Eventually, I fell asleep in the Barcalounger, watching poker on television. I happen to hate poker.

There was something amiss in our relationship, and I could sense it that night. The rest of the story, most of you know.

That life was radically disrupted, as if it was the landslide crashing into the ocean. Time will eventually spread that chaos of rocks and trees and mud out to sea -- to join a coral reef, build a dune in Florence or silt up the mouth of the Columbia.

For I’ve been brought back again from the
fine silt, the mud where our atoms lie
down for long naps. And I’ve also been
pardoned miraculously for years
by the lava of chance which runs down
the world’s gullies, silting us back.
Here I am, brought back, set up, not yet
happened away.

(-- From William Meredith's "Accidents of Birth," which I have pondered for a good 20 years or so but find it speaking more loudly at this point in my life than ever before. See the link "My second favorite poem" to read the whole thing.)

Anyway, that is how I feel about my life right now. An entire phase -- one that spanned my most significant relationship, my highest paying but most soul-sucking job, the slow death of my brother and my grief over that, one that took me from transient to "stable," and saw me turn into a budding adventure traveler -- has completely given way and exposed rock which has never seen the light of day.

Altogether, it's been stressful, frightening and filled with loss, which is probably why I envision landslides rather than something fabulous, like the birth of a star. (My visions should be more galactic, less earthbound.) I have felt the distinct disengagement of the earth beneath my feet. How fitting that I trace all this massive change back to a cliff-side road in Peru.

The most destabilizing loss of all has been my vision of the future. A year ago, I had a distinct "plan" for my life. I know, and I have generally embraced the reality, that life is unpredictable. I also recall about a year ago saying that I value the not-knowing, that it keeps life interesting. And that is sooooo true.

But even so, there is some peace of mind in thinking you are writing a particular story, that you are making it along chapter by chapter, that you can envision a story arc and even, for the time being, believe in a sad ending -- people do die after all -- but that it would be you who went first and was mourned. I mean, why not have a good story to amuse and soothe yourself with along the way?

I saw a big plot of rural land with towering trees and a dock (canoe and kayak at its side) on a lake good for swimming in the summer. I saw dogs running around a yard without fences. I saw a home dominated by a beautiful study and a beautiful library -- one for each of us -- with a little building out back where I could conduct my practice. I saw artwork from Africa on the walls and a setting of antique silverwear from Argentina gracing the holiday table, which itself saw plenty of meals with friends. I saw a large kitchen, in which we'd engage in stimulating conversation while dinner was cooking. I saw the nephew coming to visit for long stretches in the summer. I saw paid help tending to the property because I hate gardening and still love a good garden. I saw fresh flowers. Lots and lots of books. Some of them very old and dusty. I saw the world as something I would consume by first-hand experience, a regular and similarly minded travel companion at my side.

I still want many aspects of that life. But following the landslide, I'm not sure which desires have survived and which have changed. And I have no clue how I'm going to get there. Fleetwood Mac comes to mind, not the least because the song is named "Landslide," but because those words -- "I've been afraid of changing because I built my life around you" -- make a lot of sense to me.

I went and changed anyway. If we are lucky, age does make us bolder.

Bold is one thing, but perhaps, if you are smarter than I, you don't change until you have an alternative in mind. I didn't. I knew there were things I didn't want to do (move back East, for example), and I knew there was something I wanted (to put down roots somewhere), but I didn't have a (serious) new story in mind.

As the end of the year approaches -- and as it gets closer to being a year since the landslide -- I am seeing the need to conceive a new story in light of losing the old one. I believe one of the main reasons I have felt so lonely is not just because of all I have lost over the past year -- a home, a relationship, a family and far too many friends to both death and attrition -- but because I haven't provided my mind with any direction. (Except with one that was entertaining, compelling and hopeless to the point of laughable all at once.)

Perhaps the next few days will give me the opportunity and space to envision a new future I might fancy, one of my own device, built on my own predilections whether someone accompanies me or not.

I'll be spending New Years in Vancouver, BC, with the two men I consider my "gay godfathers," one of whom was for several years my constant sidekick. He goes by the codename of Morroco Mole, but because he's Latino, we pronounce the Mole as "Molé." I call these guys my "gay godfathers" because they were both instrumental in normalizing a gay existence for me.

But before I head up to British Columbia, I'm retreating to one of my favorite spots, a little rustic cabin perched on a rock jutting up out of Lake Quinault on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. I love to travel; I love adventure; but I also love the solitude and do-nothingness of this little retreat. It's a place I get to wear a hundred-mile stare for as long as I please and disappear deep within myself.

With any luck, I'll re-emerge with an idea, a path, a story. A story I can believe in.