When life pushes me away from the safe swimming area, toward the deep end, I fail to remain a normal human. I treat my sisters poorly. I read and hear scores of anxious, longing, or even downright frantic messages asking for my return. The phone rings, and I watch it buzz till it falls off the table completely. I feel guilty, but not completely. I turn away from the hounds of the normal world, and back toward the deep, where souls are forgotten. With the sort of inner grin you might wear when a talented pianist starts bangin on the low keys, with ardor and might.
I know certain people, they come from all walks of life. They have moods that reflect both good times and bad times, but they always keep their behavior in one place. Above surface, yards from the floating markers. Many of them are married with a steady job. And even when that marriage gets bumpy, or the job becomes a bitter chore, they still remember to make lunch sandwiches for tomorrow and fall asleep at eleven. Maybe they have shrinks, or a speaking God. Maybe they’re just regular.
I’ve known a surgeon or two that couldn’t turn from their work. I never understood. How can working for a living become living for work? More importantly, how can cutting an awfully fat person open in three places be a rewarding, attractive way to spend one’s time away from his family? From his three beautiful daughters, from his passion. With judgement, I’d wonder. I still wonder, and I still see the hurt. But I see more.
All but the very closest are kept at arm’s length, as I sort through the space that is an artist’s need for regularly kept distance. It pains me. Watching relationship after relationship suffer tears at what I cannot help. And with passion I often fight it. Only a few survive. Only a few are able to enter and stay forever. Fewer still break me open. And of those few, who wants to stay? I haven’t figured the formula. To do so I may need a shrink. Or a speaking God.
I don’t know how to be a lunch-at-noon always-your-fella sort. I get up, I brew coffee, I wear a white t-shirt. Aside from that, most every day is different. I don’t know how to be regular. I know how to see though, and maybe how to love. And for what I see, for what I love, I want something simple. To tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it.