e at fifty

I reached this milestone early last week on the 23rd of August. I can't say I'm happy about it, neither can I say I've accepted it, let alone become comfortable with the idea that half my life is now in the tank. But there it is, whether I like it or not.

And without any fanfare.

where E is today

Dear Mary Angel

I'm tired of just about everything. I can understand Luke 21:26 though it doesn't apply to the present; there is still a great deal of fear in the world today. I spend too much time worrying about the direction of this country than I do the direction of men's souls. I place too much value in the intransigencies of life than I do in life itself. How has this happened?

All I want is to be all that God made me to be, and to be loved by someone God would approve of. I don't think that's too much to ask.

I'm so tired and distracted I haven't been able to focus on work for a week now. There have been no looming deadlines, and those making their approach are nothing to worry over, nevertheless I can't focus on the tasks before me; they pale in comparison to the crisis currently facing me-- my own personal midlife crisis. And I have no one to share it with it.

What will that shore look like when I get to the other side of this? I think that answer worries more than anything else. This world is going to shit in a ziplock, And yes, that worries me, but I'm worried more about where I fit in all this. God doesn't make anything without specific purpose. Each of us have specific purpose, something we are meant to do. How many of us ever discover that purpose? I want to know my reason for being. He's given me so many talents... so many... but I've never known what to do with them, let alone use them for His glory. I wish I had done things differently when I was 17, 18, 20, 23. I wish I weren't the kind of person I was then. But I did meet you, didn't I? A blessing in every brier patch? And what's the point of having a midlife crisis if you don't even have cash enough for a motorcycle?

Something I've considered lately. We are all stimulus junkies; we are sensory beings owing our daily perceptions to the things we see, hear, taste, yada... and it is through these stimulus-imprinted perceptions we categorize it all: good days, bad days, and everything in between. And that's all a motorcycle would be, something mostly in between. I'm tired of being 'in between.' I just want to know who I am in Him.

There's a song getting some air on the radio where I'm at, something about ten-thousand fireflies? Well, the song is silly, but the last line speaks to where I am:

Because my dreams are bursting at the seams.

And my dilemma? Not enough net in which to catch them all.


Thank you for listening,

All my love,


Eric

though I do not yet know her name

I was thinking recently, with the turn of another year, on the desert loneliness that is the sound of most Jackson Browne songs; how free he is to sing as though he were speaking-- straight language and ideas without the usual short-lined verses of metaphor and innuendo that populate most lyrics these days. So I began to write, hearing Jackson Browne sing my song, his voice to my lyrics and melody. This is the result.


Afire For You

I I've been alone long, and a dreamer
For most of my life
Though I desire soft clean linens I'll still
Sleep in the desert tonight
Another night of tossing and turning
Another night of sleeping alone
And when the morning light comes to find me
Though every hour spent trying to atone
I'm still very much alone

II Chasing sleep down long corridors
Seems that's all I ever do
All I'm ever left with come daybreak
Are my fitful dreams of you
Another night beneath the cold desert sky
Another night of sleeping alone
Every morning that comes only serving to remind me
Despite every hour spent trying to atone
I'm still very much alone

O, And how I've wandered
How I've carried this torch for you
Never looked in your eyes, never made to ponder
How my love for you strengthened and grew
Though I be cut to the bone
And suffer to atone
I'll always very much alone

III When I close my eyes and dream of you
While sleeping deeply through this night
The stars wheeling 'cross the glittering sky
And making love til the morning light
How do you leave the bed you've made with love
Shoulder your pack and continue to roam?
'Cause I've spent my life, all my sins to atone
Yet I'm still very much alone

O, And how I've wandered
How I've carried this torch for you
Never looked in your eyes, never kissed your soft smile
Yet my love for you strengthened and grew
Though I be cut to the bone
Giving my life to atone
I'll still be very much alone

If there's an angel set to observe me
Dogging my e-ver-y step
Could he have not seen fit
To lead me out of the desert
And into your loving arms?
O, Into your loving arms

With my heart on fire for you
My heart afire for you



ELAshley
Part I - 010210.11>.6
Part II - 010410.11>.6
Part III - 010810.11>.6
Revisions:
011210.111002.6

This was written for someone specific, though I do not yet know her name.

my own personal midlife crisis: doomed to solitude

To reiterate. Every thought, image, and response has a musical connection. Some songs resonate more than others, and that is where the "soundtrack of one's life" meme is rooted. But some songs resonate more than others. For me, I can recite that litany of songs which truly, madly, deeply reverberate through my soul, on a single hand.

Pain, or so it seems to me, is the foundation of genuine worldly beauty. Beauty is an expression of defiance against that which would crush us, would we but allow it. There is nothing remarkable about a straight line-- a straight line is unremarkable in a forest of conformity. But curve that line... well then, that's something new altogether. Where pure pleasure is the straight line, pain then is the curve.

Take Celtic music for instance, or the vocal stylizings of groups like Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Cultures which have experienced oppression and suffering sing with a heart that seeks to rise above the pain... whether they realize it or not-- the pain creeps into their musical expression, and however straight-lined their words, their vocals and instruments speak in curves.

And so here I am, long story short, to the point of my own life's soundtrack, and one song from that one hand that has reverberated through my soul for thirty-four years. I've made mention of it here (or elsewhere... I know I've written about this song somewhere), but at the risk of appearing unduly obsessive I return to Yer Blues by the Beatles.

Why bother mentioning it all? Well, I came across a review of the song online and felt compelled to comment upon it.

First the lyrics:

Yes I'm lonely. Wanna die
Yes I'm lonely. Wanna die
If I ain't dead already
Woo, girl you know the reason why.

In the morning. Wanna die
In the evening. Wanna die
If I ain't dead already
Woo, girl you know the reason why.

My mother was of the sky
My father was of the earth
But I am of the universe
And you know what it's worth
I'm lonely. Wanna die
If I ain't dead already
Woo, girl you know the reason why.

The eagle picks my eye
The worm he licks my bones
I feel so suicidal
Just like Dylan's Mr. Jones
Lonely. Wanna die
If I ain't dead already
Woo, girl you know the reason why.

Black cloud crossed my mind
Blue mist round my soul
Feel so suicidal
Even hate my rock and roll
Wanna die. Yeah, wanna die
If I ain't dead already
Woo, girl you know the reason why.

Depressing, right? Suicidal, even? But why? And why does it resonate in my soul? Well, here's one reviewer's thoughts on the song:

For all that chatter about The Beatles predicting the band members' solo work, only two of its Lennon tracks would be of a piece with his Plastic Ono Band, arguably the defining post-Beatles disc. One is the muted, tender "Julia"; the other, the searing, spooky "Yer Blues"...

Following in the grand blues tradition of women doing wrong and leaving a man in pain often simply by leaving him, Lennon seethes in heartbreak. But his introspection (call it his utter self-absorption) turns the misdeed inward, and the song focuses on his reactions rather than whatever wrong she supposedly committed. This is not a revenge story, or an attack on an unfaithful woman. This is instead an attack on the man who, through some or many unspecified flaws, doomed himself to solitude.

—Charles Hohman

And this is the key phrase, for me:

This is instead an attack on the man who, through some or many unspecified flaws, doomed himself to solitude.

This is about what one feels about himself, not what someone else has done to him. And I reckon this speaks as much about my life as it did, perhaps, about his... Lennon's.

I remember a task I set for Mary Angel as her sponsor into Iota Gamma's "Little Sister" program; circa 1983. It was common for the brothers to set an impossible task for their charges, and I, thinking myself clever, asked Mary Angel to bring to me the lyrics to my favorite song, giving her only one clue... "My father was of the earth."

I thought I was clever, but I was outdone by an intellect far cleverer than my own. She called my little sister and asked what my favorite band was. Easy! she was told-- The Beatles. It then became a search for which song held that particular line. Now this was 1983; no PC's worth a flip, no Google, no world wide web to really speak of, so my sister begins to play all my Beatles albums, song by song, until they hit upon a winner.

Mary Angel was NOT pleased by the song I called "my favorite." Not pleased at all. But without going into too much detail-- long story short --I gave her no context so she had no way of knowing why that song, as tragic in tone as it is, was my favorite. And truth be told, I never considered the reason myself till much later.

As a young child I was constantly uprooted and thrust into new situations, new schools, new friends... new bullies who saw in my stuttering reason enough to make my life more and more miserable. I learned very early to simply keep quiet and not draw too much attention to myself.

So here I am years later, 21, maybe 22 years old. I've asked out the moderately attractive Kathleen Tremblay. I've picked her up, and taken her to a party. While there she pretty much dumps me and begins making out with someone else. I leave. Without her. And I go to a place I routinely frequent when I wish to be alone. It's a small but long pier on St. Andrews Bay.

It's dark. Only a sliver of moon in the sparsely clouded night sky. I take out a knife. Put it's tip to the right side of my chest and slash downward. And a second time, but without much enthusiasm. I throw the knife out to sea, stagger back to my car and drive home. I'm covered in blood so I take a shower. Excruciating pain! I bandage myself, and go to bed.

How do you tell your family you did something like that to yourself? I couldn't. I told my father I was attacked on the beach.

There was no trip to the hospital. Just a jar of sulfur to pack the wound to keep it from getting infected. What I got was one big ass scar, and more isolation from people I considered friends. The scar was quite noticeable for many years, but has since faded. The memory however has not, nor do I expect it to.

This was not an attack on the girl who broke my heart but was instead, "an attack on the man [myself] who, through some or many unspecified flaws, doomed himself to solitude." I attacked myself for some unknown, unseen, unfathomed flaws that kept me single, and without friendship or intimacy from girls.

Here's one major distinction between my own experience and that of the song in question. I was not suicidal-- I had absolutely no intention of killing myself. Had that been the case I could have easily pushed the knife straight in. Instead I slightly dimpled the flesh of my chest inward and swiftly sliced down... not in. I did not want to kill myself. What I wanted was to externalize the pain I felt in my heart.

And so this is my fear... my own personal midlife crisis... that I am doomed to solitude; that I will never find love... never share my life with a woman who loves me.

* * *

This song resonates with me. It didn't before that evening. Nor did it resonate for many years after. But today, after years of swimming in the soup of "some or many" of my own "unspecified flaws" it has come to carry a great deal of weight in the soundtrack of my life.

I am 49 years old, and still Solitude Standing. I've waited twenty years for a woman to say "yes" to marriage only to realize at last that she doesn't wish to marry anyone, let alone me.

So I'm moving on. Suicide was never an option... has never crossed my mind-- it's simply not who I am. But I'd be a liar if I said I didn't suffer a modicum of despair over having reached the heliopause of 50 and still single; having wasted the last twenty years on someone who chooses not to love or be loved.

What is left for me to do now? Accept what is and move on. And never give up looking for someone who will love who and what I am in spite of who and what I am not.

There. It's out. Welcome to my midlife crisis.

where E is..

...is where I now am. I can't think of anything better to label it than 'midlife crisis'. There is an anxiousness, a depression, a cacophony of emotions and angst that I can't shake... an emotional malaise that threatens to sweep everything away, pushing inland like a psychic tsunami. I can't believe how depressed I am right now... I just want to cry...

But what would that solve? It wouldn't make me feel any better... the pain would still be there. I would still be tired. I would still be lonely. I would still be unfulfilled...

I would still be unfulfilled


As is my wont I am listening to a song, over and over and over and over again.

Andrew Gold, 1978...

Passing Thing

Slowly sailing leaves
The children of the trees
Evicted by the wind
And can't return again

Young girl by a stream
Has lost her younger dreams
Her childhood will end
And won't return again

'Cause it's only a passing thing
It's only what time will bring
Though we are together thrown
We're all alone
We can't go home

And you only have a heart
To see that only love guide you

I am just a man
Following my heart
Following a flame
That never stays the same

                    ...

'Cause it's only a passing thing
It's only what time will bring
Though we are together thrown
We're all alone
We can't go home

And you only have a heart
To see that only love can guide you

Okay. I will write some now... off the top of my heart. It won't be as good as Andrew, but maybe it will be good enough...

Who Loved Me (And Let Me Go)

Oh how I miss you
How I miss your loving arms
How I miss the thought of you
The very sight of you
Who loved me long ago

Oh how I cherish you
How I cherish the memory of soft skin
Cherish the very thought of you
The very warmth of you
Who loved me then let me go

When all of this is done
When the world is gone away
Our world beneath a dying sun
My heart and soul written in the stars
Forever of you will say
How you broke my heart
Tore my soul apart
Left me to wander
A stone skipping cross
The blacknesses of time

                    ...

Oh how I desire you
Desire your long forgotten kiss
How I desire the memory of you
The very picture of you
Who loved me but let me go

When all of this is done
When the world is gone away
Our world beneath a dying sun
My heart and soul written in the stars
Forever of you will say
How you broke my heart
Tore my soul apart
And left me to wander
A stone skipping cross
The blacknesses of time

Oh how I weep for you
For all of time mourn you
Desire you
Miss you
Cherish you
Sweet Mary Angel
Oh how I love you

ELAshley
111709.064430.6
No matter how bad it is, I will not revise it. Ever

Who is she you ask?

She is the ideal. The kind of woman I will never see or meet again. She is the very image I look for in every woman I meet... and have always been left disappointed.

But it's only a passing thing, right? this 'midlife crisis' of mine?

Tell that to my heart.

riding thE elephant

I spent five hours at the National Peanut Festival last night manning the station's tent, in the company of three folks who were veritable strangers. They are no longer strangers but that hardly means we are now friends. I learned some things about them, shared some things about me-- all that remains is for the fallout to occur. There is always fallout in opening up oneself to people you don't know well enough to trust.

It was another lesson in becoming someone new. But then, that's not exactly right. People never change... Ever... unless God does it; and even then, that old person isn't really gone. They're just covered with someone else's clothes... someone else's righteousness, but your old self can still wreak havoc in the lives of others and in your own. Someone has given you a new shirt, yes, but the skin beneath it is still the same... get it?

I met a soldier last night whose unit was the one that took out Uday and Qusay... Saddam's sons. He was wanting advice on getting into journalism-- he was getting ready to retrain for journalism within the US Army. I told him when he left the military to make sure he knew how to shoot and edit, maintain a decent demo, and apply at a smaller station to get some experience. It struck me how meek he appeared. Not that he looked weak or beaten, but rather he looked... unfulfilled, or perhaps in desperate need of a change. Life can do that. And I should know.

It's been a long time coming but I've reached a tipping point. And it is undeniably, unequivocally, a tipping point... a crux, if you will. I've felt a change coming for the last few years, and even more these last few months and weeks. But in just a matter of days I've come to realize the futility of hanging on to the relationship I've been "hanging on" to for the last 21 years.

Do I love her? Undeniably. Does she love me? I believe she does. But she will never marry me. And each and every day that passes only serves to reinforce the understanding that the misery I feel now being NOT married to her, would only multiply several-fold should we marry. I love her but I am miserable. She loves me but she is miserable.

I used to think that I could accept her unconditionally; love her in spite of the character flaws, and idiosyncrasies that totally turn me off. I used to think it was the lack of sex that kept me from being happily in love with her. But sex, I've come to realize, has nothing to do with whether or not I am happy in my relationship, such as it is. I don't feel valued. She speaks about me in my presence as though I were not in the room; as though she were speaking about me to someone else. She repeatedly speaks about the kind of man she needs, in front of me, as though I don't already provide those things she thinks she needs. But this last week she has, deliberately or unintentionally, sabotaged my efforts to leave this relationship. And I don't know whether to be furious or depressed.

Actually, I'm both.


Next to our tent at the festival, was an animal tent... dog shows, camels, and elephants to ride-- in a ring no more than 30 feet in diameter. I saw kids and their parents climbing a mounting ladder to settle themselves into a special saddle upon the elephant's back, and I suddenly felt sorry for the elephant. Is the elephant happy with its lot? What does a happy elephant look like? Is it content to ferry kicking screaming children around in a tight circle hour after hour?

People... humans... think themselves so superior, but what makes them think such? Because they can leash a wild animal and force it to the indignities of servitude? How often do we hear of elephants "going rogue" at a circus? escaping the tents and rampaging through the city streets before some police officers have to finally kill it? Often enough that the image is easily conjured in our minds. Were those elephants happy? What was the final indignity that broke the proverbial camel's back?

I ask myself these kind of questions often enough that they are easily brought forward, and today, typed out here. And I wonder if there's a parallel to be found between that poor beast at the Fair and my own situation.

I have gotten so used to the chain around my foot that I haven't even bothered to try to escape. Fear of being alone has kept me from even trying to break that chain. Instead, I have allowed myself to suffer the indignity of a relationship that doesn't even pretend to nurture the man God created in me. Sure, I'm allowed out in the sunshine and fresh air... physical needs. But what of the need to be happy? to roam free? even as a monogamous husband a man still needs freedom to be what God has created him to be... without chains, without denial. No! It's not about sex, or the lack thereof, it's about the value another person places in me.


So. I've been saving money to move out. Out of fear or an act of sabotage the would-be missus deliberately short-changing the household's needs, tucks a sum of money away somewhere in her room (yes, we sleep in separate rooms), and forgets where she's hid it.

Fast-forward three days: She needs an emergency dentist visit to the tune of $150, demolishing all the cash we had to get to next payday. I knew I was going to have to dip into mine just to get us there, but I didn't expect what would happen next.

Rewind a month back. She was to pay both of our insurances on X, but come Y she still hadn't paid it... she was too tired to deal with driving "all the way across town". Now comes Z, and with both of us in the car, me driving without my seat belt on, I get pulled over. Long story short, a ten dollar ticket for not wearing my seat belt, and a three-hundred fifty dollar mandatory court appearance for not having proof of insurance. And she STILL can't find the money she lost. And she needs this, and that, and we both need this. And now this morning my car won't start. The engine turns over, but it won't catch. Yeah, I know what the problem is, and I know what the problem REALLY is... that I can't possibly get the car fixed AND pay the court fines, AND put money aside to escape my 30 ft diameter circle. Things will continue on as they have... the only sunshine I'll get is when I'm trotted out, saddle on my back, to be ridden and kicked by screaming selfish brats, and their clueless parents.

Knowing this then, I have a decision to make. Do I allow myself to continue docilely accepting my lot in life? Or do I break free and run, even though the guns await me in the end?

Am I afraid? I most certainly am. But what other choice do I have? Because continuing to wear that saddle is no choice at all. I was meant for broad savannas and cool wide rivers. I was meant to spend my life with someone who gets me and accepts me as I am rather than with someone who only desires to saddle me and heap indignities upon me. I am ready to be loved. I am ready to belong to someone. But I am tired of being the object to which a child points and shouts, "I want to ride the elephant!"

I don't feel right about posting this. But I'm going to do it anyway. I don't view it as a pathetic bemoaning for attention or sympathy. I'm choosing to view this as bravery because how many other people out there feel the same way but are likewise afraid to break their chains and flee, guns be damned? To those who feel the same as I, don't wait as long as I have to run.

What good is a dog if its never allowed to run? Why is it we always feel the need to leash those things we desire to call our own? I have no desire to leash ANY woman who chooses to love me-- that's right, chooses. I desire only to love and be loved, and to trust implicitly... knowing and accepting that trust is often broken. But with freedom to love and be loved, comes the understanding that trust IS broken. You must be able to acknowledge and accept that truth to truly be free... KNOW your trust will on occasion be broken, and ACCEPT that you will forgive them. For no one is perfect. For if God can forgive them, can I do no less?

I'm in a right tight financial pickle at the moment. I know it will not last long. I know I will be on my own by next summer's end-- hopefully sooner. I know a good many things, but what I don't know is if someone will ever love me the way I desire to be loved. For that, I place my trust and faith in God, who alone is perfect, and will in His own time lead me to green pastures... beside still waters... who will bless me with more than my cup could ever contain, more than my table could ever support, more than my heart could ever fathom. I will not be that elephant. I will no longer allow myself to be so ridden again.

stumble to find...

...an interesting quote

I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane."

--John Green, Looking for Alaska

I only say "interesting" because it describes exactly how I felt on many occasion about quite a few girls (I say 'girls', but that's just the little boy in me. I mean 'women'), and especially about a new someone in my life.

I'm not interested in the "fnck", I'm interested in the intimacy. And believe you me, Intimacy and Sex are two entirely different soups. They can go hand in hand, but they are not synonymous with one another. The reason being, one is emotional... spiritual even... and can be measured in lifetimes. The other is transitory; it comes, it goes, until next you meet. I fully enjoy the transitory, but I much prefer that one measured by a lifetime.

So, while I do think of the one-- and quite often, being a man --I am drawn to that other 'spiritual' connection between a man and a woman; the one where I could lie down and sleep beside her without the baggage of sex.

Perhaps the most erotic thing I can imagine is being free to be who I am, without fear, in the presence, and in the arms, of someone I truly love.

a new poem

I wrote something new the other night. Another look into my own personal Midlife Crisis. Only this time, it's not about wanting a younger girl, or driving a Harley, or super sportscar, it's more along the lines of wanting to belong to someone. Since I've never married, the older I get the more I think about, and genuinely desire, being near and dear to the heart of a woman who loves me. In short, I want the ring.

So, without further belaying the explanation...

Of Troves Bright and Golden

It is a small thing
A golden peal, a sunlit ring
Trumpets, harps, and harpers sing
Whose grace should ever encircle one finger
Where promise and beauty forever should linger
Within two hearts 'a bed
In linens white and purity's red
Of sureties, promise, the soft petal's led
To the altar where vows are made golden
Like rings ~ circles wherein lives are beholden
Each to the other's trove
Precious, rare, great riches of love
The pearl for which two hearts long strove
Now balanced ~ two rings, two lives joined as one
What great love! One flesh 'neath eternal sun

Yet these are small things
Clutched 'neath linens upon a marriage bed
The troves to which two hearts are wed
Two bright, golden, peerless rings


ELAshley
102009.125107.1
Revisions:
102009.090606.1
102209.020526.6