(This post originally appeared in my old Blog, June 2014)
Becoming one with the knowledge of being a loner is a long, hard process, but it is also part of the true pilgrimage.
Here I am, again, meal plan paid for, always a meal plan paid for when I go to retreats and conferences and seminars, and all I want to do is find some place to be left alone, have my own thoughts, my own company, and not make the idle social niceties that seem required in the illusion of social discourse.
7:00am Blue State coffee, New Haven, CT, iced soy mocha, bagel with peanut butter, banana, some melodramatic music in the background, people passing through on their way to work or school, my classmates most likely at the beautiful (and the food is very vegan friendly and deliciousness)) Pierson cafeteria, and I would rather be here, an hour before breakfast on campus, in a corner, watching people, thinking, searching myself and my thoughts and my universe for some great divine source, far away from strangers and their world that I don't ever quite feel like I fit into.
My closest friendship I have made here has been with my Ganesh statue, and I've since begun to refer to Ganesh as being an actual being, an actual person that I'm spending time with. People ask me, "what did you do last night?, and I reply, "Ganesh and I spent the night watching videos on vegan eating in Europe, before falling asleep to the sound of Krishna Das." I suspect people think I'm having a gay affair while I am here.
It has always been easier to be friends with the gods and goddesses, magicians of the past, than it has been with actual people. I am a hard friend to make. On the positive side, once you are in, it is a loyal and caring ride that takes a fair amount of wounding to break free from.
I met with an old friend last night, someone I hadnt seen since 1995, who I didn't make recontact with until 2013 via Facebook, but seeing him last night, it was as if the years had never passed, and the fielty, troth, and friendship I felt for him back then remained unchanged. When he left, I didn't go to any campus events, it was Ganesh and I once again, partners and friends late into the night, he smiling down at me from the shelf, me occasionally reaching up to rub his warm, white resin belly.
The fact that I have a wife these days, who I really love and enjoy spending time with, speaks loudly of my connection to her. Contra her, I was best with randomness, random hook ups and meetings, keeping multiple women on multiple leashes, enjoying the hunt,catch, and release, and even in long relationships I was always going away, extended stays away, any excuse to get away, and back to the hunt, the sudden hook up, and then return to pay my dues at home, or what passed for a home.
I dread victim identity, and I hate blaming responses and behaviors on being a victim, a long term victim of some pretty terrible things, because we get to choose how we respond and react to things, how we undo the damage to our bodies, hearts, and souls, right? But outside of the figurative soul and the heart, we are a series of millions of connections running through the brain, more so in the heart in (non-figurative),and the wiring for these connections began in youth, they got their exclamtion points in trauma, those spots in the connections that the sparks of the moment marked, "Here! Record this moment, we need it for survival." I think that, from a very biological and psychological point of view, I am hard-wired for the life of the solitary passenger, the traveler, the stranger passing through, though it is the romantic heart that wants those deep roots and connections with others. I don't blame my solitary nature on being a victim, I embrace my solitary nature for giving me a way to escape being a victim. My selfhood returned to me, and it continues to return to me, in the solitary nature of my soul. Being a solitary means that I get to choose to no longer be a victim of other peoples demands on my heart, soul, mind, body, and that is a liberation that the social rarely ever understand.
People become my friends, my long-term partners, wife, by jumping through a series of trials and tests. It's shitty, and I realize it, but there is a lot of flame leaping to get inside of my life and remain there. I don't create drama, I don't test people with stupid games, but I meet someone and they are probation, and their ability to resist the fires of my life dictate how long they will stay with me. There should Really be a medal, or a crown, for being considered one of my true friends, let alone my wife (this time at least). Maybe, what's required is a blanket, because I disassociate and turn cold so quickly, and as quickly as a person enters, is as quickly as they can be evicted from it, and rarely, do I care or second guess that decision. I think my friends are armed with thick blankets, ones which warm the cold, ones which repel flames, ones that guard well against claw marks, ones that allow me to stay hidden and peak out again when I feel safe.
Maybe this is why I relate so much to history's magicians and mystics and martyrs and heretics, or the solitary philosophers. I know what it is like to be choosy of your company, of your people, to be guarding of your pearls (it's one thing to cast them before swine, another thing to buy the whole fucking hog farm), and to have a deep relationship with one's invisible friends and thoughts, the spirit alongside the magician, vice versa, and not have time for the sort of relationships of quick words, commonalities, and the behavior that presents itself as friendships (or bros, frats, sororities, party people, niggas, etc.,) that is only a way of not relating to another person.
Maybe that's part of the equation. I have a busy social life inside my head, I don't have much room left to extend. I have Nietzsche and Heidegger and Rilke and Bruno and Van Gogh and and MacGregor Mathers, I have Mechthild and Rumi and Hildegaard and Julian, I have angels and devils, I have Odin and Lucifer and Ganesh, occasionally, Krishna and Radha show up on flute, bring honey-covered sweets, we have texts, ancient books, secret texts, hidden knowledge, revealed knowledge, we have transmigration of the soul, we have Kabbalah, we have Yoga, we have music, I have Joy Division and Bell Hollow and Interpol and Nick Cave to learn from, I have generations of mandolin and so players in the holler to learn from, I have Faulkner and Welty and OConnor to be mentored by, I have mountains to speak to and climb and learn lore from, we have rooms and temples and churches and mosques and museums to explore, and since I no longer "hunt" for warm thighs, our life is more filled than ever with wisdom and wonder and words and the ecstasy of hunting the self, always hunting the self, inward. I have a few close friends, I have a soulmate, I don't have room for new people to come in and out, to have surface niceties with, and if you're not here for the fire you don't get to stay for the illumination.
8:36am, Blue State coffee, and I have been mumbling to myself, writing, listening to complaint-alt-rock on the music mix here, gazing students and workers and the few other solitary creatures passing through here for the last 90 minutes. Ganesh awaits for me in my dorm, half-naked,a nod smiling, his white feet reach down toward the pillar where I will rest my head tonight. Tomorrow, my wife arrives, and this solitary wandering comes to an end, as I share this city and my life and my heart with the only person who has ever earned the right to stand besides me in the flames, who will one day stand beside me in the gardens that will grow from the ashes I have left behind me. For now though, I get another day of being a lone wanderer, myself given to myself, together alone, and this to, is the pilgrimage's path.
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