The words still come once in a while, and they’ll roll toward me and away again, toward me and away. If I have the wherewithal I will bend down and scoop them up: conglomerate, pinnacle, obeisance - - - just words. I honor their tenacity and stubbornness, and I am flattered that they still come forth, ready to be used, given my complete disregard for them over the past few years.
Not too long ago, as I drove into work with Springsteen as my companion, singing of Life Itself (rushing over me, life itself, in the wind and black elms, life itself in your heart and in your eyes, and I can’t make it without you), I was reminded of the world that spun when that song first came out. It was a world filled with lush greens, a world filled with laughter and smiles, kindness and ease. It was a world without death, a world without sorrow, a world that rotated so effortlessly.
As I drove, I realized that on the day that I had heard that song for the very first time, my world hiccupped in its rotation, and skipped like a record that had been spearheaded. As I played the words over in my mind - - - I can’t make it without you - - - I recalled the landscape of that massive world as it torpedoed into a tunnel of darkness and fear that had housed itself into an even darker abyss of the anonymity and alienation.
Yet it still spun. The tunnel of darkness and fear, alienation and anonymity was just a facet of the continued world. It was a long tunnel to get through, and it is now a permanent fixture of the new world. I recognize that as my world moved through that tunnel, desperate to reach its end, I had left some things along the way: Drama, worry, fear. Sleep, exercise, confidence.
I recognized that as my world moved through that tunnel, desperate to reach its end, a new president had become known, a new war had emerged on terrain that I would never see, a new celebrity died from an overdose of being a celebrity, Brad and Angelina had another kid, scientists discovered another breakthrough, more diets emerged, and alcohol, drugs, guns, hatred, abuse, and pride ran all over the world, like termites on rotten plywood, nonplussed by my hurt. In fact, as it spun, the words - - - juxtaposition, diaphanous, lethargy - - - shot off my forehead, pierced their way into my heart, rolled from my fingertips, or hid in the recesses of my mind; and some of them of them were left in the tunnel to toil around with my writing talent, or to cry along with the discarded willpower and confidence I had gained from having made it through a painful divorce.
I also realized that the walk through that tunnel afforded me some time to understand love, and the tenacity of love, the strength of love as it expands to cushion the pain, as it expands to embrace the sorrow of others, as it expands to allow the recognition that the excruciating pain I felt was a product of the amazing love I had in my heart, and rather than take away from it, the pain actually multiplied the love threefold. I realized the power.
And the world still spun, looping through the tunnel, out of it, back into it, and out of it again through the wind and the black elms . . .
As I sit here, January 27th 2013, on the four year anniversary of the day that changed my life forever, I am reminded of love’s power, and of the power of life itself; and of a world that is still spinning in your heart and in your eyes. . .
