The Leaving Song

"They're lining up the prisoners

And the guards are taking aim

I struggle with some demons

They were middle class and tame

I didn't know I had permission

To murder and to maim

You want it darker." 

- Leonard Cohen (You Want It Darker)

Perhaps this is just a feeling and not something that can be written down. A moment of softness that one tries to move away from as quickly as possible for fear that it might be interpreted as fragility or vulnerability. Some sort of admission that the ground is shaky and the compass needle is having a momentary crisis. One of those, in which, if you allow yourself to think, you realise that it started before you were even here. There are things that we pull into today that we didn't even realise we were ever attached to.

I am shown videos of a man I used to live with a decade ago. He is alive and happy. Playing with his grandkids. Walking his dog. Holding his wife. From what little I knew of this man, he was one of a rare breed. Exceptionally kind-hearted, tolerant, intellectual, and still very much alive amid life. It would be impossible not to realise that a lot of this life was gifted to him by his beautiful wife. It is her showing me these videos. And although I was never family, I feel a great loss. Perhaps it is some of her loss that I feel. I'm not sure. But every time I see this man move on the screen in front of me, I feel a great pain.

Death sure seems like a strange thing to live for. We will all leave and we will all be left. At some random time, patternless, something will be taken from us or we will be taken from it. It troubles me knowing that we can act the way that we act knowing this. We are peculiar. I can see the tears rolling down her face. It is perhaps not too dissimilar to how some might close their eyes and imagine the face of God. That woman represents so much to me now. She is the embodiment of love and pain, and although, in the grand scheme of things, I barely know her, I would like to hold her and thank her for everything she did for me, without ever realising. And that perhaps is her magic. She may never read this, but I hope that she knows that her husband lived the life every man dreams of, and that is to wake up every day, to love.

...

The dogs are sleeping, scattered around the room. My body and mind are tired, three toes probably broken. The sensation of tears has been living behind my eyes for the last few days. I am in no great pain. My temperament is unusually calm. But with every human interaction I find myself in, I realise that it is utterly nonsensical. It is no longer about being lost or temporarily losing one's bearing. It is not about the weight of existing or overcoming that which must be overcome. All of that is easily explained. Everyone is easily explained. And with that, I see their smirks. I hear them protest. "This know-it-all young man reducing the world to the view from his eyes." 

I have so many bones to pick, yours and mine. We are like memes of the US presidential election. All vitriol and blinkers. We seem to have lost the time we used to have to look under the surface of things. We have less and less of an idea of what makes a human truly beautiful or ugly, yet we protest as to who is which. We deal out pain to avoid our own discomfort. The same discomfort that is trying to teach us something. We hide from the important. We recoil at any form of meaning or depth. We honour the vapid. We do not brood, we scroll. We do not converse, we advertise. We do not suffer, we escape. We do not live, we emulate. 

It is so strange to see how boldly all of this moves. Yet at the same time, it is easy to understand how graceful one feels when they do not question their gait. Everything I might type from now on, I have already typed. It is the source of my existential discomfort. I have no reason to believe any of it will change, so like always, I will leash my dogs and just walk. Leaving some blank space for whatever it is you or I might be thinking and then end with...

This is for L. I want you to know that I have been meditating on your pain. I will not tell you, because I worry it might sound strange. And in these long quiet moments with myself, all I have realised is just how much love you contain within you. I am in awe. And as my eyes begin to weep, it is not because of your pain, or because of my own. Although I might weep for these reasons from time to time. It is because my life has crossed the paths of hundreds of people, all twisted up in some way or another, and if they could just hold on to a fraction of the love that you harness, they might still know themselves as supposed to the byproduct of pain that they wear -in many layers- on top of the dying embers of their forgotten souls.

May God be with you.