I often experience a series of completely immersive, fully dimensional and cinematic visitations that transport me back, at the speed of enlightment, to any number of precise, laser-targeted moments of time experienced and logged, which feels, during even the briefest moments of self-exploration, both prescriptive and most importantly and despite the occasional feelings of imminent danger, safe.
Most of us stagger amatuerly through life, army defended against a personal civilization of sadistic bosses, rude people, unreasonable spouses, selefish politicans and widly disappointing friends and yet there are moments that arrive, less and less frequently, when we are finally willingly to lay down our shields and swords in order to release God's chest-housed breath and allow in radiant beams of sunshine which allows us, in turn, to bake our fresh bread souls like the true artisans we all secretly all are.
When we live in that fragrant, warm moment of just rised bliss, time stops and all seems impossibly right with the world. We feel tucked in. Read to. We can close our eyes and remember the tactful touch of our mothers as they quietly swiped those few errant hairs from our foreheads as they quickly replaced their child tracing fingertips with their mommy warm, slowly descending, perfectly landed lips.
When I was really little I had many safe places. There were tented blankets, members only, closet spaces and the exclusive, shadow underworlds of summertime boardwalks and daddy indented, chaise lounges. From those quiet places I was able to pray at the Church of the child and while offering myself to the welcoming angel arms of forever.
What I was not prepared for was this year.
2016, has been nothing more than an endless, unpredictable chain of just stepped on land mine explosions that refuses to stop no matter how many times I to convince myself that all is well
It feels like we have all been forced to stand, glued against our will to the very same spot, saluting stoically little John John, as we mournfully watch the clip, clop of the next horseless carriage of the just now extinguished hero. And the one after that.
And the one after that.
You know the endless list of loss. Prince. Glen Frey. David Bowie. George Michael. Muhammad Ali. Alan Rickman. Patty Duke. And now add Debbie Reynolds whose tiny, let's put on a show, trouper body required the proplusion of one, final massive stroke to propell her into the heavens so she could still be next door neighbors with her beloved and our beloved Carrrie.
At this point all I can try to do is hope and pray that I run out of memory ink so I can finally breath and stare at a mercifully blank sheet brain paper.
The election, for the most of us, has been yet another land mine exploded. Killed in action, in one blinding, staggering moment of flash, has been decency, ability, talent, ethics, values, truth, facts, science, compassion, civility, inclusion, respect and educated discourse which now lie, on the scorched earth battlefields like quickly decomposing, mortally wounded, soldiers whose bodies will remain both forgotten and unclaimed for at least four more years, because avarice, just like any other chemical weapon, once fully released into the atmosphere, cannot be contained and kills on contact.
Wherever I have traveled, the traumatized, shared-loss cafe conversations have been identical. It's not even January and already those daily George Bailey-like/Potterville wild eyed faces of helplessness appear at every turn, searching desperately for answers.
It feels like, the never ending new normal ritual has been expect the best, while outside Rome burns and the Emperor waves, like a baffled, Walmart Greeter, in the lobby of a tower (which I assure you is his one and only job).
For now, and today only, the obituaries du jour will read:
Historical Hollywood glamour, forever gone.
Savage, brilliant, wit, dies at 60.
But once the dust that we literally go to and finally settles (trust me, it will. For a while at least) know this.
Despite everything that has slammed us hard in the clay-soft, most vulnerable lunar region craters of our hearts, our individual system of gravity although threatened and endlessly under atatck, works just fine.
What we need now is one small step for a man or woman.
One giant leap for mankind.