Sitting at the bar I could sense it. I was there, with others, sipping a cold drink, even though it the weather suggested something warmer. It came over me like a long forgotten friend. Her face was familiar but her name was now unknown. It was like I knew her, all about her, but I couldn’t remember a thing. The coldness of the bar, of my drink, of the weather outside, kept me from more than just vaguely remembering.
Those sitting around me did not know what I was feeling. The football game was blaring on the television overhead and I barely noticed. All I could think about was the feeling that was vaguely awakening inside me. It was familiar, yet so distant. Like the memory of riding on a horse drawn carriage on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. I remember that but it’s more like a stolen memory from a movie I once saw. I can’t remember the title or what happened. I just remember seeing it.
So as I sipped the soda that sat in front of me, the gnawing memory of something I could barely remember caused a feeling of deep longing. I looked around the bar and it seemed like I was in a two-dimensional space, full of black and white people that were supposed to be in a 3D world. It just wasn’t right. It promised beauty but provided only a false sense of what I felt was something everyone should know but was slowly awakening only inside of me.
Faulkner. That was it. Faulkner had once opened a world that was more than Monday morning. It was more than paying bills. It was even more than life and death. Faulkner had once opened to me a world of true human emotions that transcended the mundanity of life as I had come to know. As I sipped that drink, I knew that there is a world more dynamic than what I usually face. It’s more than the weekly schedule, where I should I be, what I should do, and then doing it all over the next week. But it’s a world that only a few can glimpse, let alone live in. It is a world where those who discover it struggle to make sense of those who have no clue. It is a world where my son Joseph lived and continues to beckon me toward it. It’s a world of deep emotions and truth. A world that few experience.
As I continued to let myself into the truth of the moment, I wondered where it would lead. I also wondered if I could describe it. There was a nagging feeling that it didn’t matter either way. Who cares if I could figure out where it would lead and no one, other than myself, even knew I was trying to describe it. If I ever got to the point of articulation, would it mean I won? Or maybe would it mean I stopped living into the elusive mystery that seemed so close to me at this moment. Maybe that’s what Joseph discovered. To truly live may mean to truly let go. And just live. And know that life is not found in two dimensions, where everyone pays their bills and everyone has a manicured lawn. Life is most deeply experienced in the tears and the joy, the excitement of new birth and the sadness of death.
Sometimes I want to throw away my television sets. To lose the two-dimensional images of a world consumed by what I should buy or how I should dress sounds very attractive. But what if I didn’t know what Trump did or said? That is an attractive thought.