Shortbus

I’m still face down in the gravel, though it’s more emotional than physical at this point.  Not that that makes it better.  This is one painful little knot of a mystery.  Why do I feel like this?  It seems there is nothing good or beautiful or worthwhile left anywhere in the world.  This is going to sound unbearably narcissistic, but you know what the worst part is?  There’s no art in me.  If I could turn the pain into something beautiful that touches others, perhaps I could be satisfied with that.  Somehow I haven’t the talent for creative expression.

I did tell you how I was almost expelled from high school for my inability to produce creative writing, didn’t I?  Oh well, that’s another story. 

We will simply proceed to the laboratory for the dissection.  I’m afraid to sleep.  I can’t remember what I dream.  Then I wake up feeling crushingly, achingly depressed.  I saw my face in the mirror and there were the beginnings of misery lines there like Leonard Cohen’s.  Now I begin to understand.  I’m honestly surprised he’s made it this far. 

This is not new.  There was the pot I smoked last time I felt this low.  It was old and probably had lost it’s potency.  Did it net me any insights?  No.  That was even more painful than the initial depression.  I’d believed that little stash of weed was there for help in emergencies.  It just made my head spin a little and brought me low. 

Then there was the film I watched.  I finally saw Shortbus.  God, it was the best film I’ve seen in quite some years.  Just ignore the main character, she’s a decoy.  The stories were not new to me.  What I mean is, the concepts of facing the fear and the pain head-on, of the need for exploring the darkness, of the need for that bare-souled, brutal, naked connection… those were not new.  What was new was to hear it from someone else’s creation, and not from my own pen.  And what really blew my mind was the atmosphere of total acceptance.  In the end, everyone is accepted, with their kinks and their queerness and frustrations.  Naked and fucking, everyone is accepted in that cozy little den. 

I can’t tell you what that meant to me.  That fictional New York salon became my new image of heaven.  Call me lewd or fucked up, what do I care?  Lust is not by far the only story to be told about sex.  This is about acceptance, and to me total acceptance does not exclude the sexual. 

It seemed so close.  Like there was a place in the collective subconscious that I could almost reach.  A place where people shared that complete acceptance of each other as though it were completely normal.  The kingdom of heaven, and I could almost touch it. 

Perhaps it was the remnants of weed in my brain, but meditation flowed easily and long.  The other side seemed close.  Not close enough.  The nectar flowed in my mouth.  It still does.   

When I was in Ananda Marga, they taught us that sometimes, in the very pinnacle of meditation, a sweet taste flows from the roof of the mouth.  It is called ‘amrita’, or immortal, and they knew nothing about it.  That was many years ago.  Now when I let life flow by, when I let the pain and everything else pour through unimpeded, I taste that nectar every day. 

Perhaps the vision was too pure; I crashed to earth.  Nothing is beautiful.  Nothing is worthwhile.  Where has that place of warm acceptance gone?  Oh, I still taste the nectar sometimes.  I taste it now as I write.  It doesn’t take away the pain.  It gives me only just enough faith to go on.