PART 56

Let’s talk about the past. Your past. My past. The stranger’s who accidentally caught eyes with you as you both pumped gas in the rain. Two mammals extracting oil into a machine as the clouds cry above. The past. The story you’ve remembered or learned from others or skillfully avoided or heated up and beat to shit on a stone tablet and shaped into the mold of the thing you see when you look in the mirror. Day after day after day. The BIG SHADOW. The ultimate reference. The unavoidable tag along.

I’ve been going to therapy lately. Can you tell? Jesus, for an overactive brain it’s a sword that slices you days after the first cut. You’re just not ready for it. Yet, it becomes immediately addicting. The opportunity to look across the golden haze of your life’s horizon. Behind you, a slowly rising hill birthed from your first thought. Your mother’s face. The taste of milk. Ahead, a dark curvature of the Earth. The end. The inevitable we constantly attempt to shake off our backs. With these specific parameters, you see yourself as a whole. You are not a universe. You are not unending. You have edges. You have borders. You’re an island. And within that established piece of land, therapy requires you to take each moment of importance and illuminated it in detail. Like floating orbs in the midst of the sea. Lanterns hoisted to the crows nests of ships to show you the way through an ocean storm. All risen high from the swell by questions: Did your parents discipline you physically when you were young? What do you dread? Is there a history of mental illness in your family? What do you think of when you masturbate? Have you ever had suicidal thoughts? Do you think of yourself as a hammer or a nail? What do you wish for yourself? Are you taking any medications?

Orb after orb after orb that lights the fields and gullies of your electric and mystifying brain.

With that kind of dissection, you inedibly begin to notice your own questions forming. Animals that crawl all over your body and whisper: Who am I? What makes me… me? Do I have control over those elements of self identity? Can I decide to be a specific person? What is a person? What is identity? Can you change what is learned and implemented? Can you create a version of yourself based on desired changes? How can you change? Can you change? Who is you? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Buddhists say there is no self. They call this Anatta. It’s the doctrine that there is in humans no permanence. No underlying substance that can be called the soul. Freud thinks we’re a trinity. The Id, Ego, and Super Ego. Which is a lofty way of saying… we are our past, our present, and the idea of what we want to be. Even neuroscientists generally believe that there is no official “self.” They say that the brain and body are in constant flux. There’s no data that corresponds to the theory that there’s an unchanging “you.” Neurons that fire in that magical brain of yours are always shifting and learning and becoming anew.

So, it’s generally a disheartening arrival. I’ve always been taught that to be at peace with yourself you have to know yourself. Blah blah blah. And if shamans and shrinks and scientists say there is no true origin of self… then who do I attempt to know? Who do I invite into the parlor of my mind and ask if they’d like a drink? The Id is a bore. The Ego ends up always agreeing with everything I say. The Super Ego is a goddamn handful. I can’t get a word in. And that’s the moment people (like me) choose to sit in the parlor alone and have their own conversation with the fucking walls. Because luckily the old sentiment “if walls could talk” has always stayed a flippant desire of the heart.

Tom Robbins says, “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” I’ve never quite figured that one out until recently. It always haunted me. Like a veil too heavy to pull from the ceiling. Now it’s just another lantern I can hoist up the rails to sit atop the crow’s nest. And I’ll be there to catch it and hang it as well. Swaying in the dark winds. Cupping my hands over a match as the flame flickers in the ocean spray. And carefully, I’ll light the wick and wait for my eyes to adjust. Waves. Rippled and shinning from it’s blaze. And as the light grows, swells bigger than man can comprehend approach in the distance. And I exhale with the exhaustion of finally seeing something I never knew could exist. Frightening as it may be.

And then beyond. Past the chaos.

The light from my fiery orb reaches something unexpected. Where an edge once was, a new land. Undiscovered. Without boarders. Where the island once ended, a new path. Without a need for questions or definitions or requirements. An offering from the storm. Something of my own. A chance.

Because it’s never too late. Never. To have a happy childhood.