The Rights of Spring 2022
As a child I remember a picture window in our living room. Thin rectangular sections of colored glass framed what was for me, really a magickal portal through which I first observed my external world.
One eye open, one eye closed, switching my perspective, back and forth––I would try and imagine what qualities inhabitants occupying each fully-saturated landscape of primary color might share. And without knowing it, my first memory of early childhood was forged.
Despite the disruptions of divorce that soon would impose its conflict as the overall theme of my pre-adolescence, my imagination continues to flourish mostly uninterrupted, perhaps though allowing me to find great solace ideally where NO child should––in my isolation and uncertainty. If it were NOT for the the speed bump of puberty, and the absolute vacuum any real foreknowledge of what this great hormonal transformation would entail, I am now ALL but too painfully aware the cost exacted on the well being of both my personal and professional self.
What's more, is during the formative years of my adolescence and then continuing throughout the span of my adult life––any real sense of security or well being is deeply rooted in these same exact modalities of isolation, as is the expression of my sexuality––and very much so. So, today as I celebrate the Rights of Spring and my 55th birthday, I am excited for what is to come. Because whatever that is, it will be a laser shot out from my third eye, a penile gland overly saturated self-awareness––BUT––mind you, NEVER to that same ineffectual end. That is if my insight into the internal zero-sum game being played-out between ALL that is uncertainty and my personal sense of security; AND between ALL that is isolation and my individual expression of sexuality––means anything to anyone other than me, I need only hedge my bets wisely.
Yet of the things that should never have happened but did, as well as the many things that should have occurred but never did––I sense NO great gain lost or unconsolable void either to be made-up for or rediscovered––because as I understood it, to be a child is to be uncertain. This uncertainty however is NOT derivative of a knowledge that one lacks––far from it. Children are tyrants and opportunist and will sublimate for their own immediate sticky-finger neesa whatever truth or lie is immediately at their disposal––and for this they are crowned with the laurel of innocence––yet very much paradoxically so.
Because––the very much NOT insignificant trauma I've accumulated as an adult comparatively seems somehow more akin to Saturday Morning Cartoons––I'm skeptical to think my adult-self could deal more effectively with childhood problems––and survive. There is really NO appropriate time or place to encourage a child to act more like an adult, and yet what problem do we face as adults that might NOT benefit from a more lighthearted sense of wonder or style of play?
t we did in childhood as we did then?
childhood traumas as adults and survive?
. And this is NOT to suggest is never lacking that lacking but
because appropriating even the most debilitating characteristics of uncertainty and isolation were sublimated into my own Willy-Wonka-esq world of pure imagination––AND that and that alone gave me what
I sense lacking alongside my fellow inhantats who travel in this forward direction of time.
The values I espouse are neither prescribed by fad or whim; molded from austerity or tradition; or mandated in service or favor favor or servitude, or endowed by ransome or inheritance.
Neither was it the alien-spliced DNA genius intellect trapped inside this fool's mind. , nor from the tedium or precision of my own design, but of ALL that has been broken that should work, of ALL that is met with such disdain which ought might be celebrated, of ALL that is stiffelled which brought to life bares fruit, of ALL that is essential which is cast of by ignorance and envy––and then after ALL is said and done what remains is value system, a very-one-of a-kind karma pearl.