In Ten Days

I turn Fifty.

I didn't think this was affecting me, but now, I think I was wrong about that.

This is witnessed, I believe, in my sending out my "birthday special survey".

I think I'm longing for some feedback about who I have been, and who I am, and who I may possibly become.

Sadly - feedback that can only really come from me.

Hence, I think, the recent posts about past exploits, hair-dos, and experience -- all seemingly reasonable recountings -- but perhaps obscuring that teenage drive to prove to myself that I actually have existed and done some shit while I existed.

I suppose, in this response to approaching a half-century, I'm quite normal. How strange.

I've been facing a creative dillema recently -- one I've run up against in the past, and that seems common to writers/artists/creators in general -- It goes something like this in my mind: "Yes, I could write that, but hasn't it already been expressed more ably, more gracefully, and more beautifully by a myriad of other writers?"

Therein lies the path of doom for a creator/creatrix. Or so I believe.

I believe I must simply take the cosmic bull by the horns and trust that some unique aspect of me is necessary for the divine completion. I can believe that so easily of others.

Yet -- witness, as I chase my tail:

Yesterday, I get this great inspiration for a song that I must write.

This inspiration arrives as I am listening to another songwriter's song -- a songwriter that I enjoy and esteem -- yet her song seems, to me, to yearn for an answer -- it is so focused on one perspective that it calls forth in me a desire to create its compliment in the paradox. In that moment, I am certain that I must write this song.

Then I think: "Maybe it's already been written."

I fight the urge to google the phrase I am considering for the refrain.

I listen to her song again, to strengthen the feisty internal muse that was originally piqued by her combination of words and melody.

I still believe that I will write the song that's asking for expression. AND -- I reflect.

At 20, I did not experience this reflection (or is it self-doubt?). At 20, I seemed superbly confident that I was thinking of everything for the first time that it had ever been thought of. And, at 20, I could not have googled the refrain.

But -- if all the songs have been written, and I can google these phrases and assure myself that this part of the paradox has been fully covered -- that my voice does not necessarily have to be added to the cacaphony of the vast human cry -- isn't that a good thing? Doesn't it mean that our group consciousness has become more cohesive, more morphogenetic? Doesn't it mean that a song that is truly needed will be called forth from someone, whether I take it up or not?

Thinking this -- that my particular voice may not be necessary, is both painful and comforting. I feel a relaxation in that driven state I experienced so often in my younger days.

But then I think: What if Leonardo Da Vinci had thought his voice unnecessary? Or Wagner? Or Nancy Griffith? Or Charlie Chaplin? Or Hitler? Or my grandmother? What part of me would be missing now, if their voices had not influenced my own?

A wedding of the paradox -- I think that's what I'm seeking now, as I push toward 50 years.

I want to understand my own voice as simultaneously necessary and unnecessary. I want to feel this at some very basic, assimilated level.

I want to believe that my actions, and words, and thoughts, are shaking the foundations of the earth, and, in the same moment, believe them to be the briefest breaths, incapable of disturbing dandelion fluff.

Witness -- this is how I chase my tail.

In the past few weeks, the seals have been barking in the Sound.

I could hear them as I lay in bed, drifting toward dreams. Every time I heard them, or Kumatriel said "Listen. Can you hear them?" and I listened, and I heard them, I found myself torn -- part of me wanted to get up and go down to the beach, and see them and be close to them -- part of me wanted to lie in bed and listen to them barking, marveling at the fact that I could hear seals barking as I lay in my bed.

These two parts of me scrambled and thrashed night after night, while the seals barked their . . . . . what? Their joy in mating, maybe, or their delight at the arrival of warm currents, or their warning that the Orcas were returning?

As I thought about it, though, I realized that, for me, my warring urges were ultimately based in some form of human interaction.

I think that my desire to go down to the beach was not really to see the seals, so much as to say that I had seen the seals -- to relate this to humans somewhere, or to state to another human that I had some understanding of why the seals were barking. My desire to lay in bed and hear them barking was also human-related -- I thought "What a strange and wondrous thing, that I should hear seals barking -- nearly a half-mile away -- as I lay cossetted in comforters", and then, fast upon this thought . . . . "what a story that will make -- how strange it will seem to people who do not live on the ocean".

I want to embrace these urges, both urges centered on human connection, rather than denigrate them as somehow "unworthy", or "unenlightened". I think that this overriding urge to share experience with other humans is in nearly every human I have ever met.

Even "Birders" -- bird-watchers -- often very solitary and introverted types, keep their "life-lists", and rush to report their sightings. Henry David Thoreau left Walden behind, to share with us the tale of his solitude.

And this is another tail-chasing for me.

I don't often seek solitude. When I do, I think I seek it in order to come back to connection with something to offer.

A wedding of the paradox -- seeking myself in solitude in order to connect with others, and seeking others in order to connect with myself in solitude.

Now, nearing fifty, I have met and seen and known and read and heard enough talented individuals to know that my voice is not indispensable. I feel certain that it will all get written, or spoken, or sung.

Now, nearing fifty, I have met and seen and known and read and heard enough of ever-changing life to know that everything that can be known has not been known yet, or is already so known that we won't mind knowing it again, and again, and again, and so, no voice is indispensable. I feel certain that it will never get written, or spoken, or sung completely.

I think God sees us like this -- the book that has already been read, but can never be read completely. We are the text that slips and slides and transforms and remains the same.

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Seals Barking at Chetzemoka

The seals are barking
down below the park.

At first, you think -- a dog.
But no.

This is like laughter forced out of a stern face
by a joke too good to pass up --
like blows to the stomach.

Now, I place myself:
Under blanket
head-heavy on pillow.

I sleep against this sound
with every part of my ear
leaning toward it.