by jeff brown
My law practice was the sole beneficiary of my armored consciousness. Moving again like a lone wolf warrior, I won one trial after another, kicking the prosecution’s butt hard. Where before my heart wasn’t in it, now my heart was a (not-so) lean, mean fighting machine. If I couldn’t succeed at love, I was going to succeed at something.
It is one of the great ironies of our Western survivalist culture. If you turn off your heart, you become a success. If you open it, you get eaten alive. Nowhere is this madness better reflected than in the legal system. It’s like the entire system is built on a plate of man armor. You want to win? Crush your own vulnerability, and then you can crush any opponent.
But there was a chink in my armor. A small one, where the light shone through. When I would get home from the office—usually around 1 a.m.—I would go into the sunroom. I would reach into a box I kept near the futon and pull out a special group of pictures I had taken. Sarah with our lil kitten lying on her chest. Sarah lying naked on the couch with a playfully seductive smile. Sarah relaxing in the bathtub, eyes closed dreamily. I loved these pictures so. Then I would put them around the futon, in a very methodical manner, before crawling under the blanket to go to sleep. This ritual soothed me—I felt as though her spirit was protecting me—and sleep often came easy.
In the morning, I would wake up with the alarm, soon after sunrise. Quite often, Little Friend would appear on the outside window ledge looking for Sarah to feed him. I wasn’t planning on feeding him nuts, so he would linger, staring at me, trying to win my affection. I would stare right back at him for a long time, practicing my soul-gazing with a rodent. There was a way in which I felt like she was with me, when he was at that window. She lived on in the heart of his longing, just as she lived on in the heart of mine.
Once he gave up, I would get up, lovingly place her pictures in the box, and leave the sunroom. After closing the door behind me, I would grab a small chair and place it against the door. It was a little red chair that Sarah had loved to sit in when she was sketching. Until that chair was against the door, I couldn’t begin my day. After it was against the door, I felt ready to put on my shield and take on the world. Where before the whole universe was our temple, now it was all contained to one small room. And I was devoted to keeping that room safe.
15
The Bleak Between
The isolation of my daily life became unbearable. Whenever I wasn’t working, I was alone in the house with Lightnin, too embarrassed and immobilized to connect with humanity.
Early one Saturday morning, I went looking around for Dude—my pushcart guru. Perhaps he could light a fire under my hopelessness. I found him sitting outside of me and Sarah’s favorite coffee-house with a large hand-written sign at his side:
1 WISDOM for $1,
or 5 WISDOMS for 1 MEAL
(you can defer some of the wisdoms
but not the meal).
As usual, he was dressed in a quirky spread that only Dude could pull off: a blue velvet blazer, a red Hawaiian shirt, a pair of patched up khakis and what appeared to be 1950’s bowling shoes.
A young woman with spacey eyes and a yoga bag strapped around her shoulder was just finishing with him. She was crying as she got up to leave. Dude looked at her square-on and said, “And, remember, Skye, transcend nothing, include everything. You won’t find it up there. You can only find it down here,” pointing to the ground. “Thanks, Dude,” she said before bouncing down the street, feet not quite on the ground.
I sat down beside him on the sidewalk.
“How you dudin’?” he asked.
“Horrible. You?”
“Dudin’ perfect. How can I help you? Love again?”
“Yah, love again… and again.”
“She left again?”
“Gone like the wind, Dude. She’s just gone.”
“No way to get her back?”
“Not likely. She’s not ready.”
He paused for a while and then looked me in the eye. “Then you are blessed by her absence. Can’t make someone ready to walk a path they aren’t ready for. Just don’t work.”
“Sometimes people push each other along...”
“No, they got to want it. Listen buddy, if one person doesn’t want the relationship, then it’s simply not a fit. No sense trying to figure out why they don’t want it. No sense blaming it on their commitment issues. No sense waiting around for them to realize they wanted it after all. Because it doesn’t matter why they don’t want it. What matters is that you are met heart-on by a fully engaged partner. If they don’t want it, then you don’t want it, because you don’t want to be with someone who isn’t there for it fully. That’s the thing about love relationship—it’s an agreement that has to be signed by both souls. If one doesn’t sign, then nothing has been lost. If it’s not a fit for them, it’s not a fit for you either.”
“But Dude, she DID want the relationship! She asked for it, and her soul signed on the dotted line! She can’t just break our contract!”
“Sure she can. Maybe she just signed on for the short term, not the long haul. Look, she’s got free choice. Maybe she needs to do this stage alone. Fact is, it doesn’t matter how much two people love one another if they’re developmentally incompatible, or if they don’t have a shared willingness to become conscious. That’s why we call it a relationship and not a loveship. Love alone isn’t enough. If you want it to last, you have to relate to each other in ways that keep the ship afloat.”
“That’s profound. You just make that whole thing up?”
“Nah, long ago. I say all of that to about a dozen people a day, all of them in tough relationships, usually women.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes while a series of fire engines raced by.
“I keep asking God to help me understand...” I said, breaking the silence.
“God!” He started to chuckle. “Don’t be looking that far away for the answers. The only one who knows why it happened is you. You brought her into your life. Stop looking for answers outside yourself. Don’t ask God, BE GOD. You’re the sculptor of your own reality—don’t hand your tools to anyone else. Even the Big G!”
“The universe had something to do with it, didn’t it?”
“Sure, but you were the originator of this. Yah, I know tragic things happen, but most of the time there’s gold in the dross. You know what that means? It means there is a kernel of glory in there somewhere. You just got to go down into the mine and find it.”
“I don’t want to. I want to close down.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes, before Dude spoke again.
“Look, bud, you can close down, that’s your right. But—just so ya know—if you close down, you miss the opportunity. The gift didn’t die when she left. It’s still in front of you. She was just the wrapping paper. Don’t you get it—she wasn’t the gift. If you stay with the feelings, you’ll find out the real reason the love came to you. Maybe it wasn’t for you to be together. Maybe it was for another reason, Bud.”
I tried to imagine “another reason” for Sarah. A greater reason than loving her? This didn’t make sense.
Annoyed at his certainty, I got up to leave when his hand shot up to stop me. He was mumbling to himself and counting on his fingers.
“Loveship, sculptor, wrapping paper… three wisdoms. Hey, you owe me three bucks!”
“You mean you have like a rolodex of wisdoms that you tell everyone?”
“No, I’m not a computer—I shape my expression to my client’s needs. I’m an attuned Dude. I really listen. But I need to eat, you know,” he said with a kind of wounded defensiveness.
“Sorry, Dude. I really do appreciate your wisdom.” I dropped five bucks in his bowl and walked inside to get my morning latte.
Open Bless-A-Me
When I stepped inside the coffeehouse, I did the oddest thing. I ordered Sarah a latte too—her favorite kind, pumpkin spice. I knew it was insane, but I needed to pretend she was here. When the dr
inks were ready, I brought them to the same table we used to sit at.
I closed my eyes and imagined her near. I remembered the smiling eyes that would drink me in, as I drank my latte. She loved to watch me, when she thought I didn’t know. Most of the time I did know, but I pretended I didn’t because it gave her so much pleasure to stare in secret.
I opened my eyes and looked over at her latte. It hadn’t even dropped an inch—surprise, surprise. I drank mine and emptied hers on Baldwin Street. I needed to walk today.
I wandered for hours, all over the city: places we had been, places I had wanted to take her. I talked to God under my breath, waiting for an answer. (S)he was silent, again. Perhaps Dude was right and I alone held the answers. Perhaps.
I kept seeing women who looked like Sarah. They got out of cars, raced by on their bikes, talked to their boyfriends on street corners. She was everywhere, and nowhere at all. How could there be so many Sarahs?
After a quick smoothie at our favorite juice bar, I walked down to the harbor and sat on a bench overlooking Lake Ontario. My body of wounds was activated again, nattering at me with tireless intensity. Again, I juggled two narratives simultaneously. My inner lover insisted that I hold to the opening I had courageously chosen all those months ago. And my inner warrior cajoled me to return to the ways of the unawakened man. In fact, he berated me for staying so long in the pain, “What kind of man needs this? Who is this bitch to get all this power? Enough already—you’re a broken record. Move on.” Such polarized views. Was there no middle ground? Was there no way to bridge the sturdy masculinity I embodied before her, with the more enheartened version we explored together?
I reached for my cell phone, eager to call her. I dialed her number time and again, hanging up on her voicemail every time it came on. I didn’t want to hear her voice recording and come into stinging reality. I factually knew she was gone—that much I had integrated. But there were deeper levels of acceptance I just couldn’t assimilate. I still needed to pretend there was someone waiting for me on the other end of the phone.
I walked back to the market hopelessly confused. I didn’t know how to live in this world any longer. I had climbed heart mountain and landed, face first, on a rusty spike. The contrast between the wondrous world that love reveals, and the materialistic world below, was almost too much to bear. When you love as God loves, all life forms appear beautiful. When you fall from grace, you can’t help but wonder why he ever bothered creating them. Would I ever smile again?
I got my answer around the next corner. As I turned into the market, I saw Dude sitting against his pushcart in front of the taco place. He was sipping a beer and taking in some sun. I put $20 in his bowl and sat down beside him.
“Not needing any wisdom. Just want to sit here,” I said. Nothing comforted me more than Dude right now.
After a few minutes, he reached inside a small knapsack and took out a nail file. He began filing his fingernails slowly, methodically, like he was engaged in a meditative practice.
“Look at my last finger,” he said, holding up a finger with a long, rough nail.
“Okay, I see it.”
“That’s like the soul when we begin this incarnation.”
“The soul is a fungal fingernail?”
He guffawed at my sarcasm. “It’s not fungal, it’s just dirty. Look, the point is that life is the nail file. It wears the nail down until all that’s left is the true essence.”
I rolled my eyes. “But why do some nails get rougher over time?”
“Those people didn’t live their real lives. They didn’t learn the lessons that smooth the soul. They hid from reality.”
The guy was a walking metaphor. I didn’t know what to do with him. “You mean smooth the fingernail, don’t you? Have you taken this theory to the beauty salon to see what they say?”
He didn’t answer, filing his nails mindfully.
“Not judging you at all Dude, but how come you live on the street? Why homeless? You could get social assistance and get a place, or…”
“For the same reason you couldn’t land that divine love in this here world. The more open something is, the more difficulty it has with society. Society was built on a foundation of fear, not authenticity. I get too numb when I join the world. I lose my openness, my access to the divine.” Then, pointing to the world around him, he added, “This way, I’m always part of it.”
He did seem more alive than the rest of us. “Okay, I get it.”
“And I ain’t homeless—I’m houseless. The bunch of you are the ones without a home. You got a house, but you ain’t got no home. You can’t be at home on this planet if you’re not at peace in your own skin. That’s where our real home is.”
Soul-food for thought. And he was right. Right now I felt like one of those people: housed, but homeless.
“Any last thoughts on my heartbreak?” I asked as I stood up to leave.
“Yes… Open Bless-a-me.”
“Open Bless-a-me? You mean Open Sesame!”
“No, silly. Open Bless-a-me. Say that whenever you feel your heart closing. Open bless-a-me! no sense asking the universe to bless you if you aren’t blessing yourself. It all starts with you.”
I thanked him and started walking. When I got halfway down the street, I heard him yell to me at the top of his lungs, “OPEn BLESS-A-MEEEEEE!” I looked back and he was waving to me with a big fat smile on his beautiful face. It was contagious. For the first time in weeks, I actually found myself smiling, too. Twenty bucks for a heart-job, well worth it. My pushcart guru of the heart.
Blink of an Eye
The following weekend, I found a love note in the house written by Sarah. Hidden under a plate in the kitchen cupboard, it just about made me insane:
Though the sea rushes forth
washing away sands before,
still clinging to you
I am breathless
While misty shadows
dance upon the shore
still watching for you
I wait,
restless.
I was instantly catapulted to a deeper level of self-avoidance. The ground had just begun to feel a little solid again, but this was too much pain for me to hold. Was this the way it was going to be for the rest of my life: two steps forward, two steps back?
For the next few weeks, I dropped in at the neighborhood bar every night after work. True to my Jewish roots, I would drink one glass of beer before getting tipsy and stopping. After I stumbled home, I immediately checked the phone to see if she called. Of course, I knew she hadn’t. Of course.
I began to have sexual dreams about other women. Some of the women were unknown to me, whereas others were women I had shared intimacy with before. The dreams grew more and more intense, sometimes waking me up in the middle of the night. I couldn’t help but wonder if my inner world was trying to lead me away from Sarah.
I decided to go on some dates. I didn’t feel ready for intimacy, but I wondered if the presence of other women would revive my optimism. She had fucked God-knows-who since, surely I could have a meal with another woman. I hadn’t so much as sat across a table from one in the better part of a year.
I wasn’t ready. All I did was project Sarah onto every woman I ate with. I couldn’t even hear what they had to say. I just kept looking for Sarah. One woman had her sharp wit, another her nose, and one even had her Cheshire cat grin. The illusion of soulmate in volume form. If only I could mix them all together, my beloved Sarah would jump out of the blender!
I longed for the days when I could have sex for the sake of pleasure. But I was ruined to fucking for fucking’s sake. I wasn’t that guy anymore. The most I could do was cuddle with Danielle, a beautiful Ashtanga yoga teacher whose natural scent reminded me of Sarah’s. I would lay behind her with my eyes closed, momentarily imagining Sarah. Then I would try to touch her hair like I touched Sarah’s, and my hands would lock up. I could fool my mind, but I couldn’t fool my body. It knew who it loved.
My body began to reflect my self-avoidance. Blessed for many years with no physical problems, I became a regular visitor to the doctor. I got strep throat twice in one month. I suffered from constipation for the first time in my life. And I developed a rash on my lower back that wouldn’t respond to conventional or alternative treatments. Clearly, unresolved heartbreak finds a way to express itself.
Interestingly, the more intensely I disconnected from my heart, the more serendipity occurred to remind me. Where before I saw serendipity as yet another indication of divine intervention, I was now inclined to see it as the work of the devil. Clearly I had pissed off someone in charge. How else could I understand their determined efforts to keep me connected to the impossible?
I continued to rail at God and the universe. This time, not in the form of a letter. That was too quiet. Instead I bellowed. Loudly. One snowy night, my anger built to a crescendo that bordered on madness. I got into my car and began racing down the highway, the harsh hail pelting on the windshield, howling at God or his devilish stand-in: “I want a fucking apology, you bastard!” I accelerated as I howled, my words getting louder with every quickening mile. “DID YOU HEAR ME? I said I want a fucking apology! WHERE THE FUCK IS IT? I didn’t have a hard enough early life—you thought I needed more pain? For what bloody purpose? Apologize! Apologize! Send me a sign of your fucking remorse!”
Suddenly the car hit an icy patch on the highway and I lost control. In the heart of my fear, my anger at God fell silent, transformed into prayer in the blink of an eye. The car swerved into the shoulder and then spun right around, now facing oncoming traffic. Luckily, there wasn’t any.
Was God the enemy, after all?
A Thousand Sexy Imposters
Although I could easily rage, I seemed to have lost the ability to cry. I couldn’t get below the anger and sink into the crippling pain of loss. It was too tender, too haunting, too permanent. I preferred the habitual comforts of drama to the nakedness of raw, stinging grief.
