Double

I thought I saw you and LK, Roosting, as it were.  But what does someone look like 20 years later?  Does that same spectral agency that called out "beauty", spirit and name still have effect?  I think it hovers and waits for those who are now what we were then.  I think those initiates respond on social media - in the glare of ring lights and pith. Not us.  Past it.  

Would I know you if I saw you by happenstance and would you know me?  Does it even matter?

I kept looking intently.  I was noticed.  I couldn't be sure.  I felt old, tired and past making a fuss or gambit.  This will pass for something like propriety, I thought.  I finished my wrap and left the Roost with one last unmet glance.

Twenty years.  The madness is gone for the most part.  It was replaced by mistakes, pain and surviving into an age something like success.  Or at least acceptance.

On quiet nights I hear that old self conscious consciousness with throaty, papery recitations.  I think of you, wondering if it still speaks to you so many miles and years and experiences away.

As always, my best of hopes to you.

Amends

Forgive me.  

I am also working on forgiving myself.

Unmaking

I am left at the bar at the Irish Village, 30 years past relevance.
Listening to Rush "fly by night"
"Ship isn't coming and I just can't pretend"
Messaging my old college roommate, currently in Hong Kong.  For which I recommended restaurants.
This world! This world we have made!

Familias

My grandfather
Died in 1995

For the third
Time in as
Many weeks

I heard his voice

But I cannot
Tell if he
Means warning
Encouragement
Love or disappointment
He talks the
cadence of the dead

Orizons

As if I am going to find my peace and salvation in an ap on my device.  The modern book of prayer.

Large, To Go

Time to start stealing time in the margins, again.  The third place, or in my case the fourth, is a Cafe on Boylston in Fenway, not to be confused with her sister of the same name and on the same street by Berklee:Pavement.

Strangely enough, this was opened by a Rao's alumnus.  It has that bit of time/space anomaly in it, as the original Rao's once did.  A close team of barristi.  A familiarity among and with the regulars.  A cue of significant music upon occasion.  Richard, a baby-faced former Amherst denizen, perhaps from Peoples' Market. 

The difference?  I am much more reserved and diligent, conscious of myself, my age, my roles.

So while I somehow expect a parade of men and women out of a Fellini scene, each come to represent something from my past eras, and the first two acts of the script, if they were to show I would take a different lesson.  It has nothing to do with me.  I am in their story.  Drop the ego and white male sense of centrality.

Well, I am trying that on, anyway.

The Man in Black

I have not been in Rao's for an actual sit down in many a year.  Johnny Cash is on the stereo.
But I am here to ponder why I have held myself back for so long.  Perhaps, more importantly, how do I proceed and begin to live fully and openly from here?

When the push comes to shove I think I am not ready to seize any future I used to dream about.  But now is the time?  If not now, then when?

But Rao's is still a station-point of people I know.  Waves and nods and catching-up.  Social capital.

How do I proceed and begin to live fully and openly from here?

Emphasis intentional.  This very spot, so freighted with memory in spite of the renovations.  This emotional state I drag around with me across continents.  This socio-economic space I give too much power to.  This social net woven over decades.

Steps.  When a I cannot go another step into any future that seems in the realm of coming days.

Oh muse, I call upon you.  Grant me some fraction of your art and grace to find this voice.  Or the cowardice to pull a different trigger and spare the failure.

"Oh freedom is just people talking. Your prison is walking through this world all alone"
Desperado