(Non)-ordinary life
From May, 1970 (the mescaline experience that woke me up to new possibilities), to January, 1987 (the Shirley MacLaine workshop that did the same thing in a very different way) was almost 17 years. Ordinary years? Ordinary life? Yes and no. The externals were much the same as anybody else’s. The internals were another thing.
To list even the highlights of what went on in those years would give an illusory sense of normality. Some highlights of those years,
- 1970-71. My wife and I spent six weeks in Europe, then off to grad school in Iowa City.
- 1971-73. With my new M.A. (which I never used) in hand, we were off to Florida where I would try to write. I wound up becoming a librarian, surely a job made for me, one would think Indeed, my bosses offered to pay my way through graduate school if I would get a master’s in library science., but I had other plans.
- Finally it was time to run for Congress. A primary race, an entry into the world of politics, I didn’t win the primary, but did well enough to attract favorable attention. That fall I wound up working for Bill Hughes, the primary winner who went on to win the election.
- 1975-77. Two years working as his district office manager in my home town. On the night of his re-election, I resigned.
- 1976-80. I joined with two others to found a weekly free-distribution shopper newspaper, providing me opportunity to write columns, but gradually losing money at an impressive rate.
- 1980-83. When the newspaper went south, needing another way to make a living, I passed a statewide test and became a computer programmer (on the job training).
- 1983-86. Moved to Virginia, still as a computer programmer, hoping to be close enough to the A.R.E. (Edgar Cayce’s group) to find something useful to do. A long three years.
- 1986-1989. I became an associate editor for the Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk, for a while functioning quite happily. It was in the first flush of enthusiasm for this return to writing that I attended the Higher Self Seminar.
Of course, braided into all that, personal life as husband and father and homeowner, with all that those roles entail. Throughout it all, I was reading, always, and making repeated attempts to write fiction, that came to nothing.
Those years were suffused with useless worry, always wondering, where was my work? When was I going to find my life? I don’t know that my life was any harder than anybody else’s, but it wasn’t easy. The things that made it hardest were, of course, within myself. But it took a long time to learn that.
What I know now is that my life up to then had been shaped by solitude and longing.
Solitude. I was more of a loner than I realized. I had a hard time making and keeping friends, and rarely had more than a couple at a given time. This, I know. Why this was, I didn’t know. It took until recently for me to realize that mostly, I didn’t let people in. From an early age I had gotten accustomed to the idea that what I thought, said, believed, did, was usually wrong and probably laughable. Naturally, the stranger my ideas got, the less inclined I was to share them. And this, in turn, meant that I was “living in the closet.” I didn’t quite realize it, because I was seeing it from a different point of view, but I was putting forth an “acceptable” façade that was quite different from who I really was. As I said in Muddy Tracks, once I decided to let people see who I was, what I believed, and do so without shame or apologies, it was very much as I imagine it is for gay people who come out of the closet. What a sense of relief! And what a greater level of honesty one can reach.
However, being used to going one’s own way can be a great strength. That, I had. As the Rimpoche said, “If we could not be bought by praise nor defeated by criticism, we would have incredible strength, we would be extraordinarily free.” Well, unfortunately I could be bought by praise, but I was fairly good at ignoring criticism. Still, a life alone among people is a lonely life, probably more so than if one were alone on a desert island.
Longing. Always there was a sense of time being lost. The years passed, and things changed, and I changed, and still I felt, so strongly, that I wasn’t doing my real work, and didn’t even know how to find it. This gnawing sense of being out of place nagged at me year in and year out, and I couldn’t find anything to do about it. As always, I threw myself into whatever it is I was doing, but as always I had to fight the part of me that was saying, “This is all so much lost time and motion.”
This longing was invisible to others (I think) and I never thought to try to explain it, But it is the hidden thread that explains so many things in my life that must otherwise be inexplicable.
- I had a good job, right out of college, as a news reporter – and quit before a year was up, saying I was going to write a novel.
- I got an M.A. from a good school – and did nothing at all with it.
- I bounced down to Florida for two years, “to write a novel” – and produced nothing that could be seen.
- I can for Congress on a shoestring, somehow neglected to quit mid-stream, parlayed the effort into a good job representing our new congressman locally – and quit after two years to start a newspaper.
- I got a steady job as computer programmer in New Jersey – and promptly decided to move to Virginia.
The hidden key to these eccentric decisions? I was looking for something, and didn’t know what it was, or where to find it, or how to find any road that might conceivably lead anywhere toward it. I couldn’t reason my way to it, and I never thought to seek people’s advice.
I know my father was puzzled, and I am sure he despaired at my lack of common sense. But how could I have explained to him what I myself didn’t understand? In 1985, when he died at age 70, I knew immediately that my life was about to change in a major way. (Astrologically, progressed Saturn was conjunct my natal Sun). My life was going to change. But how would it change? I had no clue. I was flying blind.