He offers me one of his beers and as he passes it to me I read the tattoos on his knuckles: DEAD HEAD, it says. There's a handprint tattooed in his neck and something else on the other side but I can't figure out what it is. Lower down a strange tree is etched on his leg that looks like it's been drawn by a child, awkward and scew, and the outline of more ink peeps out from beneath his shirt.
Mother always said never to date a man with words tatooed on his knuckles but this guy is as sweet as cheesecake. He picks up on the fact that I don't feel a %100 comfortable there and he keeps a special eye out for me. He makes a point of checking in, asking me where I've been and how I am. When he speaks to anyone, I notice, they have his undevided attention. There's respect in his voice. He's not just speaking to a person, but to a human being.
The night before I leave I sit outside with him and the alcoholic from New Zealand who's come to visit NO and India House 7 times before. “… and they wanted to take out both,” I catch Earl saying as I sit down.
“What did they want to take out?” I ask, chugging back beer.
“My kidneys,” it comes, his hand combing through his hair. I swallow hard. “It's the cancer. Doctors gave me 3 months to live,” he says, drinking down the rest of something that resembles cough medicine. “I wasn’t going to hang around for that shit."
Turns out Earl's come here to party the last 3 months of his life away. At the rate he’s drinking he might only have a day or two left though, I imagine. Hell if that's what he wants to do, eez all good. Here's the crunch though: If I ignore the booze there is something radiant about this man. He’s full of joy. There’s no other way of saying it: this man is 100% alive.
“I’m going to have to head out again soon,” he says later. “You know when a dog leaves the pack and then goes into the woods to die? That’s me. Left my family the day after I heard. Said goodbye to my boys and the ex-wife and headed out, I don’t want to be treated like no invalid in the last months of my life. My dad filed a missing person's report, I saw my picture on the Net. It’s funny what happens you know, because now I’ve been here for 6 weeks, I got myself family again. Think I’m going to be heading out to the treehouse hostel in Georgia next,” he said, sinking the rest of the pink liquid in his cup. I wonder how many more hostels he would have the time to stay in. Maybe not too many more than myself.
I'm fascinated by him. Not only that, the depression that's been following me around the last couple of days instantly disappears. I want what this man has: freedom. The reality of his own mortality has changed his expectations of himself and the world forever. His expectations of life have fallen away, and therefor, in my estimation, he’s become free. Through his dying he's come to life.
On the train leaving New Orleans I listen to Ram Dass recordings and he talks about the clinging of the mind being the cause of suffering (Buddhism 101). Oi, has my mind been clinging over the last couple of months! I may have left SA physically but my mind kept me there and to some degree I just couldn’t ever completely let go. I was worried about what I could expect when I went back, wondering if I would have changed, if the place I'd left would have changed. I expected my trip to bring me clarity about just about everything I've ever wondered about. I expected it to fix me.
Expectations. It's a global killer, more so than the cancer that's got Earl to wake up to life. It's the reason why most of us can never seem to just be in the moment. It fogs our minds and blinds us to the truth. It's the thing that will make us look back on our lives one day and think: I wish I didn't worry so much! I should have just enjoyed my time doing this or that instead of being so concerned with that other thing.
You could be living on an island in Hawaii and be married to the most beautiful person in the world and still commit suicide because your expectations of what it was going to be like wasn't met. You don't have to be poor/disabled/bankrupt/in jail to be disappointed, oh no. We all have The Sads behind closed doors. Our projections of what a thing should be and what they actually are rarely match up, and still we spend all our time projecting out, never really being just open to receiving whatever is.
We imagine that if we have that one thing: the winning lottery numbers, the right guy or girl, if we live on a tropical island or shed 10kgs, if people would just respect us for a change, that everything will change. We expect our parents to love us, our children to obey us and the world to notice us, and when they don't sometimes the pain is too much to bare.
For a long time I thought freedom was the thing that you had when you didn't have to worry about money or work. Freedom just simply meant that you had options, enough not to feel like you had to do anything. Eisj, what a lie.
I believe I can say that I experienced freedom once, but it wasn't on this trip.
I was living in a block of flats across the street from the Gardens Centre in Cape Town, a beautiful 2 bedroom with wooden floors and rent control and I was working mostly as a Sangoma and doing readings from the flat. Also dabbling in some wardrobe assisting on film and tv sets which brought in oodles of cash but killed my desire to live and be functional.
One day I was returning home in my car. I remember driving down Roeland Street and turning up towards my block and when I was about 2 blocks away from my house it happened.
I woke up. For about half a minute it felt like a thick veil lifted off of me and I became acutely aware of the absolute miracle it took for me to find myself there, in my car, on that day, driving home. The amount of stars that erupted, the eons of cooling, heating, erupting, mating it took for me to be here, in my car, at exactly that moment, driving down Roeland Street. It would never ever transpire again with this specific detail. My hair would never fall in the same way, I would never feel the way I do. It was, in every respect of the word, an absolute and complete once off experience. And for just a couple of seconds I lifted out of the mud to witness the extraodinary privilege of Being. Om mani padme hum. The moment that I realised what was happening the veil melted back over my face and it was over, but it's never fit as well as it did before that day. That glimpse of freedom, of a life lived without expecations will inspire me forever.
I still live my life by expectations. Literally, I'm caught up in it. My expectations of myself, my idea of other people's expectations for me, my narrow conception of reality and what it means, my pre-conceived ideas about who I am, what I am and what it is that gives meaning to my life. What am I going to do when I get back to Cape Town? How will I survive? Will my trip be good enough for everybody else, like toting a bag or a new Christmas present. Will it be good enough for me.
If there's one thing Americans have taught me it's not too think too much before acting. Don't sensor myself so much, just trust what comes and believe in my own spirit and for that I'm very grateful.
In my own way I occasionally take stock of my life by getting out of my comfort zone: I go on an adventure, on a meditation retreat for 10 days, a vision quest, or sit with myself in nature. Sometimes I even go overseas. All these things help me to see if I still fit into the world. It hurts like hell but dang it pays off big when I'm done.
Earl gave me a big hug the night before I left. He wanted to be sure to say goodbye to me and was very clear that he'd been happy to have met me, that it meant something to him. He was drunk out of his mind but impeccable in his spirit. That man showed me the joy of letting go, and so in my own little way I let the rope slip between my fingers a little today. I feel a little bit of freedom.
I fall down the rabbit hole.
“In our sleep, pain which we cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” - Aeschilus, The Orestea
All I can say is..... :( .... :I .... :) :D and ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks for this.