It is no secret that early morning—before daylight and before most of the life-forms near me in the valley below are awake—is my favorite time of day. It is a selfish time for me, a time when my obligations disappear into an ephemeral mist of my imagination that lasts just long enough to hide the world beyond. Sometimes…often, actually…I wish the mist would conceal the “real world” longer and more thoroughly. I don’t want a translucent mist. I want an opaque fog. Mental humidity fueled by vaporous distance. And time over which I have absolute control. Control. Ultimately, that’s what it’s all about. Control over my environment, my emotions, myself.
For a brief period almost every day, I seize that control. My disappearance each morning into the darkness has long since been a ritual. When that ritual is interrupted, my roughest edges become visible. They get sharper and more dangerous. My compassion slinks away into the corner, safe from my cruel animosity.
These last few days, both sides of my wedding anniversary, have interrupted my ritual, though I have been able to write. But I haven’t been able to think like I’m used to thinking. I’m used to thinking by myself for myself. Grief and anger and a thousand other unwelcome emotions rip into my serenity like bullets from an assault rifle rip into tender flesh.
The lyrics of John Gorka’s Armed with a Broken Heart do not describe my rough edges, precisely, but they come close:
Take this as a warning
To stay away from me
Because the man that you used to know
Is not the man that you’re going to see
Someday we may laugh at this
Someday we may be friends
But for now you can keep your distance
Stay away till the pieces mend
This sudden loneliness has made me dangerous
Please don’t watch me while I fall apart
‘Cause I’m sad and I’m angry
And armed with a broken heart.
People who have the misfortune of interacting with me when I am in these periods (in which my rituals are interrupted) must get tired of my mood swings. They must be impatient with the jagged bounces from emotional depths to emotional highs and back again. I know I get impatient with them. But I’ve gotten used to them because I’ve had decades of experience with them. No one else has that experience. So it’s not a routine interruption to anyone else; it’s a bothersome intrusion into an otherwise reasonably stable life. It’s the sort of thing that causes people to step back, away. To avoid. To watch, to observe, but not to engage. A bit like auto accident voyeurism.
Forgive me. I’m attempting to think with my thick and arthritic fingers. My fingers feel like they have been lashed to inflexible oak splints. And it feels like the mind that drives my fingers to release their messages has been dulled by repeated high doses of morphine laced with tequila. All these effing things are interruptions. They intrude on my love affair with pre-dawn darkness. Already, I can see far too much light outside the windows, shades still drawn. My peace is not shattered; instead, it is suffocated with too damn much dim light.
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Some days, “spiritual practices” can take the form of simple ritual. Simple ritual that reminds me of my good fortune and urges me to feel and express gratitude for what I have and appreciation that I do not face insurmountable problems…only interruptions. Yet interruptions can wreck even average days.
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This evening, I will join friends for dinner at a favorite restaurant. By then, I will have washed away the ashes that, this morning, clog my eyes and my arteries. I will take time to privately and personally reflect on and appreciate my friends’ presence and their willingness to include me in their plans. I will do my damnedest to embrace the happiness this interruption brings to me.
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I cannot think rationally from one idea to the next. I’m on a series of high-speed carousels that require me to jump from one to the next. Coffee probably is not helping. But it’s the best I can do for the moment.
