CLEANING THE CLOSETS

This uprooting business is exactly that: pulling up any kind of growth, shaking off the clinging dirt, and trying to pack it into sacks to take to the next "planting". Yesterday, while going through the storage closet, I opened boxes I hadn't touched since coming back to L.A., five years ago. Imagine my surprise,(to quote Holly Near), when I came upon forgotten love letters ...sigh.

Since I'm constantly writing, I don't keep much "old stuff" around. It gets worked until it cannot be worked any more and then tossed. If it gets published, terrific, then I have a book. If it gets rejected three times--into the trash. With the advent of computers, it becomes increasingly irrelevent to hold on to bits of paper,no matter how sentimental...usually.

And therein is the rub: I may have a black-leather-heart (as one ex once told me), but it IS the heart of a romantic. (Even I have to acknowledge that.) In the classical sense...The extraordinary gestures, the burning affairs, the rain-soaked evenings by candlelight (unless the candles got drowned...)I'm bad. Very, very bad. However, I've learned to exist in a (fairly) balanced twenty-first century mode, and don't mingle this romantic's heart with business-- nor with anything other than personal life. (One doesn't survive this long without mastering the basics.)

Given all of this, when I came across those letters in their tin box--letters going back thirty years--something broke a little, inside. (I'm sure the guy downstairs from the loft heard the crack and thought I was vaccuming up an errant nail,again...)

I sat on the futon and pried open the tin. What followed was a complete shock. Truly.

In the past, I'd re-read these tomes (about thirty of them--hand-written on onion skin paper, most of them sent from Kyoto, Japan...) once every five years. But I always carried them with me--from New York to Massachusetts to Los Angeles to Laguna Beach and then back to L.A. Other items were tossed, given new homes or simply abandoned, but not these notes. They were from three, separate affairs, all long-term, all life-shifting, all over. (Forever done.) Yet, the letters were some kind of touchstone. I'd actually been a part of these lives... amid all the comings and goings of many relationships, these were the ones that still haunted me...that I couldn't shake off. They were the tangible measure of where I'd been and who I'd grown into.

So, I leaned back, took a deep breath, (lit a candle) and began the journey backwards.

But this time, something was very different.

About three quarters the way through, I became bored. (Really bored.) I mean, how many times can one get "lectured" from an older lover, about how one's age is a main problem? Or that one needs to shut down the emotional part of one's personality and learn to "maintain a cool exterior--never let anyone see you sweat"--or "don't be hoodwinked by money, exotic looks or clout--remember who you are and act from that confident place, always--cause Toots, it's all you really have to depend on"....

Wise words, on some level, thirty years back. However, words that mostly fell on deaf, romantic ears. (Of course I continued to fall ,ONLY for exotic, wealthy,powerful people--usually older than me--and always ending in a painful mess.) Still, I'd held on to those tough words, as if they were from the Koran or Heart Sutra or the Gita, itself.

But this time, what I had remembered as softly longing, impassioned cries across oceans, were illuminated with the light of experience--my life. My experience.

These lost loves were sometimes boring,very controlling people. (They were neurotic as hell--or at least as neurotic as I was!) They filled the letters with minutia about obtaining cheese for a cheese-pig-out in a cheeseless Kyoto, or how their Sensei wouldn't let them glaze a single pot after throwing five hundred on the wheel; or how they thought they would write at the end of a busy academic week, but now, pen to paper, all they could do was to inform me they were too tired to continue the letter...better luck next week...Or to complain about constant visa problems and boredom in academia, or how they "loved being loved by me"(only to leave me several months later)...

These were people I adored; people I wanted to punch out busses for( macha show of strength...), or dedicate my first Nobel Prize in Literature to...People I had seriously considered having babies with or "settling down" beside...How could I have been so blind? (Or blinded?)More importantly, why did I still have those yearning fantasies--like proving my worth via a spot on "OPRAH"--where they would catch the show and come searching for me...Why did I need these anchors still, in my life?

I called my meditation teacher, at Delphi. She sent me, (immediately), a guided meditation about confronting the Darker Self, (or the memory of these past lovers), one by one, and having a "conversation" with them. (Thanking them, mentally, for whatever their presence over thirty-five years gave me; then, letting them go--off into the distance--with care for the lessons--releasing them to their own karmic wanderings. )A bit corny, as some of the guided meditations tend to be, but great therapy. It felt silly, at first, but I forced myself to finish the excercise. I mean, this WAS my Teacher, after all...

Then, when I rose, I did something which, heretofore, had been unthinkable: I locked up the tin box. I tied it in a yard bag. I threw it into the trash, in the city of Angels, unceremoniously.All candles blown out. Not even any operatic soundtracks behind me.

For a few minutes, I almost dashed back down into the alley, dove in the recycling bin and retreived it--but I didn't.

I haven't seen any of those released people since our final sad acts. They have never sought me out. We have not crossed paths in decades. Yet, I had carried them, like other guilty pleasures; for years. Time to really clean out the closet and let go. So, that's what I did.

Leaving where I've lived my adult life (and taken all my adult lumps!) is no easy transition, but, it's got to be done. (So many lessons...) I'm finally understanding the Zen concept of "Beginners' mind".

Back to the packing...