January 11, 2004

12:09 a.m.

Walkabout

Back from a couple of days on the road. We showcased at a conference in NYC -- the presenters are from Arts Centers and theatres and larger venues than we usually play (read: $$) and it was a pleasure to be seen there. We got to play in a large ballroom with a kickass sound system, mixed by someone who has done this for us several times before and really knows how to make us sparkle. These things are such a cattle call -- in a way it's cruel because you have exactly 10 minutes to enrapture people, show them your music and your personality and your potential and your patter and your... bookme worthiness. On the other hand, once we start to play it's so much fun that I feel rather invincible. We paid a lot of money to be at this thing for our total of 20 performing minutes, so we didn't feel it was worth the extra money to register in order to cruise the exhibit hall. When we go to the Folk Alliance conferences we have a booth of our own. I was just as happy not to have to walk that walk today. Our agent/s remained there for the rest of the weekend to handle what we hope will be a lot of booth traffic generated by today's performance, and we got to come home.

Last night I slept horribly in New Jersey; cold, cold room and wakefulness owing to thinking about Will and Dar and all that must be confronted, within and without. W. and I had a lovely, albeit short, visit yesterday morning. He was about an hour late because his battery had succumbed to the minus zero temperatures and he had to get a jump. Once he was here, though, I gave him the tour of my apartment (avoiding the corner of the bedroom where the framed poem about him is hanging; see December 1 entry entitled "Poem") and we sat on the couch and talked about surface stuff for a while. Later, closer to when we both had to leave, he asked me about Dar and if that relationship was something I was still interested in, and I ended up kind of opening up about this whole situation, and finding it odd that I was in this same place with Dar the last time Will was visiting me, almost 2 years ago. I told him that one issue for me was that, for whatever reasons and with whatever ramifications, the scope of passion I'd felt for him was such that nothing I've felt since, and possibly nothing before, compares to it, and feeling anything less seems not worth it. I said I think I'm holding out for that again, now. From there we started talking about The Past, and he severely apologized for not understanding, before, what was going on between us/with me, and said he'd missed me and been afraid last year that he'd ruined it between us for good through negligence. We both cried and held onto each other's hands and I told him he'd unraveled me. But that I thought it was for a reason, because it had been such an inspiration and I'd written songs and so many poems that he didn't even know about. Then I let him read the framed one, and I went to the bathroom while he was reading it and he had to sit down on the floor. When I came back I knelt in front of him and he hugged me a long time. He said he was glad to be here, grateful that I would still see him. I said I thought he had been on his strange walkabout back then, and that I'd had to go off on mine, dig deep, and get the thorn out. We talked a little more and then he had to leave, and I had to leave. It might be a few months before I see him again, schedules being what they are.

I've thought about that thorn since then, and I feel guarded lest I let it in again. How can I explain this to you, how someone who, to someone else, may be so unassuming and unremarkable, but to me seems like someone to whom I am inexorably connected, our lives inescapably entwined. And how hard it is to understand why a disease might come along and prevent that. He had a very hard year, and spent a lot of it in the hospital, or incapacitated. I know he takes everything one day at a time now. It's why I didn't kiss him. Or because I promised myself, and I kept my word.

It made me think of my friend Rush, who is a college professor (English, I think, or lit) in Louisiana. I went to High School with Rush, so many years ago, and a couple years back he found me on the web and we email sometimes. I love that he's literate and loves wine, and very funny. We got together once last Spring, which was fun, albeit very stessful for me because I'm so petrified of going on a "date" now and this was kind of borderline that. Anyway it was all right in the end, and so we've written all these months, and then he didn't write for about three months and I kept wondering if he'd fallen in love and run off. Finally it turned out that his email wasn't coming in, and when it did, about 80 messages showed up including all of mine, so it took him a while to get back to everyone. Now that we're corresponding again, he tells me he did, indeed, fall in love with someone. He told me the story, which is pretty great -- but more amazing, he said his ex wife and the mother of his kids, from whom he's been divorced for some years, died of cancer shortly after we saw each other last Spring, and he just didn't have the mettle to tell me, because he was telling so many people and after a while you just can't talk about it any more, but then he felt terrible for not telling me, and he hoped I didn't think him the worst dissembler, also for not telling me that he'd met someone who is now the complete focus of his emotional life. There was nothing romantic between Rush and me in the first place. I really didn't mind at all; in fact, it made such a good story in the end that I was glad to get the retrospective version, and very glad that he'd found joy with someone. But what arrested me was how he'd told me that MY correspondence had gotten him through these dark, horrible months; that every time he wanted to go into a black room and scream and scream and scream, he'd read back over my emails and be able to ground himself again, and that he thought me the most wonderful friend, and how lucky he was to have me. And here was Will yesterday, telling me the same thing, how lucky he was to know me and what an amazing person I am. And I find it so ironic that, despite being this irreplaceable gem, this guiding star in the night sky, I feel such emptiness and isolation, and puzzlement at why this part of my walkabout is so very solitary.