Here, on the eve of my departure, I've been feeling very sentimental. I am perhaps too deep a thinker for my own good. And, I am WAY too deep a feeler for it. In a way I wish I could change this about myself but at the same time it makes me who I am--granted, that may be unfortunate.
Nevertheless, I thought it might be a good idea to tell - hopefully, briefly, ha! - just a little bit about myself to those new people who are just now getting to know me. This post will remain private--for friends here only, until my book comes out sometime next year.
I worked on the next video most of the afternoon (the one of Glenn and my tour of the New Life Compound), added some improvements to my tent and wiped it down and organized my pack. I kept running into technical issues with the video, so it may be a little while before I get that out to you.
Tonight, since I hadn't eaten all day and was feeling kind of weak, I walked a few doors down to Godfather's Pizza where they have a good buffet (pizza, salad, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, etc.)--and a good price too. I paid and sat down.
I simply took in - absorbed - all that was going on around me for a while. There were people of every kind enjoying themselves, laughing, helping their kids choose what to get, milling about, kindly getting out of each other's way in the narrow spaces between the tables and the food counters. It was typical Missouri (at least what I've seen of it). The men were large, manly but gentle. The women were attractive, smart but friendly. The children were well-behaved, inquisitive but happy.
There were a couple single people like myself, sitting alone enjoying their meals. I have been to buffets where I have truly felt sorry for people eating alone, yet these folks simply looked like they were catching a meal and then perhaps heading out to enjoy the night. It occurred to me - for just a second - that *I* might be the one who looks pathetic; maybe in need of a friend. But little could people know just how many friends I have to share my days with--right here, in all of you. Still, I am a bit of a loner. I really prefer it most of the time. I wouldn't be able to write if I could have these days of solo contemplation. In fact, it is HOW I can even write at all.
Anyway, my stomach told me to get up and make plate.
While I ate my mind began to swim deeply back into the past...
I am a polymath (look it up if you want?). I have not only worn many, many hats, but I have tried to learn as much about each of those hats as possible. I've been a musician, artist, photographer, graphic designer, newspaper and other business owner, publisher, banker, bankruptcy specialist, personal financial consultant, personal care giver to mentally disabled people, botanist and rare plant grower, entheogenic advocate, I studied quantum mechanics and cosmology, and even taught myself calculus and analytic geometry (with the help of my mother--a former math teacher)... Many things. But always, I was a writer; maybe because I am naturally a philosopher at heart--not that its done me much good! ;-)
I grew up a relatively happy little kid until I was about ten years old, in Yarmouth, Maine. Family issues and other situations then began to drag me down. Because I was ambitious about wanting to express myself in any way possible, even my long periods of subsequent depression and growing self-hatred wouldn't stop me from tenaciously trying new ways to be heard. I felt I had something to say to the world but I saw myself as a complete failure at doing it. No one really cared. And I really didn't blame them. I became an absolute expert in ACTING happy, but - really until this journey started in October of this year - sadly, I just wanted to be dead.
I hated everything after decades of sinking down further and further. I loved the Spark and I knew He/She/It loved me. I'd always felt it there in my mind--in my soul, but I felt utterly unworthy of being in this world. Needless to say, I have also been self destructive every now and then.
I guess I was hoping something might do the job of killing me, since I was too much of a coward (I thought) to do the act myself. I want to be exceedingly clear one thing: My death wish was not because of some lack of faith in God. I was a very strong believer. It was instead an unmatched lack of love for myself - a black, seething, unquenchable self-loathing. That is important to remember.
The stress of my jobs, and my inability to lessen that boiling pressure almost accomplished my sick goal. I suffered a heart attack in 2006 and - as I've talked about here a few times - I had several "visions" while close to death, in the hospital. I won't get into them in this essay, but I'm quite happy to talk about them later if anyone is interested.
The inflammation of my right coronary artery, and subsequent blockage, was not do to drugs, alcohol or bad diet, but due directly to being highly stressed out. After long consultations with the doctor who did the stent surgery on me, he plainly said as much: "You need to find a way not to let your problems not hurt you physically...IF you want to live."
When I was in the hospital I grew even more depressed. I wasn't dead yet, but I also was now seemingly confined to an even worse fate--being stuck with a weakened heart. (In my music if you ever hear me mention "broken heart" that is what I refer to--along with being a metaphor for what CAUSED that issue of course.)
I remember one day there, looking out the window at the thousands of cars going by on the highway - people on their way home from work, just doing their thing - and wondering if I'd ever be free enough to join them again. Even a life of playing the human-created "game" of modern society was preferable to being in a hospital hooked up to tubes, shitting in a bed pan, stuck with needles and dealing with a healthcare system that didn't give a hoot what happened to me.
As an example of this healthcare, I was completely ignored (forgotten about) for two days there. NO doctor came to see me, nor check on my condition. When my cardiologist (the guy who had saved my life) arrived after those two days and heard that I'd been neglected, I actually saw his face turn from white, to red, to purple, with extreme anger. He looked like he might have a heart attack himself! He quietly asked the attending doctor to step outside the room for a moment, and then I heard one of the loudest, most intense dressing-downs I have ever heard. He walked back in, made sure my clothes were available in the closet and said calmly, "Don't worry, you'll be leaving tomorrow morning."
When I got back to my apartment in Gorham, Maine, it was cold and everything was exactly as I'd left it; like an archaeological site, rediscovered. My poor cats had been wandering around for five days outside and inside; their only human contact being the daily feeding by my landlady. They didn't really even act like they were glad to see me. I think they were. But they didn't really trust that I might not just walk out the door again and simply never return. This had a bigger impact upon me than you might think.
I sat for a while, contemplating my sorry existence. I got stir crazy after a few days and asked to go back to work early--a stupid decision in hindsight. For a few more years I worked there and then at another job selling federally mandated bankruptcy exams. Again I ACTED happy, and was promoted twice until I was a supervisor over a couple dozen specialists.
Being a supervisor meant drinking that awful cup of mandatory back-stabbing, that is required in many businesses to betray my own friends there in order to please management. My heart rebelled against me nearly every day. I was just another piece of the problem in society.
When I complained about it, I was warned about not being a "team player" with the other supervisors. Then, when I discovered that my manager was planning to stab ME in the back (beginning the bloodsucking process of forcing me to quit) - I found a list of all my corporate "sins" on her desk one day - I simply went home and never went back. Quitting that job was the best thing I could have ever done for my heart at the time. Immediately I felt better.
But the stress continued to rise again as I tried to fit into the "game" without an income commensurate with an expensive apartment, my family's expectations for what I "should" be doing with my life, etc. All the time I grew to despise this "game" more and more. Eventually, as I'd walked out of that job, I walked out of my life as a "game player."
I literally piled as much stuff as I could on my bicycle and left through the back door, never to return. You can read about my first adventures on the street in my iwallk.blogspot.com blog by starting at the "Introduction Why Iwallk" post. Turned out, it was a "practice walk" for what I'm doing now.
I had to placed my cats in the hands of a wonderful friend. One of them got sick and died. I never saw her again. The other - Buddy - I was able to get back and he and I lived together for the last three years, until temporarily being cared for by my sister Deb? while I do my crazy stuff out here. I miss him very much, but he is perfectly happy and that makes me feel better about it.
After several months of walking around southern Maine, I found a place to settle down again with Buddy, in Buxton, Maine. I got back into music again and recorded two albums with a drummer friend of mine. I had to move out of the Buxton situation in 2013, and lived for a while sleeping on the dirty, flea infested floor of my drummer's house (with his extremely ignorant wife) for several months in Casco, Maine, before moving to a camper in Saco, Maine on my dad's property (he did not live there, but came nearly every day to do so-called "work").
That became a nightmare. The drama of that situation is still too fresh and raw in my mind to get into right now. But, be assured, it will all be told about in the fullness of time.
When things finally became intolerable there, with the help of the Spark, I formulated the plan that I am now following. Doing what I'm doing now had been a growing concept ever since I left my Gorham apartment. It was my "Plan B" option, in case everything ever went to hell. If I hadn't had Buddy I would have done this way back in 2009 when I left my supervisor job.
But, as I've said before, EVERYTHING happens for a reason and in its own time. It wasn't until I arrived in Boston and made the fateful decision to simply begin walking no matter what, that I realized just how extensive my unconscious training had been for this journey.
I know now that during all those years of suffering I was being prepared for the most important thing I would ever do: THIS.
I had learned to be able to work or sleep at any time of the day. I had learned to live on one or less meals a day if necessary. I had learned live with very little--and frankly felt better that way. I had learned to write more clearly and expressively. I had trained my body to walk very long distances, nearly every day, for the last three years. I had learned to deal with the cold and the extreme elements. I had built up a small band of people who liked what I wrote, in several blogs (many of you are among them). But, most of all, I'd learned to trust and rely on the Spark to lead me; to surrender my own will to its will.
Through, bitterly cold, winter nights (some as cold as -22 F) last year, surrounded by four feet of snow, when I was trying to make 4 gallons of propane heat last a month, eating my one food stamp meal a day, walking 12 miles a day--even in driving snow, reading veraciously every philosophical, scientific and comparative religious thing I could devour, and CONSTANTLY writing, I was actually being *trained*.
I wasn't very happy - at least whenever my dad was around - but my physical, mental and spiritual muscles were being toned and prepared. If I had only known the full extent of the Plan for me, I keep thinking that maybe I would have been more satisfied with this training. But that thinking is WRONG. Completely wrong.
IF I had known what I was about to do - that which I now am doing - I think I would have become complacent, self-satisfied, overly confident, and honestly...I don't think I would have ever *actually* have done it.
It took a lifetime of mental anguish, emotional pain, struggling for answers, being poor, being hungry...just simply never being satisfied...to find the answer to all of my prayers: THIS.
My mind slowly returned to my meal tonight with an appreciation and familiar love for the Spark; its wisdom, cleverness, perfect timing and most of all for its love of me. With this love flowing out from the Inside I have learned - finally learned - to actually love myself. THAT is my greatest accomplishment so far. My ego had to completely die for my spirit to be heard. I was always afraid to pray for myself. I felt I didn't deserve it and that doing so would corrupt me and be an insult to the Universe.
But I broke down at the lowest point, just before I had to leave Saco, and I said, within myself, to the Spark, something very close to: "I want to Live. I want be Your instrument. But I am so sad, so tired, so filled with wanting to die. Please help me. Please, please help me. I know I should only pray for others, but I NEED help for myself. I see the blackness beginning to surround me again. The trap maker is overjoyed in the fact that my leg is caught in his vice. He drags me toward the pit. I have spent so many years believing that it might be for the best. But I want to do whatever I have to to escape the pit, to find happiness--like when I was child. Let me be your child again. Not MY will but YOURS be done."
I sat for a long time in my camper waiting for an answer to my prayer. I heard nothing. But, my body was filled with warm shivers, the kind that radiate down the spine. I wasn't sure if my prayer made it to its Target.
It took my own effort in buying that Amtrak ticket from Portland to Boston, and being tempted one LAST time, by a cold, uncomfortable - almost unbearable - night in the rain, and then choosing to walk out into the complete unknown, for the final answer to come-in, loud and clear.
If I were to put it into human words it would sound something like (and I'll do my best to describe this, since it wasn't in words, and hopefully I won't cheapen it in the process)...
"I am pleased with you. You not only passed my tests, but you passed your own tests. I will walk inside you while you walk along this road. I will send an unseen companion to be with you and give you strength. You will have to work hard--harder than you ever have, but if you do, I will work even harder to make sure you succeed. You are my son. I love you."
And, so, that is the summation of 46 years and how I got to sit in this motel room in Branson, Missouri, HAPPY, truly happy; with the happiness of a child about to go out and "play" tomorrow, at my favorite activity. :)
I thank you for letting me indulge in this essay. What selfish pleasure could be better than talking about one's self and having people actually read it? The blessings are manifold.
The time is NOW. Someday I know my hour will have passed by. My usefulness to the world will have run its course. But, for now, I am sure that I am in a partnership with the Prime Mover. These days will be the sunshine of my human life. YOU and my Spark have made it possible.
Thank you.
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