For those of you reading this from your email, or
from your Facebook page, may I suggest you move
to my site itself, with a little Click….
…and for a couple reasons.
One, it is Ever So Much More Sexy a Layout on the
Blog page, than on some other makeshift version.
And Two… then I am spurred on by the
Number of Hits on my site.
Dear People….. Writing is solitary work, and
I Need ALL the Encouragement I can get!
Alohas…!
January 6, 2005
So… the talks we have, long and into the night, are frequented
with lots of booze, but when he’s inebriated, he really talks,
expounds with theories and diatribes, on ethics and commitments,
on his mind set and why.
It’s pretty darned interesting, but it’s also a lot of work. I feel
exhausted from it, and I’m not quite sure of the whys.
I feel like I need to record this, and that it is important somehow.
But why do I feel this way?
It is important because he is a movie in the making, because his
voice is a broad band of incomparable experience of Maleness
in this world.
.. or am I just puffing it all up with importance…?
You can see the cover of my old journal, and it speaks for itself.
I knew what I was getting in to, yet there was no going back.
Interesting things are occurring in my brain throughout all of this…
First there was the fantasy, the romantic movies that were left in
my storehouse, replayed so many times that I was truly unsure of
what was the truth anymore.
I remember writing quickly, to remember clearly, so as not to distort
it, but still after all this time, I am no longer assured it is the truth.
No one else even knew him, except my daughter Piney a little, and
she adored him. A couple people MET him, but I know no one else
now who Knew him then.
So as these weeks have passed, I notice the old movies fading, and
a new gathering image formulating before me. One based on bits
and pieces, gleaned from long conversations, one building upon
another, like pixels filling in the dots to dots, and a new man begins
to emerge before me, in my mind’s eye.
Yet these eyes, which lived to eat up his countenance, these eyes
which were so delightfully pleased with the sensual pleasures of his
physical self…….they are not allowed to be involved in this re-
formulation yet, this complete re-assembling of information.
And now I see the brain attempting to overlay one upon the other,
the old, or rather Younger Alcir, the iconic hero character who
flashed in and out of my reality…overlayed like images on Velum…
over this new Alcir, the more complex and complete picture of the
man, without the eyes filling in and informing my soul.
These eyes see much, and I depend on them to grant me information
that they grasp on so many levels. Will they adore what they see,
or will they speak of pain and sadness, and too much to handle?
This other life that I head towards, this being that impacted my orbit
with great explosions and re-adjustments…that in effect changed
some of my life’s directions.. enlarging my horizons, and filled in
spaces by his very existence..can I now integrate him into my
daily life, can I hold it all, and still keep hold of myself?
We are tumbling towards eachother, as surely as stars on trajectory
into a future that holds more explosions and murgings, to
create a new being, a new reality, a new star in the night sky.
What will this star pour out into the universe?
And what is IT’s life about?
This particular evening, after he’s heard I have a ticket,
a date, a plan…
…..after he’s been back in the shadows smoking his cigar,
hiding his hopes…
After spreading himself like jam on my toast …
with that poem, that said his heart was new and open…
….after the shared heart stories…
….his youthful joy renewed…
He’s been back there, waiting for my true reply, waiting to SEE…
“I want to SEE it” he’s said, over and over.
So he leaves the phone to pee…and when he comes back,
his voice is insistent…
“One thing just occurred to me…
You’re not Bullshitting me, are you?”
It was a statement, not a question.
The story that Alcir told me, of how he discovered Who he was,
discovered that he was First and Foremost a loner and a diver…
is actually rather heartbreaking, yet beautiful at the same time.
“My inner self started when I was 6 years old, and I was drowning
in high seas. My father trew me in the wader, he watch me as
I tried to stay up, my arms an’ legs grabbing.
I wen’ down, and didn’t come up. I Loved it. I went down to the
bottom, and sat in the mud for a long time…. maybe four minutes.
Suddenly I appeared up, with a big smile, and I discovered my life.
All I wanted was to dive.
I discovered who I was…. a loner and a diver. I didn’t need anyone
else to help me, or to tell me who I was.
And that is when I started fighting it.
They…my parents… could never understand why I refused to use
my intelligence, which they said I had.
Two times I broke the world record for deep sea diving.
I went over 75 meters down…
I don’t care that it was not recorded. I know who I am. ”
I remember he told me once that he went down … i don’t know…
200 meters or something crazy. When he came back up, the
other guys didn’t believe that he’d gone down all the way to
the sea floor, so he went back down, following the anchor chain,
and brought up some sand from the bottom, just to prove
that he did. This was a Free Dive.
He claimed he could stay down for many minutes… four or five…
and frankly I doubted his story. I mean, impossible, right?
Then much later, I saw some nature program, where it talked
about how some people have this rare genetic ability …
and can, indeed, hold their breath for many minutes, and also
endure deep dives. I had no idea.
“All I wan’ to do is make myself happy. Society wans people who
wan’ to impress society. I’m not a monkey… I’m not a circus animal,
that lives to amuse people… I jus’ wanna live my life.”
He got a medal for bravery. It was in Desert Storm I think.
He carried a buddy on his back to safety, but he was already dead.
“He took 6 or 7 bullets for me”, he told me “but he was already dead.
Actually, he shielded me, but that was not why I carried him.
I never thought of that, I only thought of getting him out of there”
Another war story in Desert Storm… he was sleeping in his tent,
and in the middle of the night, he got up to take a piss… he heard
an explosion.
He looked back, and NO TENT…
He’s been shot 11 times, stabbed 4 times, and something happened
to his face.
“I know,” I told him. ” I can’t believe you’re still alive. I’m amazed.”
“If You are…imagine me?” His eyes grew dark and clouded over.
Still, his gaze was intent, as he looked deeply into me, knowing
he was sharing things hidden so deeply within his heart.
“When I am at war, I do not see them as human beings…no…
as a target; I have a perfect concept that they feel the same for me.”
“I don’ wanna die, I don’ know why. I don’ care about life or death, but …
somehow, I don’ wanna die”
He told me so many things about himself that night. My heart is
heavy with the realizations of his youthful pain. He said at six,
his mother told him he wouldn’t live til he was eight, and every
year she renewed her predictions.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because she didn’t like me.”
He was always in trouble, at home, at school. And then came the
beatings.
Now today, I realize that he is ADHD. And these people are usually
extremely intelligent, and in those days they were completely
misunderstood.
And the father story… a life of beatings. With the belt, with a
piece of wood, with whatever he had in his hand at the time….
…even kicking him, and when he fell to the ground and curled up
in a ball, well then he’d kick him some more.
They both took great pleasure in punishing him in front of others.
Strange, how such terrible deep scarring can direct someone to
such drive, such accomplishment.
I’ve felt for some time that all of this was about proving himself
as a man. But not to be loved, not to be liked by others.
And he was never accepted or shown love by either parent.
No, it was something deeper. Proving to Himself that he was
what he Knew himself to be…… Extraordinary.
notesfromthelovewars 