I strolled through Magic City after midnight in various stages of bliss.
During the total of this particular Saturday-night-into-Sunday-morning excursion I talked to precisely one person, a man who came outside to see what was causing his dog to bark so steadily and loudly all of the sudden.
“There’s a fox out here,” I said. A streetlight glowed on this tree-lined street. The dog was behind a chain-link fence. I couldn’t see the dog and I couldn’t see the man.
“Oh, that must be what he’s fussing about.”
“He also could be annoyed by me just standing in the road looking for the fox.”
That plus pleasantries were the sum total of words spoken to me or by me to a specific person with capacity to hear them.
This is different than saying my utterances were over for the evening. At the time when the fox crossed my path, I was, in fact, just getting started. During the rest of my meander I talked to rabbits — I have decided it’s my mission to lessen the collective fear of a species; the initiative is slow but I’m in it for the long haul — and various people who were invisible to the naked eye.
I experienced a fun, flirty, connection with a woman I barely know who wasn’t at any point present.
My imagination engaged me in a discussion with siblings who also were not anywhere nearby.
I talked to my therapist — uh, no.
I conversed with myself, of course, as well as one or two other people who temporarily occupied space between my ears.
Sometimes my words were uttered aloud. Most were in the form of the internal conversation that comes standard issue with the installation of brain waves.
So in that respect I engaged in the experience of being alone with one’s thoughts. Except the tenor and tone of these conversations felt different than is usual for me. Among other ways in which this was evident is that while walking I also did a lot of dancing. I’m not a gadget guy but I bought a set of noise-cancelling headphones a few weeks ago and I am enjoying the sound that can come from something I bought foremost for its capacity to create silence.
One way to look at this walk is as a denouement of a week in which I had felt a wider range of the human panoply of emotions than is common in my experience. Or maybe I didn’t feel more total emotions; maybe it was just that the emotions I did feel struck me in ways, and more deeply, than I’m used to.
I feared the loss of a seminal relationship and took steps to mitigate that loss, steps that in themselves aroused fears and the kind of stress that comes with significant decisions.
I later showed up for that relationship with vulnerability, which, in turn, changed the frame.
Separately, I faced a conflict that had weighed on my mind for more than a week. I did so with, more or less, the version of me I want to be present in such moments but getting there took some work.
One morning I felt a burst of grief while running on a treadmill. I simultaneously imagined myself running in a dead sprint on a sunny day down the backyards of my boyhood home and also my deceased brother outrunning the death that brought about my life. Yeah, not the usual treadmill mindset.
At various times during the week I experienced feelings of loss and even some betrayal. I overcame indecision that could have left me stagnant until I finally chose to do something I wanted to but didn’t think I could ever do … I used aggression in mostly constructive ways … I made friends with indecision and confusion; I let the dust settle … I worked through common stress … Health concerns — my own and those of people I love — came and, if not went, were managed. I have never surfed but this felt like I road a lot of emotional waves.
I encountered someone who managed my anxiety in rare and appreciated ways, which allowed me to see the fear and therefore watch it rapidly dissipate.
I received touch that healed.
I saw colors with my eyes closed.
I encountered beauty I didn’t think my shame would allow me to see.
Maybe I have consumed a jambalaya of emotions like this one before in a single week but never, that I can recall, did so many feel so acute.
In the 36 hours immediately before this walk, in separate spaces and in different ways, I released energy from my body that had been inside me, in some cases, I suspect, for a long time — in one instance I had the sense of touch on my chest by a non-human hand that sealed a vulnerability that had existed as long as I have had biology. I would be the first to say this could be pure fantasy; it’s too early to say and never could it be proven.
This walk was, then, something of an exhale. The consolidation that follows chaos. The celebration that arises from letting go of weighty psychic stores that no longer serve.
Stress builds up and the dissipation can be profoundly palpable.
I am talking in the abstract here, no doubt to the annoyance of the reader, but I am trying to sit with feelings that by their nature are hard to capture. The particulars of the stories would distract; in some cases they would require too many details to be concisely coherent anyway; in others, well, I just don’t want to go there right here right now. I danced alone under the stars and writing about my moves does something for me — even if not for anyone else.
One thing about emotions is that, for all their power, after they pass you can easily dismiss them. Maybe, at least in my case, even feel shame for having felt them so deeply. I think of music. Once I shared with a friend an affinity for an old song that was hard to find even in a streaming world. I was taken with the song in ways that, in hindsight, seem a little over the top. My friend liked the song, too, but our experiences of it were, of course, different (personal to each of us). You can share your feelings but this only goes so far; another person can relate but they can’t do an upload. We can be listening at the same time but none of us hear the same song.
“He was just being emotional,” is a phrase. I have studied Stoicism and such schools of thought tell us that emotions (“the passions”) aren’t to be trusted. Certainly not as much as reason. I’m not only ignoring that right now I am sort of doing the opposite.
Why try to cement this moment with words? It’s a fair question. I don’t know that my answer will be any more durable than are the emotions themselves but there’s something in the ephemeral aspect that makes certain emotions worth savoring and acknowledging. The attempt is one thing that glues me together.
Clouds pass, never to be seen again, not exactly, yet a choice few have appeared in more than a few compelling photographs. I live in a world in which my primary way of perceiving experience isn’t the one that, in most cases, the collective We operates in. Hey, reason and logic are essential — especially in public discourse and in the establishment and execution of societal and professional laws and norms — but, as I have heard philosopher Martha Nussbaum put it, emotions can also be foundations of profound personal knowledge. Besides, if feeling this way is wrong then I don’t want to be right.
I’m attempting to capture a cloud with my fingers. There are no lessons here. No formulas. Only dualities.
Mind and body.
Thoughts and feelings.
Memory and the moment.
The sense of being alive infused by the acceptance of death.
Under starlight and set to music, I moved through the night as something of a happy drunk — one who hadn’t consumed a single chemical — and I don’t know that what language I’ve used to describe the moment does anything useful for anyone else but me and this time, at least, that’s reason enough.