The Oldest Storyteller...

Now I’m eating sandwiches for breakfast for the moment but then I feel great so I don’t have a problem. Fascinating time in my life, I guess mostly because that event really changed it. That year. That miraculous year. People have their universes which is very true, we are a universe. In going through my childhood, I got it back. Psychology was my childhood preoccupation. I think about everything that I’m doing now, or starting to, and I feel sense. This makes sense. As a universe. I had one, I have one.

I might have been funny, sure, a funny kid conducting the Devon Sawa experiment while most kids were just putting magazine cut-outs on their walls. Not me.

I didn’t understand this “stage” where I was in my development, why these magazine pages were covering my friend’s wall. Buying a magazine, a teeny bopper magazine, I put up Devon Sawa and waited for a feeling to arrive, assessing the world of images…my mother was Dr. J. I didn’t understand this, Prince, was he there? Should be. But I had a foreboding feeling, just turning someone into an image. I suppose someone could have suggested finding my finding people I like, totally. Actually, go, get some magazines, let’s live life, build some dreams, you see. That would be me today with a kid like me. Let’s put up some dreams on the wall, something.

My mother was into that, saving the world, her appearance in articles. That affected me thinking about how she was, who I knew.

But still, I took Devon Sawa down and crumpled it up to throw it away, I paused. That’s easy. I understood. I see. Less real. Me in my pink room. I wondered about that.

My father had secret Alzheimer’s, my mother not there, omni-absent, even spiritual, and a Brazilian mother held residual resentment toward me more so siding with my father…squinting at her. Was it all that? Is it ever always all that? Hands in the Italian triangle, maybe diamond, me not wanting to call this woman? Understandable. My father looking at me disappointed. She called you a child molester, slammed the door in your face, brainwashed your child, apparently…? Sure, it wasn’t “her fault,” but all things considered, thinking about the responsibility I’ve taken for my relationships, meaning, “you were there, you made your decisions…” even by doing nothing. And that’s the truth. That was super complex, complicated, but that would be a key for her because she couldn’t believe what she did to my father, and the reason why I was there vanished. The money. Ouch. That one hurt. Later. Arriving at a point…not knowing what to say about what was true and what wasn’t. I mean, would you want to be her? Not really.

Wasn’t the most pleasant four years of my life, to be honest, Aunt Jane hated that expression, but there was joy too…

The thing is, I just started thinking about myself as a parent…kicking down doors, ripping shopping bags, Christmas stockings off other people’s chimneys, just firing in. Some people have to do that: become a parent to themselves. Maybe more people do that than not…grow up… that’s the journey from childhood to adulthood. But the way I dealt with my parents had a fantastical track.

Into the second house, after those four years, my father got ill. This wasn’t my house but it sort of became that, the home I wanted, more my home than my home, I had to take responsibility for that. Waking up, what are you doing? This woman became like my mother…It’s not a gratitude thing, it’s that she wasn’t my parent. I was “like her kid.” I came out of a sick home and can’t compute fully when that news came out, I was right all along, in another house. And there’s another mother. Three.

Then, my Russian friend the lithe and lethal Sonya opened her arms wide to me every time I came ito my apartment, the warmest shade of yellow on the walls —come to Mama darling! Bowing, shrugging, no expression, I will be your mother, if you need a mother. No, I said, I’m not sure about that. If I need another mother. She took sweet care of me. We took care of each other in The Year I was Invaded by the Russians.

Family was the wound.

We get into dynamics or relationships or situations. I’m not the only one, another song. I don’t blame, even. I might have been a touch too radical. A man came onto me onto me once and one person — one of the money men — suggested I do something underhanded. I say that with an old smile, we were friends once. And another — the friend around the apartment said, which is funny — said “no this isn’t you,” this was my closest friend. Maybe I should have said the same thing.

I think I went through a particular journey that year.

I apologized, lol, for my side, you’re probably going through a very hard time. If I’m here then I am creating it on some level. This is literally what I said. You create your own reality no? The thing is, I found out I wasn’t even that special. Good man. Anyway, I didn’t say “you…” I said “me…” How many people do that? Even my friend who is like that doesn’t apply that logic to relationships. How many people go — “not YOU, ME.”

Ah, confusion.

Hands up, not responsible for everyone’s choices. But mine, yeah, that too.

The Chelsea Hotel was an enchanted location, just exquisite, I felt so lucky to have passed through there because who in my generation did? A perfect setting for Death coming in like Meet Joe Black but not. I’m young. I can change direction. Call it a turning point. Yes, you can do that. People do that. Something has to change. Something about this…wasn’t going to sustain me long-term.

I can’t wait to get to The Oldest Storyteller. I did a preliminary chapter outline for a grant, I mean, that’s all I have been doing is working…up until 5 AM in the shisha bar most nights…the man bringing me my cardamom coffee, I think he might have texted me recently too, how sweet, “where are you?” You make these pushes even if it’s not ready or perfect. You have to.

I love thinking about the structure of that one even a collection of droplets to capture a moment as eternal. Though very short it doesn’t always feel that way. It’s one of my favorite feelings, yes, eternity, from that sumptuous evening I felt time bend. And in the end, in my mythological thread, I walked through the slit in my eye, shut tight, that I remember still; a sunbeam hit my eye, time was bending, what was this?

“And through a dark eye I walked through unknown territory and still I saw love is timeless.”

Time seems to be a material, it doesn’t function linearly. You can condense time, Hopkins believes. Bring it into the present. Talk to it as if it’s already happened, Aniston said. That’s probability. “Probable futures,” I shrugged at nine, I saw that. Probably could have used someone to help me through that but I saw it. It expands, it can even suspend and speed up to make up the difference. Or, you can hardly capture it, the evening flew by. That meeting dragged. Time never felt so long, so thick.

Death telling me back then – now – I’m not after you, the concept of power is skewed. Relieving.

“Life is long…” a lovely idea also true. We hope, of course.

Fulfillment, value fulfillment, these ideas, that’s what I was thinking about.

I thought about it on my walk to get coffee this morning. I’ve read about the feeling in some of these mental breakdowns or conditions that something external is doing it to you. Well, I mean, depending on your belief system and again these ideas exist in the architecture of the world that might suggest that there are higher forces at work. I understand a sort of basic confusion there. I really do. In some of these states, well maybe things did happen to you. It’s just to ground some of that. I had moments like that but that’s not true…not unless…I thought about that…

“It is the future that writes the past…”

That might be true.

I think for some, history repeats itself, and where’s that future that rewrites it, even, more accurately? I did that, personally, it turned out, so we might not have the story totally right.

I like to talk to it as if it’s already happened. I have this book in my hand. I have the key to that house. And thank you. Thank you for a great job opportunity…for a future, I guess, that makes me feel so useful. Maybe I could be a mother now, maybe I could have a family now…you see, these things weren’t possible. I was even flippant, meaning, expectations. Finally, my friend, Yelena, she said “whoa, I’m just asking you if you want to have kids…?” She saw through my clothes and called me “a tomboy.” But what people see in you, that’s another thing, since I felt people called me this, that, very feminine…as if…I could probably write a paragraph where I am this, that, and everything. Now inserting new words —opinionated. Sharp not diffused. Doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve. It’s already in the appropriate place, beating, looking right at you. Ready to start an argument or two, laughing, stumbling, trying on new clothes, being fiercely honest. Not emotional. Not quite like that.

The Seth books— I read some and I am not afraid to say that. Some of it was rather thrilling and helpful and inspiring in the sci-fi sense, “ideas are as natural as a strand of hair,” amazing, even the Oldest Storyteller having a fun opener…just going through this apartment, beginning to break it down. Ideas, ideas, ideas…for her, based on me. One step at a time. Taking it in. A world a touch enchanted getting a little older, sheets over antiques, every item exquisite, hand-selected, not her house.

Even me being “a seer” on some level, you know, I had to laugh. Looking back on The Year I was Invaded by the Russians. I had a visual flood my senses: thief, tightly braided cursive, that feeling, when I met the extraordinary thief who went on an inspiring journey to leave that life behind…stepping aside his expectations, he never let me down, I never let him down. Change, what does that entail? What is that?

It’s just to say — I don’t care about the reality of it — just put it in a fiction. Zip it up. Problem solved. This is an Oldest Storyteller reflection. Write a story about a gifted seer. It’s fine that I’ve had experiences I couldn’t explain or get visuals sometimes though I’ve also crafted a bit out of that. I created that character, that perspective, Death as wisdom…across belief systems. And there are many.

At least for the moment, that story is a return to childhood, a journey out of repression since that’s what it seemed to be so that’s a particular headspace…a child hiding through time and space…I did seem to put myself together, get to know myself. The adventure of it…

On a train speeding between two points in time, two destinations, Paris to London. I just graduated clown school, though it wasn’t just that, and the questions people asked me in college started to land. At twenty-six. Almost a decade later. How did that happen? I saw a flash in the window “remember me” which is what I heard in my head at four before I left for these four years. Never remarked it. I started to, I put pen to paper. I started at the top, everything I could remember.

The point is — it could take years for information to land, how did I feel about that? Hopefully, one can respond in the moment. I had to bridge some gaps. Was I always like that? How many people ask themselves that? I started seeing these four years, I felt like I woke up and I got up… breathless. Where am I? The only one on the train. That’s it.

Death on the brink of dawn.

Death is there, in one way or another, so what do you want to do? With the time that is given? It’s not a bad question. I’ve heard about parallel realities, moments in time, past lives informing the other, even how psychic material wraps up energy into a picture. A psychic told me I was once a Viking warrior and I stood serene as the battles were coming. I still remember that, I’m not so attached to the literal meaning, it having to be a literal past life. An oracle, truly, that’s what this looked like, in a kitchen smoking at a table with a bright tablecloth. “You wanna know where you come from…” People have so many ideas as to there being so much more, what it is you’re looking for…

I liked the Oldest Storyteller because time doesn’t really exist but it does… strictly present, Death.

I used to interchange pure and strict so that was my solution.

I was pure, and now, I’m strict. A journey. I had a focus problem. It’s true.

“The future is a point of focus,” Death says across it all.

I mean I felt time bend — at nine — and that feeling, “there is only the present moment, all time…times are present?” How stunning. We’re here. I like that. For its simplicity, the Oldest Storyteller moving across all of it…to look you right in the eye. “Energy.” Bringing it back to basics. Man was such a mystery to me, too.

I’ve had classically psychic experiences — Matera, a presence in my hotel room.

Energy cannot be destroyed, neither can you, and who knows? In going through my story, were there sticky places, you see? Certain events or experiences might not be so easy just due to what happened. Sure, I can craft an idea out of that.

The world keeps turning, we seem to have an idea though: respect the dead. I get there’s nothing, some people believe that so why keep anything? Why rituals? Why do we honor life and death? It doesn’t seem to be true, basically, because energy cannot be destroyed; that’s what we believe. That’s what everything is, no? It’s less story, for the Oldest Storyteller, funny. Energy. A lesson.

Some believe there’s a process in that departure — that’s a real idea, figure, in some cultures, Death is “the ultimate guide,” as my hypnotherapist put it. A seat of wisdom. A master psychologist, no? That would make sense. That idea “true,” that’s true, and what does that mean? A true idea.

I always like taking this idea for a little thought ride…through this amazing apartment…where that journey began. Virgil Thomson’s. A long kitchen of hand-carved wood and brass wallpaper of pure gold on the ceilings, too, a universe. Diving into the mouth of a bright blue alligator…time bends. I never really thought about it but — hello? If a child told me that…time bends? Excuse me? You see, I’m here…

It was enchanted, it felt that way. Sheets over the antiques. Learning what language is. It should not be destroyed and he’s heard that, no? The Oldest Storyteller.

I started looking around where I was, loved this house, I really did, and I thought I might place a story in here, a great gift, and the owners supported me on doing it, and yes, a time in my life was coming to an end.

“There are no limitations to the self…” that’s Seth, a great line.

“Everything from your perspective,” that’s Death, mine, in theory, your life flashes before your eyes. And what does that mean? It was so much fun, you see, now, moving around all these truths searching for a higher perspective that seemed to be love — the strongest healing force there is, and that seems to be true. “What do you expect?” That’s the Oldest Storyteller. Love.

It’s just that, you know, what is it all about? What is it all about? People seem to know…how does it work? Time, love, relationships, what’s history? How do you create what you want? What do you want? On what levels am I doing it, etc., how high-tech is it? Are you — if you can’t question what you read — creating your own reality? I’ve been saying that for some years now and finally, just putting that away a minute, I feel better. Presence. I guess there was much…I guess I was repressed.

“Probable future events can affect the real past…” great line…It would make sense based on what I saw the evening I felt time bend but then, where am I right now? The big bang — my father slammed on the breaks when I was two and I went flying into the dashboard, an accident. Cosmic forces.

Fulfillment, meaning, that seems to be a fundamental drive.

I told this guy who hit on me in a way I didn’t appreciate— I take responsibility for being here on this end. Was that…the best way to approach that? I do not know. I had to separate.

I worked for a mental health app and separation was a concept she built into it.

I create my own reality but there are limits. I do think that. One should have them.

“Everything from your perspective,” Death says. “Your whole life.”

And what does that mean?

The Oldest Storyteller could meet someone a little enchanted, no, to meet him.

Especially in my case because my whole concept changed. It reorganized. A new beginning.

I kept opening internally along the way, different qualities of feeling too — getting to know my own imagination — to arrive at a surprise, a moment of solitude, or maybe a moment just dawning, something new, something a little like love. So many decisions and revisions before the taking of a toast and tea, T.S. Eliot. So I had wild imaginings trying not to get scared, I held on tight, in fact, for someone so diffused…not always. I opened up. Quiet moments. Ones I kept returning to. And why this one, always this one, the cafe chairs. I even got confused, my old house coming back, my pink room, it took my breath away. I just sat there, there, and there. Not the same feeling.

I grew up through that…that required some reframing, forgiveness, and a higher perspective. I guess I needed that. I wasn’t the most awful person…and even that, what did I do exactly? And Death, the oldest storyteller, even if you were the worst, there’s nothing you can’t change. It’s called a redemption story, if that’s my story, come on. I was four. I’m just being honest because I had my moments. Rage, that was wild, necessary, another stimulating quote from Seth.

“There’s a natural aggression for anything to come to life…”

I thought about that to break open from a seed, to reach, to dream, to love, too…

I guess my dreams over the past couple of years reflect a moving through, beyond, now, I’m basically over it. And that’s just me.

We develop over time. Choice was a real guidepost. No, I’m not doing that. I don’t fully understand but I don’t have to. If you are honest with yourself about what it is that you want…there’s a lot possible. I loved that, an opportunity to be that honest, because you can’t lie to Death. That’s the idea. That’s what I really wanted.

“I am not a liar!!”

Me beginning to question this story…

Memories surfacing, I can’t go there, and I explored that — what the truth is…a good role in the back of the car, every car…taking a ride. Was I that afraid? Of what I would find? Not knowing anymore. Well, probably, this, that, I just said stop.

I found myself in that same places, moment in times, “you mean it wasn’t just about that,” holding onto a tape recorder. I’m not a liar, shaking. It was about their fights…Death walking from the shadows now. I guess some choices we make have layers…I wanted to remember this, I loved life, their fights even inspired me…why did that moment have so much meaning, so much truth, a living room…me with this tape recorder? I was studying the drama of life.

And Death had been a part of every story ever told so there hasn’t been anything, really, that he hasn’t seen which comes from my childhood, probably. It made it easier to open up to myself. Wasn’t going to get weird, doubt, look at me as if he hasn’t seen a thing or three. A human response sometimes isn’t always easy, meaning, you belong. Don’t recede. Your story belongs here. And Death, he’s just like that, a consummate professional. He stood for difference too since our experiences might not be alike so he didn’t need to say it, he could change shape, form. It helped too. As I went along.

Contribution was probably the strongest idea in a healing journey besides love — unbreakable even when it got tough — even shifting, Death in the back of some old car, my perspective on what love is. This, in my opinion, is not love. It’s not a flimsy thing. It shows up. It’s not an ethereal concept. And heard these characters in my life trying to convince me, well, she didn’t know how…but still, it’s not, not to me. It was, it really was, the strongest force maybe in the universe and I don’t know what to say about us, you know, in relation to how strong I felt it.

Contribution.

I found it, thinking about meaning, a man’s life, what it meant to them, me…now. I can’t explain the mysteries of the world, I am not at that door, but I found a deep satisfaction in finding that one night— contribution. I found myself back down the shore, the shore, in the middle of night…taking a step back. The light from the lamppost coming into the sunroom, porch, misty, even, a deep blue. My cousin’s mother, my “like a mother,” graining back, took her into her arms; she was crying, her grandmother just died…a pieta in a soft shadow.

His eyes pierced through the darkest night, every memory, fierce, very. Very very real.

I drew myself from the shadows, someone who didn’t even see who they were, a star, because that’s what we are…cosmic fire children, a Native American said that to me. “I, too, am from the stars.” And many, probably more so than not, don’t even see themselves…that’s a higher perspective.

Even “such darkness here,” coming from there.

“One’s imagination does not have to turn against them,” whoa. But yes, there are dark areas in real life, we imagine terrible realities and make them come true, that too. What humans can do.

Leaving behind, I don’t know, what I would never know, because I wouldn’t. I realized that then. It was around then. Contribution. Accessing what one has to give, what their experience has to offer. We make a contribution in many ways…showing up for another…

Even thinking about what makes a good story, why this scene, since me — personally — I could bleed even, find myself in memories, so it’s also about cohesion, this story. Yeah, I have to admit that, over a pietà. I began to tilt this thing I learned like I had to have this, lack, into a space of abundance, I didn’t have to be like everyone else, either.

As an adult, thinking about all this, crying, even, wondering what it meant to me, could it mean something to me? On a couch with dashing blue jays and chrysanthemums blooming wildly. It’s not over. It’s not over. Obviously. Just because I got back my childhood, what I loved too, this is what I mean. Opening…care…

Contribution, I’ve only just begun. Some of that was sticky, I felt so bad, hard to feel because my parents were my parents…so I didn’t know, I just didn’t know, um, how did I feel? I didn’t really have a grasp yet. So he was sick, sort of waking up, and isn’t that hard for anyone? Walls crashing, no, I was so fast, young, I was the problem, just putting it together. Coming to discover something like that…seeing the picture differently. Now, Death looks back, I’m on a bus, on a phone. Pinned you, myself, “another doctor,” wake up. Just moving through that. Death wasn’t in a rush, actually, there were other worlds, but this story had a particular route. Just settling that matter.

Remembering that evening in Rome, my sneakers, seeing them first, what is this? Starlings at the end of the day swaying around ancient columns in formation, silhouette…”time flies,” I said to my father who always said it with a tone.

“Time flies,” Death says, he likes that, it can fly in many ways.

Who knows where I’ll end up? I might as well start where I’m at. A family story isn’t a bad place to start…me hiding behind a Christmas tree, another family, another plate of cookies. Please, don’t get affected. Can’t say no, can’t say you’re wrong, I’m right, so there was a dance, romance, just a kid, trying to make it out the door. Coming to appreciate another group of people, don’t want it to happen again, you know, the beginning held so much promise and then. For the most part my relationships were successful. I’ve got a solid handful that I could rely on during all this. I suppose community is a slightly different concept, feeling like you’re a part of something greater…even art, writing, something…that’s what I want now. Never thought about that consciously. A healing concept.

Just thinking about that year, that magical year. Quarantine came. A flatiron loft became available, a family was fleeing, they needed a cat-sitter for the One that was Juan — “One” in a French accent. I faced the Flatiron building, I saw myself in that taxi where Fifth Ave and Broadway crisscross and change directions, and life can flip on a dime. Time bends. I made the decision to go to college here because it was delivered through the folds of a flag suspended and rippling through the air. I thought about that all these years later, Death here, there, everywhere, heading uptown.

Then, One and I were moving, suddenly, uptown, a penthouse with the boxes still unpacked…I’m trying to access these years with my father, oh, I expressed other symptoms…I’m not getting it. I am not a liar! His dementia, his denied dementia, was mind-bending. Central Park, my friend wanting to talk about his experiences with death…his thinking…which I didn’t know what to do with later…Then, down to South Brooklyn, whoa, I was scared. Didn’t know that. Back to Chelsea and into Fifth Ave, the aesthetics of these places couldn’t be more different, to take off: Naples Marrakesh, Fes and Istanbul…seagulls gliding in formations…

That story is one I liked more and more as it developed along with me, where I could go and keep believing, even, drawing my childhood out of the shadows, settling accounts in a living room in New Jersey, the stickiest. Headed home. So much changed that year, the protests burst from below, all around me; I was at the Flatiron. I spoke to my sister for the first time in two years, voices, voices.

I did go through a deep transformation of self of some kind. People do.

Gratitude, it’s still my approach.

I saw the Oldest Storyteller as a figure of duty, incorruptible. Power, keep it. I appreciated that. And I know I am not alone.

I thought about all that, I had moments, just connecting to — what? Where I am now? Further along?

I would rather lift myself up from the seat of my own experience with a new understanding and see what happens with that posture. David, the Brit, who came up behind me…the two of us watching our friend…asked me ”what do you think?” We were good friends, I think. A Brit asking me…? And he was. He watched me, too, walking straight up, vertical posture sort of Mary Poppins he called me at the Louvre. It was my coat, too.

I used to, at four, walk across the living room, I remember that, working on my posture with the Encyclopedia book on my head.

I got back all that.

He always did have a good eye, David. He said to me finally, you’re so bold in real life, your clothes, but on stage that’s something else and what is that about? Good friend. I didn’t know. I think he saw that and now I can be grounded and proud of where I’ve come from, the journey I’ve taken up until this point, and find more ease, the way I want to go, share some old stories, write new ones.

Someone said history was people doing the best with what they got. And history repeats itself…sometimes, I wish it wouldn’t. In my own life, I sought to change some of that. The story changed because it wasn’t totally accurate. So many truths, seeking one to lift me up. A new debut. Both my parents were sick, that’s it. Wasn’t that enough?

But I had characters from my life rush in…loving Death playing all that now…to tell me it wasn’t true and I just had to go through the story, the basics, what we know… and forget that, even, and change, think about that. So I laughed, I did, I laughed a lot. I thought about it. Well, maybe, what? His Alzheimer’s didn’t. At four…noise, attachments, absolutely, even if it wasn’t true. Even if the story wasn’t true. And there are un-true stories…that are taught as true…

Illegitimate babies, that was a weird concept to me at nine…

“Excuse me?”

I said to my father.

Illegitimate babies, I looked out the window. I never heard of something more absurd. No, no, no.

And that’s just an idea that people have…

Why do we do that? Put it on the baby. Do you think…that God, even, would agree? Really?

“We are all fundamentally innocent,” now that’s a higher perspective.

So, the Oldest Storyteller today…cruising on home…at the end of the day…feeling a little older, seeing myself older and older…reaching.

I just love that story, whatever that’ll end up being, but that was the year or two of magical healing, which is more of an aside, real healing, real, what it meant to me, what meaning is…and that’s Death’s domain. So, I began to move, back in the beginning, getting into my body…dancing in the dark, learning what I could do, how old I was, so much…just before dawn.

“You’re life is supposed to in-spire you.”

That came with more than fluffy feelings, that too.

“The cosmos is also at eye-level,” in a palace in Fes, in that, a higher perspective also looks right at you. That’s the wisdom of Death, in my opinion. Useful. In terms of the divine being above (power too) somewhere out there, that we’ll get to, it’s right in here, we are in the universe. Home. Through many doors, he led me by the heart, a real unknown.

“I am just a door…”

And that was true.

-

And now I’m here.

So I don’t know because I’m finishing Christmas in Naples is a Sport, it helps sometimes to go through the Oldest Storyteller to work on flow, “another kid trying to get out the door…” since that’s the narrative with some of that dialogue. It helps sometimes to keep a perspective that feels meaningful, I don’t know how else to put it. That feels even natural, less story, even, though I’m moving through one. A life. And we each hold so many.

Someone once said that compassion is presence; that’s South America. You know, Captain Planet, South America — HEART!

The idea that presence is heartfelt, full.

That’s the Oldest Storyteller.

Thanks for reading…