From the frontlines: An American heart in Australia

This place started as a prison. It seems fitting. There are many comparisons to be made. A prison in paradise? Yes. This is the most honest and fitting description for our world. We are all in prisons, to some extent, and beyond the walls of every enclosure is the freedom of endless distance, the beauty of the palms blowing in the constant breeze, and the happiness of knowing that prison is another word for fear. No man, no mind, no one with hope could ever be locked away. Sit still and think about it. Sit still and solve all of your problems by sitting and being still. Ah, Western mind, how you wonder about the simplicity of the only answers. Want to know how it works? Too bad. It does. Be happy with that.

Now, on this Australian morning, I sit still after waking with and shaking with the fallacy of fear. It's love, you see. Yes, love. That little part of life that was always a game but ended up bringing pain and the loss of the greatest sense of comfort. Love can change life, but love is just a game. Right? Well, men grow from boys and truth is always redefined. Answers look different from different places, at different times. And love, well the game got serious. Now there is no choice but to bet hard, to put it all in and stare stiffly at the table as the wheel spins. I hope that bouncing ball of stone lands on red, but if it doesn't, the only other choice it has is to rest in black. Back to the feeling of a morning and the blackness of waking alone when all I want is one. One woman to hold. One woman I dream of. Maybe it's because I dreamed of her and woke alone, maybe that's why I shook and worried, why I fought tears and learned again what I've been learning all along. Love is real and not a matter of choice, like so many feelings in this maddening play of existence. We choose to live. If we live, we will love. If we love, we feel pain. If we hurt, we're alive. And the cycle continues, letting us play our part so we never accept that maybe, just maybe, the story was written long ago.

The tears I battled and refused to let go, finally fell. The essence of the my body released in drops that reminded me where I am and what it means. They say I'm in Australia. I say it too. What a world this is! What a time! It took two days in a metal balloon with wings and I was slapped down in the middle of that place that people write about in books so it isn't forgotten because if nobody wrote it and nobody looked, this land would be exactly as it should and exactly how it is. It's here if you want it, but if you don't, those who know will enjoy it all the same. There are palm trees and wild parrots, strange accents and visitors from across the world. I'm on an island but I'll never see both shores. There is a desert here, vast and wide with surfaces of all kinds. There are mountains that turn blue in the setting sun. There are mystical meanings given to beautiful places by a people that may have been the first to bare the responsibility of being people. There have been firsts here. In a beginningless existence, first moments have happened here. Maybe this is the home of the start. Maybe coming here was necessary. Go back from where you came, take a minute and think, and return only when you're ready. The Aboriginal people have no words in their language for yesterday and tomorrow. Every day is today. I arrived in a moment. I'll depart in a moment. If today is all there has ever been than I have been born, lived, struggled, traveled, returned, and died all in a day. If that is true than I'll know it only when the day is done. But it is the start of this day and I woke to watch the first show, when darkness erupts with light and life forces its way back through the bleak. Power is present at sunrise. It's the collision of bliss and nothingness. I never thought that growing up would bring an appreciation of the moments before and after the sun has risen that must be similar to the moment when one watches a child being born. This is endless and it came from the place it's going. This is the answers inside the questions. This is a day worth living, worth feeling. This is a moment that I'll never forget.

But I've forgotten before. I've made mistakes twice and taken chances that I know will leave me alone. This is the mind feigning control. This is the thing that must stop. Yes, we choose and move, we walk and stand under our own control, but what about those moments when that control is lost and you just want one? I'm not yet ready to accept that there is no control, nor could I accept that my sense of control is anything but a sense. The feeling of love changes the look of mountains and the sensation of water from a stream on the skin of every being. The coffee tastes different after love is felt. Love, in every form, has meaning. But love in the true sense, love that defies logic and asks you to risk it all, it makes all the difference. I've loved and lost, taken care of people who have needed it, waited until the right time to act. But now I know. After years of logic and reason, years of thinking before talking and hesitating while walking, I'm ready to jump. Shit. I'm already flying. Isn't that the truth of it? One moment love is a game, that thing that keeps your friends happy for a while and makes your parents long for more, then it happens and love becomes love. No ideas of what makes sense work when love is in play. What will I do? Follow the intensity, take the risk, hope for the best, and walk confidently with eyes that may cry. There is no other choice and metaphors can only mask the duty for so long.

Let's try to be rational here. That's what I used to say. I still throw it out there for good measure. I use it to give logic a little play and let it think it still has as much influence as it once did. Let's be realistic. I am, in the truest sense, now. So you believe in love? I believe in this, more than anything. If life is lived in a moment, if that moment is the meaning of it all, if that moment contains heaven and hell, than that which makes us feel the most of the moment in every way must be followed. Life really is a series of moments. For me, there has always been a longing for love in the truest sense, a love that I rarely saw and rarely see but read about and dream about, a love that I know exists beyond reason.

There are stories about those who are taken by this feeling, lost for a lifetime in the eyes of another. There are people who wait and hope but never win. Then there are those who find it and feel it in a way that never ends. There are people who find another that fits and, if they're wise, they do what they must to keep the feeling, even when it's no longer nearby. Love isn't about trying. It's about accepting and acting. But I'm losing myself in the mist of metaphor once again. Ah, to be a man pretending to be a poet. Looks like I have done it again. I've spent a while putting down words without really saying what it means. If sitting still and smiling can be the answer to all the questions than surely this pouring of words is not entirely necessary. But it feels right. That is why I write.

My coffee has gone cold. The cup is warmer than the liquid it holds. And I sit wondering whether I've said what I needed to, whether I've said all that I could, whether there is more to come. Ludovico Einaudi plays piano in my ears and I wish to yell to the clouds and ask they to play the role of heaven for a second so I can thank them for the essence of melody that can be bent and broken or flow blissfully. I'm a man alone in a forgotten world, on an island that no one who believes only what they see would think to be an island. I guess that those who have been past the clouds are the only ones to have seen this place in its entirety. Imagine that our eyes could see all of it in one look. Imagine looking out a window and seeing everyone who has ever been known and the place where everything we know of thought and emotion has happened. What if we were in the space beyond the fog and on the edge of the unknown abyss? What thoughts would come?

Maybe the same thoughts and feelings, the same sense of being that love brings. I am a man in love with a woman. Yes, it is that kind of love, the kind that will never die and is willing to fight through anything. And I've had this love. I've felt her touch. I've been in a bed beside her, waking to see her sleep, watching her breath and knowing bliss. I've driven long hours to hold her hand. I've waited and watched love walk by. But it's still walking and I can see it over the horizon so I wont give up. Not now or never will this heart stop. I found it. I found her. I've met the woman of my dreams. This rational man who furrows his brow and strokes his beard while he talks has found something worth skipping for. Shit. I do skip, even though she isn't here. Just to know that I love her, that I've spent nights beside the woman that I love, just that is worth a smile that can last a million years before it can go a million more. Love is never lost and hope can heal all wounds. No negative can last. Hate, fear, and misery fade. Love lasts. Love. Breath. Love. That is all.

Are you depressed? Yes and no. Do you know what you're going to do? Probably but I'll realize I'm wrong as soon as I decide I'm right. I love a woman in a way that never stops. I'm blessed to know this. I hope she knows it too. I hope she sees my love revealed, reborn, revived in a way that shows exactly how powerful it is. Love is beyond the rising sun. And music! Music is heaven! But Love! Oh man, LOVE!

Now, I laugh. The coffee is cold and getting colder. There is no microwave to warm it. There is more coffee but my hands already shake because of the caffeine. I miss this woman that I speak of, more than I ever thought possible. Might even lose my mind for this feeling. Shit. Already happened. But I'm sane inside my insanity. I'm balanced with my imbalance. Yes, that's right. I'm a realistic man who is willing to row a bout across the ocean for a kiss. Ah, the contradictions and the smiles that come from watching life unfold. Its fun, this living thing. It's fun to say that you're going to move to Australia for a year and then go further. It's fun to drink wine for weeks until a moment in the rain forest when you wake inside and cry, learning what you had and have lost. It's fun to say, shit I fucked up and I need to go back. It's fun to try and live against the odds. But the fun is speckled with intense pain, like horrid, really bad loneliness, but life is still fun. I woke up sad. I actually thought the devil was waiting for me by my door.I saw his silhouette. Then I remembered I hung my raincoat on the door. It's not the devil, it's a raincoat! That, right there, is all one needs to know about life. Damn nicotine patches make me question whether or not reality is a dream or dreams are the truth. But that is also fun. I have no idea what is going on, ever. I mean none of us do. Is the sky blue and full of white clouds or is the sky white and occasionally flooded with only blue? Fuck if I know, I'll leave that to the scientists who will believe what their tests tell them. I'm a man of faith and feeling and love is my god. Loving the way I do, loving the girl that I love, well, that is all I have ever asked for. Now I have to do whatever it takes to make it work. I write letters and cry. I wake alone and paint, as though I'm a painter, like it would matter if I was. What a world we live in!

I hope she hears this. I hope someone reads this. No, it's not hope born from the ego. It's the other kind. It's hope that says, hey take a look at this and tell me what it means because I laugh and cry at the same time and never really learn enough to stop making big mistakes. In fact, the more I learn, the less I know. But, shit. I know love. I know I love a woman. I know I'll do what it takes. I know I'm a poet and plain. I'm sensational and the same. I am human. Humans like other humans. Sometimes humans like one human a lot. Sometimes its love. Sometimes that love wins. Sometimes humans smile. Ah, the smile.

Goodbye words and any who have read them. Time for me to go running or walking, or both, while talking or thinking, or both. Love life and it will return the favor. Hope can defy logic. Anything is possible.