TRUTH

“There wouldn't have to be any truth, if there weren't any lies."
DH Lawrence - "Women in Love"

Thinking:

What is the point of "being right" when it sets you against those you love? The truth is in the mind of the beholder. We each know our own truth, and if we are courageous, live by it. If we are not courageous we place judgment on others, an attempt at "being right".

Right?

It's almost a knee-jerk habit - one I have been struggling with all my life. Now, finally, I know I must work to peel away the skin of fear. What is there to fear after all? We are all human beings! Henry found his voice when he found his courage. Sing! Let the song be what it is. Say, YES! If someone doesn't take to it, they needn’t listen. My life, as depicted fractionally in the "Capricorn" posting, had been a secret, a shameful secret, hidden behind veils of personas I had worked like a thespian to master. Why? From what was I hiding in that darkness, hidden from light and fresh air? The truth I feared to face because of the lies I had been smothered in as a child by the Church, the education system, the so called "adult" world, humanity itself. I felt I couldn't measure up, had been as much as told so, over and over. And though I wasn't unaware of the truth of myself, the person I knew I was, and whom I shared with a very limited number friends - like two - I knew the "adult" world would never accept me as I truly was, and yet, no matter where I turned, I was living there, on Main Street, Sacramento, California, USA! I couldn't avoid it! What to do, as a child of fourteen, and then a young man of twenty-five, and then a forty year old "adult"? Hide! That was the easy way out. Avoid contact with THEM.

And yet there was this urging, something urging me on, urging me toward the light of day, or a night beneath the open, starry sky. Something would not allow me to capitulate entirely, something that I believed in, but couldn’t name. Henry, especially in “Capricorn”, became my companion, as did DH Lawrence, Durrell, and the great story tellers like Steinbeck and William Golding. And, of course, the music, Clifford, Miles, Coltrane. There was where I went to dream, and be quiet and to plot my eventual emergence into the light of day.

Well, time is a-passing, as they say, and death has lain out the imperative: It’s now or never, and never is not an option. This little skirmish with heart disease is like a boot in the ass. “Get out there on the field, son. It’s time to get into the game and show us what you’ve got. It's now or never.”

So I work on the “Suicide by Prayer” writing about the 50s, and when I finally get to the “Age of Aquarius” section, the 60s and 70s, those little blurbs in the “Capricorn” posting are but a sampling of what is to come. You may want to cover your ears, eyes, and mouth.

Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil.