stevesunusual…music and more

Delight in blindness.— “My thoughts,” said the wanderer to his shadow, “should show me where I stand; but they should not betray to me where I am going. I love my ignorance of the future and do not wish to perish of impatience and of tasting promised things ahead of time.” (Niet.)

It has been an unusual year or two, and as 2018 turned to 2019, when faced with a choice, I have decided to pare away, to strip down what I was doing to what I, in fact, wanted to do. My conservation work, although tedious in role at times, has been fulfilling and some camaraderie has arisen. Most else has been pretty much nil, but being close to my family and haunts is always satisfying. I rejuvenated a former working passion of mine and it might lead finally to a bit of recompense. If I were not so stubborn, I might have fled this place and find it happier by now, but I am always looking around here, trying to extract blood from a stone, whether it be a bird in a forest I’ve known my whole life, or finding a way of life here.

There is a tremendous beauty in this falling to nothingness, ignored by the hiring world, not pursuing unrequited friendships, rejuvenating my tasks and goals. Past great loves of mine have finally been let go, and the boxes storing those memories have dwindled to one. I sometimes feel a pang of regret in part of me. I wish what is now behind well. I cannot look back for long, for any longer.

And the past came to me these past couple of years in force. A college reunion in 2018 led to long conversations with people I’d respected then, but didn’t know well at all. On the other hand, a close friend or two from that time is no longer close. A couple of the very few cards I sent out this December to people from that time have gone unanswered.

And in 2019, high school took its turn, an even more obscure reunion for me, who had barely scratched my brain to think of that time in a decade or two. The nooks of the school were familiar again as we toured, and I found I had a single happy flash of recollection about almost everyone I met. It is benign, almost happy to meet people again who you barely knew then. The couple of formerly close friends I spent time with were fun to see as well. The others were small things: “I remember her, overhearing her commenting that she loved saxophone music as the girl behind me kept staring at and seemingly trying to steal my eyelashes.” “This woman wrote a different binomial equation in every yearbook she signed.” “This person lived so close to me, but being a block out of the range of where I ran around with my friends, I never got to know her.” Such happenstance smoothed over with age.

Someone I thought I might wish to meet again was at a concert. I had not imagined this context, and she with her husband, and it was pure revulsion after a moment of initial stun. In another context, maybe not revulsion, but it’s done and now revulsion is the default and so it will remain. I wash my hands of that wish.

I found someone recently who I had searched for off and on for years, ever since she’d said goodbye at the end of a school year way back then. No reply; could she forget me?. Or was it an odd juxtaposition for her, not worth it? I can let these things go now; I have tried, and the past is not much for our present⁠—it truly does end.

The world is indifferent, I know this, but experiencing it with such force in the world of standard human endeavor of these days⁠—finding work, finding love⁠—this indifference I had not quite experienced in the same way, with the same endurance, although I have found I can endure it pretty well. I refuse to refuse myself, to contort myself, to comport myself. And I am the better for it. After nothing most likely will come something.

And again, there is the delight in nothing, lost but still possibly on the verge of being found, but not relying on it, not trying to pave deliberate some way for it. Tonight, the delight of the epiphany is here with us now; my world has fallen to nothing; I am saved from strife. “Then the tempo of life slows down and becomes thick like honey—even to the point of long fermata, of the faith in long fermata.” (Niet.) The earlier holidays’ powdered-sugared Pandoro is now parti-colored Rosca de Reyes.

I imagine most would say I have held the fermata too long, and yes I think of my former band teachers. Say it has been too long a pause in my indecision, confusion, stubborn refusal, seeking self again. I can let this long, sweet pause go like I have much else. Now it is time for achievement, compromise to scrape together a living and maybe loving. I look at the pair of Stiphodon gobies that have the 29-gallon fish tank beside me all to themselves and think of my being alone, and of the old line of mine in my head: “I await one ere I seal my tomb.” It holds true, and though it was written with a wife in mind, it can also apply to paying work. But even now, these do not compare to the satisfaction in this nothing, knowing myself as I stand. Now it is time, with minimal compromise, and as the celebrated musical advised, to Follow Thru and fulfill what I am.

Nancy Carroll in Follow Thru ©1930, Paramount Pictures