also not at all nearby—so much so to where it was nearly all the way around the world; and it continued until she became the whole earth.
Children Can Be Cruel And Everyone’s A Child
There is an old man who is an artist—an artist who only works naked because he is sure clothes separate him from receiving inspiration and that clothes also separate him from his ability to express from inside of himself to outside of himself.
When he was twenty-five, he used to have a job and work full-time there, but he felt conflicted about who he was and what the right thing for him to do with his life was. Not knowing where to direct the force that he felt because not having yet discovered a way to get through to a place where he could express and create something on his own, he found himself working to make every project a masterpiece. In the office, he would focus intensely on small details that were not very important in the end result of the particular project. He knew it was good that he did a lot to do his job well, but all of these efforts made his job much harder than it should be and caused problems with his co-workers and bosses.
He often also had eccentric habits and peculiar idiosyncrasies that concerned others who had never spent time with someone like him before. At first, he didn’t notice how people perceived him. But, once he did start to notice, it caused discomfort within him that made him have trouble paying attention to his job. In a panic to get focused enough to get his work done so that he made sure he did his job well, defensive about how others felt about him, he began to try to do as much of his work that he could at home.
Some months after he had been mostly working at home, during the spring, after a long night of work where he wore himself down to complete exhaustion trying to perfect a project he was working on, he got undressed and took a shower. Getting out of the shower, he walked over to his bed and fell asleep naked on top of his blankets. He woke up the next morning and started working immediately, not noticing that he still had no clothes on.
Something happened when he worked naked that had never happened before. There was no conflict within him and with how he related to others within himself—and there was a rush that overflowed him with expressive force, limitless creativity. This was something wonderful and powerful. Even though he was at first scared, he moved through his fear and decided he could and should do something other than what he had been doing—knowing nakedness was the only way this could happen. He called and quit his job so that he could put all his energy into exploring this. For the first time he felt like an artist in a way that he understood to be true.
Somehow, soon everyone he knew found out that he no longer had a job and was spending nearly all his time by himself inside his home being naked. The reactions were largely not good. Family mostly stopped talking to him. He had almost no friends left after not a very long time. There was no history of similar behavior or ideas from his family or from those who had been around him.
Although he did take odd and temporary jobs when he needed to so that he could make just enough to get by, most of this man’s life was spent exploring what could be expressed that might mean something that in some degree was as meaningful to others as what he felt when naked alone. Most of this man’s life was spent thinking that he needed to be by himself and that that he could never meet someone who understood.
This man is now seventy-eight years old and lives in a basement, studio apartment in a section of a city near a university, living off of a small, monthly check and food donations from a organization that delivers to him twice a week. His life has been difficult and lonely, but with richly beautiful rewards within his dedication. He tries not to define his life as simply a sacrifice for his work, knowing it has been much more.
He still struggles with the consequences of the nakedness—the consequences with what he has done to be in an honest relationship with art. But he struggles less now than he used to: he recently realized that there were others like him; that while he doesn’t have to give up the significance of his solitude, he can grow past some parts of loneliness.
Travel Time
At three in the morning, there can be a satisfying stillness. By the bay, the boats and trains can be heard clearly going to and from. Sleep does not come to some, but one can become transported to destinations that are excited discoveries.
The last boat, that with its music passed, took everyone aboard to an island not far yet distant; the last train, with its frantic insistence, took everyone aboard home.
Wild, Western, Cowless, Cower Less Man
As I sat lone on the ragged beach, surrounded by sand and rock, upon a piece of driftwood about my own size, with my hat on my knee, my head in my hands so that my eyes were fixed on what was in that moment the highest point of tide, with a tilt of my head upward so the heat of the sun absorbed from the nape of my neck to the bald of the top of where my hair once was—after time had passed and the tide had risen—I saw a horse’s ear cut through the water. Soon, the rest of the horse followed. But it did so in a slow, gentle manner that I found more surprising than the fact of it being there—the comfortable softness of this reassuring me that it did not and I should not feel any fear—that there was no danger occupying our presence together.
I stood up and touched its side near its back. Then I touched its mane, petted up along its strong neck, over to its head and face, then moving my hand to under its jaw. I felt like after some silence the horse invited me to sit on its back, as if it wanted me to so that it could take me somewhere important. I climbed up, and the horse started to move: first a trot; then, a gallop; then it felt like flying and got quicker and quicker.
All my energy and focus had been pushed towards the direction of holding onto the horse and how fast the horse was going—so, during this limited period of focus—somehow—amazingly—I hadn’t noticed which way we were going. Finding the ability to look around me again, I was astonished as I realized we were moving atop awesomely powerful waves, the shore now behind us: I a lone man riding atop a wild horse, now approaching the frontier of the Western Sea.
It was more wild the more west we went, moving at still soaring speeds deeper into the sea’s frontier. Around me, I gave my attention to whatever it could absorb. There were towering trees made of moist, heavy air that lingered for lifetimes, with each year bringing a new ring of thick mist. There were tumbleweeds of a billion lost voices, tumbling words never spoken because never thought and felt. In the almost lazy light, a dark dusk with striking bolts highlighting the contours of soft-pulsing circulation—there were tones of colors I had never seen. There was no sound at all at first because I couldn’t recognize what it was—so in absence of anything else to understand it as I mistook it for silence—but soon it ripped into me with the growl of an ocean made of fighting wolves. I felt the presence of many animals there yet could never see one clearly, catching only glimpses of unknown parts of what I didn’t know.
We traveled further, and the intensity of it began to wear me down. I became so tired that I fell asleep. While sleeping, I dreamt about having a pet cow. The cow had been abused by whoever had it before—hungry, scared of people, even scared of cows, terrified of all others, so animals and things of every kind. I went to the cow and it was frightened, and I was also. It ran from me and then tried to knock me down as I went to it again. I knew that what happed to this cow was wrong, but I had no idea of what good was. I thought about what good could be, about what else was not good, and I could not come to a clear and direct statement of it. The cow finally came to me, and I helped heal its wounds and gave it food. Within the dream, I seemed to live together with it in a house built into a large grassy hillside for at least a decade.
I woke up and realized I had no cow and felt a profound loss. I thought of the interdependence of everyone, of how relationships show what relations really mean. I thought of how the cow could be independent now, and I discovered what that meant. But then, I realized the horse was moving fast again—faster than before—so fast that I could not tell where we
were until everything stopped and I noticed we were in my kitchen. The horse was eating from my container of oatmeal that I keep on the counter to make breakfast with every morning. I laughed and the horse was gone.
A month or so before this, I was changing my pants and had a thought that didn’t really relate to pants but did relate to changing. The thought was that most of my life I have felt partly hidden, sometimes purposefully, defensively; other times, like the greatest part of myself didn’t exist to others. It was hard to understand this. It was hard to know how to act. It was easy to dodge through fear having to act in a way that would change any of this for the better. I watched my life and others’ lives—panicked, helpless—unable to be part of what I saw in any good and meaningful way—cautious not to interfere—careful not to assert the greatest part of myself.
After what happened on the wild Western Sea and the within the dream of the cow, I changed. I stood as a man—knowing when to and when not to interfere. Asserting the greatest part of myself to fight for what is good, to keep fighting for what is wonderful, approaching the world and each situation I’m part
Secret Stories Page 9