MOVING IN STEREO

I'M FINDING IT HARDER TO BE A GENTLEMAN

"Well I'm finding it harder

to be a gentleman everyday

all the manners that I have been taught

have slowly died away

but if I held the door open for you

it won't make your day"

"I'm Finding It Harder To Be A Gentleman"

White Stripes

So I'm skipping a little ahead. College done. Marriage. Marriage done. No stories from that period because, really, there are no memories. It was like it never happened. It would be a bad dream if it weren't for the missing time. It was a period in my life when I had lost everything, everything that people my own age, late twenty-somethings, were working so hard to get. In a bid of sympathy, my mother made a point to say how she had read the two things that created or led to most suicides: the loss of a job or a marriage. I was supposed to be proud or take pride in the fact that I had not hooked a garden hose to the tailpipe of my car and gone to sleep the permanent way. I was not proud of that fact. Suicide never occurred to me; it never once crossed my mind. No, that would come much later as I became more familiar with the mundane corporate world and who the Hell conducted that warped study anyway? Jonathan Edwards? Where is the conclusive proof of what caused someone to blow their brains out, bleed to death in a tub of water, or leap from a highway overpass without talking to people who perpetrated these self-inflicted atrocities? Keep in mind as you look your fellow man in the eye that you or anyone else really know what is going on inside someone's head. If you did, you would be mortified.

Perhaps my stubbornness to live came as some sort of sick sadistic love for my emotional pain. Life hurt intensely at that time, but at the same time, I could feel the pain shaping me, restructuring my DNA, slowly changing me into something else, someone else, the person I always was inside or longed to be. The thrill of that outcome far outweighed any chance that there was some eternal spring or afterlife by which I could perhaps seek salvation. (I have since learned that taking one's own life is unforgivable and garners you nothing more than an express ticket to Hell without passing GO and collecting your two hundred dollars. I have added a touch of Hinduism, astrology, Buddhism, and Hermetic geometry to my religious beliefs just to cover all my bases.

There is a very old proverbial saying that I have found in both the Old Testament and in the Upanishads. It goes something like, 'When you come to the chasm...leap. It is not nearly as wide as it seems.' I always felt that was a goading expression, like your school-kid friends giving you a double dare. As I stand on the opposite side of a chasm looking back, I can clearly see that it was not that far after all. That first step, though, it's a doozie.

So what was it about marriage and stability and working a steady job that I hated? Still not quite sure to this day, but it seems like all of it at times. Often with marriage comes a slow, quiet dysfunction. It is not intrusive at first, and that is its beauty. I'm not sure about the world as a whole, but it seems that marriage, like so many other things, is completely misunderstood in my small corner. The idea of happiness seems to fall by the wayside in lieu of family and possessions, and security. In some twisted way, all of that burden is supposed to make you complete, fulfilled, a fat-happy, numbed, but a semi-productive member of society. If this seems as odd to you as walking naked on the moon, I am in good company. If not, then perhaps you should read something else. This is not just a self-examination but an examination of many things you will find challenging, even threatening at points. There are so many other things to read that you might enjoy.