I BEEN THINKING

I been thinking.

Like my old buddy and law school roommate Martin Smith would say: “It’s a good life, if you don’t weaken.” I reckon that’s about right.

After another decade of marriage, and then a year or so after the divorce from Amelia—--I am gradually, and resistingly, receding into the life of a single man living alone. Tonight I came home after being with my buddies at the Artist In Action meeting in Clearwater with all the ruckous from “Fourth Friday on Cleveland Street", and things were just where I had left them. It was quiet; so quiet that I could almost hear it. And I felt like somebody was here, in the other room, and I was not alone. That is probably so, but I kept expecting in some part of my mind to have her, or someone, call my name or say something and appear through the door.

So when one finally terminates a relationship that almost was, there is a vacuum, and not so much guilt for not having done enough, or having done too much, but there is a feeling that maybe I could have made the difference if I had just known how. After four trips down the aisle, I think I know how to handle that now, but do I? I was selfish every time. I have enough tech under my belt not to let it run out and dry up and die on the vine for lack of putting 1000% into it with the fertilizer that makes such grow and bloom.

I guess that some things are unworkable when the music just never harmonized enough to make both want to dance together regardless of how much they want to or try. Two good people on the edge of the abyss of lonliness—wanting more--. We are no longer “us” except as friends, and good friends. Damn. Oh well, it’s done now, and it just hit me as I came home tonight that it is a done deal, and there is no looking or going back.

I have been working with a lady named Ingrid who is helping me with ethics, finding my purpose in life. Mr. Hubbard says that one knows one’s purpose in life by the time he is two years old. I had forgotten mine.

I began to look, and after going down a bunch of dead ends, saw(in my mind) a painting I did while I was in college. I took up oil painting—never took any lessons—just played with it and should have never gone to law school but should have pursued art for I was good and could have made a great and fulfilling career painting. Instead I had to go to law school for that was the thing and was commercially feasible—so I was told---and that was true---I was damn good, but always unhappy.

As I meandered trying to find that concept, that thought, that bright spot in the far corner of my past that was covered by so much debris, I suddenly turned a mental corner and there it was. It was a painting of two old men, Mexicans I guess, sitting against a dark umber wall, with hats down over eyes as in siesta, with guitar by one, and the light was just right. It was mostly black and umbers and whites. Boom, I realized what a major thing I had done when I painted it---it was perfect---. I had let myself go while painting it with no worry of the outcome, and something happened. She asked me about it, what was special about it, and it hit me!!! I had put myself into it!

This is a thing that I had abandoned on my way down that winding trail to here and now. I had failed to put me into what I was doing, and had become random, bored, just playing, not serious, not real, having spent forty three years as a lawyer doing something off my purpose line, and had never had fulfillment in achievement, regardless of how much money I had made or cases I had won. I remember settling the biggest case ever, quite a few million dollars with a fee of more than a million. My staff was ecstatic. I was bored. It was kind of "so what"? It was more money than I had ever dreamed of having. I had never put myself into it or whatever I was doing. I had left behind the thing I loved most—painting—like abandoning my one true love to marry a rich widow I didn’t really care for that much.

So now, I will put myself fully into anything and everything I do without reservation. If I am headed through the door, I am going through that door. Like Amanda Ambrose once said in a song, “If you don’t like me walking on you, well get up offa the floor.”

The discovery of this within me came at the right time. I can devote my time to production. I am co-writing a manual with the genius and most remarkable man I know, Patrick Valtin, and that is going to contain “me” for I will put me into it—and it will be amazing.

It has been a long time since I have written a personal blog, and coming home to this empty house required that I document this moment in time for things will not be always so desolate, unless I want it. It is damn fine to be in charge again. It is not so lonely with me here as my best friend.