Seventh Chakra: Sketchpad

XD

I can't help but laugh.

Or cry.

Opposite sides of the same coin, aren't they?

Last year I got a fortune cookie fortune: "A good laugh and a good cry both clear the mind."

Amen to that.


2008. 2 and 8, the numbers of relationships and godhead, respectfully. 2 + 8 = a perfect 10. Or you can revert it back to a 1, the very beginning. 10 - 7 chakras = 3, the magic number. 2 is also the cube root of 8, bringing up another 3. 8 - 2 = 6, the number of foresight. 8 / 2 = 4, the number of love. And 8 x 2 = 16; subtract the 1 from the 6 and get the experimental 5, or add them and it leads us back to the divine 7.
If you look hard enough, you can find that everything connects to everything.


I surrendered.
I submitted.
The whole year.
Everything I knew was a riddle which answered itself.
So I let it be.
I stopped trying.
I dropped everything.
Writing, reading, acting, loving, working, doing, meditating, caring, voting.
You name it.
I didn't do it.
A leaf on the wind, I was.
God created the Earth in six days
And rested on the Seventh,
Right?
This year was my Sunday, 52 weeks of holiday.
Ooh, I was full of myself this year.
So monarch-like.
I found an archetype I fit quite well:
I am the Absent Companion, I am The One Who Got Away
I am Something You Can Never Have
I enjoyed my own company.
More than the company of others.
And I pissed everyone off.
I didn't talk.
I never responded.
I spoke bitterly about them.
And I wrecked rooms.
To the last teacup.
And sometimes, I really meant it.
You can't completely blame me.
You helped me do it.
All your praise, your love, your attention, your returned visits and multiple texts, your long periods of silence, your thinly-veiled coded messages, your showy displays of aggression, your imitation of me, your deliberate absence, your Google searches, your obvious lies.
Your letting me get away with all this shit.
It's like Heisenberg.
Except just a simple thought in my direction altered my power.
If anything went wrong this year,
You're vested in for at least half.
Don't forget that.

Last year I had one night which made my whole entire year. The Girl, the one I divorced, she met someone else throughout all this, became engaged, and got married. Had been trying for a while to regain contact, drop the hatchet, and just be her friend again. Across The Universe allowed for that. The movie is totally her, and we set up an evening to see it together. To be there in that theater, watching this ultracool film, eating a box of Pocky, sitting next to the person who sent me on this 7-year road, not an adversary but an equal, well, my Third and Fourth chakras were twinkling that night. This year, 'twas all Hallowe'en. After years of trying and failing, I finally hit a live screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. A dozen friends from work and wherever tore up the Music Box Theater with hundreds of others, toilet paper streaming everywhere, screaming "Asshole!" and "Slut!" a million times, paper plates whizzing by your ears, a mostly-all-female cast re-enacting everything on stage, and I kissed my virginity away and got the certificate to prove it.
If you haven't ever, do. 33 years of tradition put into this, and the story of your night will make jaws hit the floor.

You all now know about Melissa. The Deaf Girl. Such a supernova. Yesterday she was here, now, who knows? And I was the one who let go. Why? Why do I let such an amazing person slip through my fingers? Was it the story she told me? Not at all. Is it the fact that I'm a complete idiot? I won't deny that.
Then what? What is your eminent reason, Kevin?
Here's an epilogue for you.
We hung out one more time after she told me her story. She was cute, plain and demure, a green dress and comfortable shoes. I was grungy and unkempt. We spent the evening playing card games: Go Fish, Crazy Eights. Two grown adults caught up in children's games, getting stuck in simple gambits, knowing each other's complete hand. It was so ludicrous we couldn't stop laughing. She said she wanted to keep hanging out like this. That she wanted me to be her friend, that friends last longer. And those words hit like a landmine. I fell in love with her. Right from the start. And I bit my tongue for months trying to get to know her first. And for all that, the best I can hope to achieve is to be her friend. Hell no. It's a trap. It's not enough for me. I'd rather she hated me than I stall out at being a friend.
Hence, the stories I wrote.
Which I know she's read.
Multiple times.
And I know she's nearing completion of her second book of poetry.
And that she's going to Hawaii next year
As an Eco-Tour guide
On a cruise composed primarily of Deaf staff and vacationers.
Any way you slice that...
Still the coolest thing on two legs.

Gotta finish up the story about Tchotchke. Although there's not much left to say. Last time she directly communicated with me was an e-mail from early May last year, where she promised to send an update but never followed up. She did do well, however, to ignore my attempts to say hi. Then there was the errant text message on New Year's Day this year that might've been her, but also might've been some random 773 number. And then, nothing. Except, maybe, the occasional second-hand rumor. Word on the street is, she's gone back to church and met a new guy with a familiar moniker, gotten engaged, and, according to a recent Mary Schmich article in the Chicago Tribune, just recently tied the knot. All in less time than our whole relationship together.
Got a hell of a track record, don't I?
Ladies, take note: Dating me will only greatly improve your life in the aftermath of our break-up.
Congratulations, Tchotchke. Best of luck.
Have you been pooping?

I was loudly celibate this year. Perhaps too much so. Nothing was happening no matter how hard I tried, so I gave in to it. Makes everything pretty easy, I'll tell you. When I go to a party, I know exactly how the evening will end up. Less pressure, less worry, I can just sit back and be myself. Sure, there's frustration, but that's why I write. And smoke up so often. Problem is, it gets to be too easy. Just when you think no one's interested, people start slamming you over the head with signals. But, since I'm not on the market, I miss every offer. And the confusion between me and everyone reached epic proportions. In hindsight, I tossed aside gorgeous women from all walks of life, and more than a handful of men. And, honestly, I'm the worst person at reading sexual signals. I tried to explain it to an acquaintance of mine thusly: Imagine horniness as a starving predator stalking some meek, innocent prey. The prey is cornered, helpless, and the predator slashes with its claw, rendering the prey stunned but alive, an easy target. Staring at the trembling prey, drool pouring from its mouth, the predator suddenly finds itself motionless, paralyzed. A quandry hits its head: Do I feed on the prey and satisfy my desire, or do I nurse this poor creature, whom I hurt, back to health? Both of them forever standing there, never moving, neither one able to make a decision either way.
And I lasted two years thinking like this.
Sort of.
Not quite.
One brief pass at dinner Monday night, a grand mal epiphany on Election Day, and I'm afraid I'm not as innocent as I loudly proclaimed.

Children of a Lesser God was the pinnacle of my acting career to date. If you didn't see it, it's really a shame. Rarely was I off-stage, and since I was the lead and the main translator for the audience, I had to memorize both my lines and the lead actress' lines, which is easily a good 3/4 of the script. In two languages. A DVD of the show exists somewhere, but I haven't seen it. In fact, I'm one of the few people involved with the production who never saw my performance. I have no personal basis on how my performance was, except for how I was feeling the time of the show. The rehearsal almost literally tore me apart. Working full-time and exploring the depths of a character whose interactions with the Deaf are so antiquated it makes my brain hurt, the whole preparation process ate at me for the way I behave with my brothers. I really began to hate myself hard-core. And the cast knew it. I couldn't hide in that theater. Because it was my second show there that season, and because I had worked with many of the Deaf actors before, I felt the whole room change as soon as I walked into it. If I was light and bouncy, everyone could have a good time. If I was tired and bitchy, no one would be able to relax. After that I was called back in by Chicago Overcoat to shoot some 2nd unit scenes. Nothing special, dressed up as Policeman #3, but I got to drive a cop car in a couple scenes. Talked my way into a chorus role in The Full Monty at the same Oak Park theater, but with Jennifer and her family coming back home from Texas, I opted out to play uncle and godfather. Nothing else was lined up, and I was surrendering to the whim of whatever, so I pretty much remain retired from show business. No performances, no auditions, no desire. In search of something new for myself this summer, I discovered a guitar in the basement of our condo. Brian had bought one years ago to teach himself to play by vibration, and there it sat collecting dust. After getting hooked on Guitar Hero at a friend's house and no game console of my own to practice on, I asked him if I could tinker around on it. Nine years of violin and an ear for music got me up and running pretty quick, and with the help of some piano books from yesteryear, I learned a couple songs from REM's Automatic for the People. Played everywhere: Held impromptu concerts outside of work during my lunch break, or I'd just pull up for a couple hours on my day off. Got about a dozen chords down and a good handful of recognizable tunes. Didn't bring any of it to my Open Mic Night this past May, though. 'Twas all my writing, with a couple other featured performers, to a relatively empty room. Still, I had to know it could be done. Since then, it's all been writing. This chakra project, plus some spur-of-the-moment pieces scattered here and there. People may look at their favorite novel and think it must flow so easily out of the author, that the book practically writes itself. But, if you've ever written a paper for school you know how agonizing and time-consuming it can be to put out even a simple 5-page thesis. Every spare moment I'm not working or cleaning or sleeping, I have to devote to writing. Right now I'm at one of my weekend jobs writing this in-between handling customers. If I don't, nothing will come of this. And this thing I got coming out of me may be just the thing that saves me. So, for that alone, it takes precedent above all other forms of leisure time.

The biggest problem with Self-Actualization is that it's lonely at the top. Anything, everything you see before you has just given up its secrets and lays there like a road map, a nursery rhyme, a bowl of after-dinner mints. One step short of omnipotence, it is. Problem is, the view you have is strictly a singularity. To you it is crystal clear, but all others see is a pitch dark blackness, an enigma sucking all meaning into complete nothingness. It's easier to explain string theory than it is to tell people the truth of what's going on. And even when it's laid out so even a 4-year old can digest it, there's no guarantee anyone will believe it. This is the strange nexus where faith and belief intertwine. One must believe in one's self that what they know is right, and one must have faith that other people will accept and fall into line. Until then, the burden lies completely with one's self, sitting tight all solipsistic, hoping that illumination will finally spread out. And really, it's very funny the place you find yourself when that light hits you. Strange loop hierarchies, fractal patterns in the course of life, a snake eating its own tail, all of it converging into a superdense point and erupting in a flash of belly laughter. After changing careers from Psychology to Theater to Coffee to Fashion Retail and back, I find myself working two customer service jobs well below my education, working too damn hard and earning a fraction of previous salaries, the lion's share of which goes straight to bills and loans. People look at me and, if they don't know me, see a struggling student still wet behind the ears, and if they do know me, they shake their heads day after day wondering what the hell I'm doing still slinging coffee when they know I can do more. After years of working so hard to get out of the shadow of my parents' home and searching for my own voice, starting in a basement apartment in Iowa and going to my parent's basement, a Canadian hostel, a West End Vancouver tenement, a hip Chicago apartment, and a suburban golf course condo, I find myself back at the start. I recently moved to Evanston, a city which speaks to me whenever I went to visit. I live in a garden apartment oddly reminiscent of the basement of Buck and Nettie's in Goosetown, that unknown neighborhood in Iowa City, that basement where The Girl and I divorced so many years ago. It's bomb shelter-riffic, sorta like camping indoors all year round. But it all works. And it's all mine. And it's the perfect place to sit and plot out the next couple years of my life. Because, if there's one lesson I learned time and time again throughout this whole journey, it's how to rebuild myself into something stronger when the world around me has crumbled away.

But where to go from here... Seven is the number of chakras in the subtle body, located within the Being itself. Some texts speak of an eighth chakra hovering about a foot above the top of the crown, the first connection with the Spiritual Other, the godhead. Others speak of dividing the body into 12 or 16 chakras, each having specific vibrations of their own. Then there's the aforementioned mystical MerKaBa, which describes six chakras located around outside the body and can actually initiate out-of-body experiences or time travel. Does the story end here and now, or will year 8 and 9 bring upon necessary changes?


Well, we can't answer that now, can we? ;)


The seventh chakra is purple, regal, and sits at the crown of the head, that flat part at the back of your skull where the hair spirals out. It controls death, regeneration, release, transformation, self-actualization. Its energy can be controlled by Fluoride, Quartz, Diamond. Once the go pieces saturate the board, there can only be one outcome between Being and Every Other Being. The game is over, each being learning new things about themselves and the other. The only thing left to do is to shake hands in good sportsmanship and clean up. Being and Every Other Being will meet again, their lives marked by this initial encounter, and strategies will be different, communication will alter, emotions will flux, the self will reflect change, desire will wax and wane, and competition will start anew. In the meantime, enjoy the cleanup and aftermath. Have yourself a nice dinner, drink an expensive bottle of wine, share in some excellent stories, and take the rest of the week off. After all you've gone through, you deserve it. Celebrate the journey, learn your mistakes, and rest up. Because, sooner then you'll ever know, the game starts all over again. And no matter how much you think you know, you know nothing of what's next.

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Now playing: Pearl Jam - Life Wasted