I was asked to do what no one else will do. Because it was my true friend who asked, I will do.
It may be true, it may be not, that as his being travels bodiless through the bardo, what we say here and now could in some unmeasurable way give to his release from this world. It could be something needing exposure. When expressed it may muster a brightened wind, so he sails on, unhindered.
Theres a dragonfly beating against a window pane trying to escape into the light beyond. Imagine that words, like hands, could cup that winged fairy and carry it out of doors.
In asking me, I imagine he wanted something said of his relationship to the motorhead. He liked that moniker, the motorhead. He liked a lot of what I have been writing in the last few months and would sometimes feed me perspectives to consider so some of the writing was born of conversations we had together, sitting at the back of a Mexican cafe in the west end, rested in the comfy seats surrounded by a wall of chachkas, an absurd backdrop for our meanderings of mind and heart. As written before, in True Friends, he had departed the cult before I, ending his relationship with the motorhead by writing an email and letting the penismind know it was time to put a stop to the control agenda, the control through sexual liaisons. Any conversation we had about the motorhead was flushed and drained out with his oft repeated phrase: he is a fool yet to meet the consequences of his foolishness.
I know of something that greatly troubled him. That being the separation the motorhead created between people, as in The Magicians Wall. He saw a divide occurring even before the women talked, even before the extra blanket of secrecy was laid over the division.
It really troubled him. It went against the grain of his quadruple bypassed heart that only wished for love and truth between his brothers and his sisters, at least within his world. He really stretched himself to embrace everyone he loved as they spanned across the expanding divide. A ring-pass-not the motorhead made for his own security with no regard for the unfortunate effect on relations.
Loving his peeps meant more to my friend than any kind of allegiance. He cared for those he loved in insightful ways, whatever their alliances, and in spite of the divide. He lived down deep in that level of understanding. He had no second thoughts, no niggling doubts, no questions left about love.
His ways in expressing love were uniquely his own, never dictated by anything or anyone outside of himself. His flow of love was individualized and specific and directly honest. He knew the ways into people, different kinds of people. He knew the different ways to reach different people. In that fluidity he was always his own. In all the time Ive known him, he was only always himself.
Well, there was that Danish blonde who turned his tide aside for a bit, or else she unveiled a Silenus we hadnt known in him before. But/and/also he was always authentically his own. Unique. Loveable. And wise as Silenus, too.
He loved the connections he had with famous people. He went to school with a guy named Dyson who invented a vacuum cleaner. One time he shared his writing with Leonard Cohen who had nice things to say about it, along with one stern observation that he took to heart. He knew a lot of famous musicians and artists in London. His sister knows who Banksy is and for him, that was as good as knowing himself. He once shared very matter of factly how the people in the London scene really loved him up last time he visited. He came back from that trip, in many ways, deeply healed. He had connections all over the world, men he loved with all his heart, and he shared with them often and it always excited him to talk with them. His brothers. He was like a brother to me and to lose him and my blood brother within three days of each other has really rocked my world.
Going for a walk along a familiar path these days, I think to myself, I need to call him for a coffee date. It has been such an everyday thought that my mind hasnt acclimatized to the world without him. Those coffee dates were powerful. Real conversations that built up into fantastic heights of mystery. Like children, we sometimes fell backwards, looking upwards, laughing, and in awe of where we ended up.
Life in a cult is a blur most of the time so I cant recall when we first met. We had some similarities in our histories that cast a shadow on the golden inevitability narrative. We didnt mind. In secret, we enjoyed those parts of ourselves together, and over time, those shadows disappeared. Being seen, embraced, and going beyond any need to deny our dark places, we changed. His profound dedication to a love track and his movement on that track blew the shadows away. Soon enough it was clear not to indulge in those identities together anymore.
When his wife passed and he was still working, he moved into our loft, and lived with us until his next wife showed up. We loved listening to his stories about the rehabilitation hospital, his patients there, and his relationships with those folks. He made the hospital sound like one of the most entertaining places in the world. It seemed a perfect playground for him to work his love magic with people. And once he had told us all there was to tell of a day at work hed say, Life in a body, what a trip.
Theres an outline for a movie script in my laptop somewhere. The main character is a conglomerate of he and I, damned by the rainbow and truly in love with truth and the discoveries in the meaning of life. His voice comes ringing through that character saying, Reality is what you are being in it.
He was extremely sensitive, and as he grew older, even more so. It was a beautiful thing to see in a man, a beautiful aspect of him to remember. I will remember the way he conscientiously set about making right the things that troubled him. The ways he found to wake me up without directly shattering me from my delusions. He showed a lot of support for my writing and I imagine that is why he wanted me to share at his memorial, because there is a lot in the substack pages that he was aware of and that he felt needed to be said.
Out of everyone he knew and loved, each in his honest and singular way, there was one person he had no regard for and he rested in the knowledge that he was not moved, inside or out, by that person.
My true friend knew that being honest is of the highest value. He knew that dishonesty harms other people and ultimately harms the one who is being dishonest because a liar cannot trust the world nor have faith in others. In honoring my friend, I believe that is what he wanted to have said.
Now an honest man has left our world. I see him completed, arrived at a genuine truth, cupped inside sincere kindness, and deeply in love with what he loved.
By example, he as left me with exceptionally good advice. To be the love that spans any stretch of divisiveness and to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. My true friend, in his beloved ray of honesty, is free and away now, and so farewell: his blessing season this in thee!
one by one our pillars fall
stepping into
wilderness
beyond fair dreams we've woven
all transpire the
warp and weft of earth and heaven
Jessica this is stunning!