wire

Just now I'm thinking back to the avant-garde French artists of the late 19th century, running off to the South Sea islands to escape the oppression of modern city life. But no matter where you go, there you are....

And here am I, having watched the film Man on Wire early this morning, and realizing that such tricks could never be accomplished in today's All-Seeing-Eye culture with surveillance cameras everywhere. The only things that can happen are things that are allowed to happen, things that are managed with a great deal of cooperation from many agencies. (Which brings into focus those planes that later flew into the towers, and how much cooperation they received from more than the rag-tag band of folks intent on their own mission, as well as the melting point of steel and.... but I digress.) How far are we from the world of Philip K. Dick's "Minority Report" when even bank robberies won't occur because surveillance will have reached its penultimate state?

My first wireless bill arrived from AT&T this morning, and while I expected it to be large because of the pro-rated service for 2/3 of a month added to the advanced monthly charge, I also got some unpleasant surprises and steeled myself for a long argument. Surprisingly, the woman on the other end, who must deal with irate callers all day long from her cell in Bangalore, was able to drop 40 dollars from the bill without batting an eye or talking to a supervisor. Just a few keystrokes and it was done. My original header for this post was "fighting with the phone company" -- but taking stock, I realized I had merely a vigorous tango with one individual, and she proved a willing partner. So much for tilting my lance at corporate giants.

After that small encouragement I took a few minutes to add up my current expenses for communicating with the world at large: for a land line, a cell phone, and broadband Internet service my total is $125 a month. Not subscribing to cable TV, and picking up my DVDs for free from the library, I suppose I should consider this outlay a good deal -- and it becomes more palatable when I realize that it constitutes only 5 percent of my modest net income. Still, it's weird to be dependent enough on such bodiless contact that I would fork over $125 a month for the privilege. I keep reminding myself that if I were in the South Sea islands today, I'd have to make the additional investment in a laptop. No matter where you go, there you are...

Wire-walker Philippe Petit, for all his living-in-the-moment following of artistic passions (a testament to the possibilities inherent in massive ego), is still a man who had to pursue his particular moment of freedom in the otherwise inaccessible point between those two towers. He was supported by friends whose emotions he found messy. Up there on the wire, he could be blissfully alone.

From Joni Mitchell's "Hejira":

You know it never has been easy
Whether you do or you do not resign
Whether you travel the breadth of extremities
Or stick to some straighter line
[...]
We're only particles of change I know, I know
Orbiting around the sun
But how can I have that point of view
When I'm always bound and tied to someone


I officiated a wedding last evening, two men who already tied the knot in CA but who wanted to stand before their friends in Portland. In attendance was another couple whose wedding I officiated a year-and-a-half earlier -- and who were crediting therapy (both singly and as a couple) for their continuance. Clearly their love for one another was still present, but so was the pain that was already tearing at them, and which they were honest enough to admit. As each expressed it in a different way, marriage was the testing ground for their growth as individuals: if they didn't have the stew pot of their conflicts, how much would either of them hope to gain on their own as human beings?

Is that why so many personally wounded people still want to make a go of it together in the world? This twosome wanted to know my track record for the couples I'd married: how many of them were still together, and how many had gone their separate ways? Certainly they knew that I'd have no way of knowing.... but I did mention that my own partner (who'd been there with me during their wedding and reception) was no longer a part of my life.

Referring to this couple as "they" in conversation with me is a misnomer. Each approached me separately at last night's reception for those heart-to-heart portions. Each was in a struggle, each wanted to succeed. Each was willing to confide in someone who for all intents and purposes was a stranger to them (except for my very particular job function), to camouflage their current discontent with the memory of that happy day, on the occasion of yet another happy day. They still watch the video of their wedding, to remind themselves of their efforts and their intent. And that fact reminds me of the importance of public commitment, as well as its evanescence. Sometimes I think I'm just a sham artist, when I see all the pain that ensues, when I recall my own, when I think about where I currently reside in my psyche. No matter where you go, there you are.

My moments of true connectedness, of understanding, of high-degree epiphanies, have always been solitary. And they have been about the nature of connection itself, about love as quite literally the force of creation, about the dance of intimacy and its creation of all this maya, this illusion, this loveliness we call reality. These unitive experiences are solitary ones that I and others have been given the grace of experiencing, and they lose a lot in translation when attempting to communicate them to those who haven't been there. The rest of life happens in the long, long interstices between these moments, and includes those attempts to regain paradise in the connections we make with the faulty equipment of our bodies and the wet electrical connections between our frontal cortexes and limbic systems.

Does true freedom only come when you are alone? Or is that also a chimera, an impulse between synapses, a suspension of disbelief? What really happens when we stop paying our bills?