June 22, 2017
Once again, June is upon us. Another year has faded into the mists … eight of them since the day the Earth stood still … 96 months. Much has occurred in those 96 months; there have been milestones to celebrate; there have been losses to mourn. The one greatest loss overshadows them all and I return always to the undeniable fact of absence … absence that tears at the heart and paralyzes the intellect … because it is so unnecessary.
My thanks to Siren for the drawing lesson.
It is the absence of love … and its greatest modern protagonist, Michael Jackson, at least in his physical embodiment, for he is not absent in my life … nor, I would wager, in many of yours. His love is the one great constant that blesses me in every moment of my day … every day … always … and in all ways. So, while his absence is a wound that seeps and oozes with misery, his presence is the air I breathe, the path I walk, my religion, my wealth, my sanity, and my TRUTH. My eyes burn for the sight of him; my ears reach out for the sound of his voice; yet, he is here and my heart is full to overflowing with that knowledge. Contradictions.
As a child, June held such promise that I couldn’t wait for it to arrive. I so looked forward to the freedom of summer days when the school year was just a distant memory and the coming of fall too far in the future to waste my time worrying about.
I loved to swim … oh, how I loved to swim. Diving under the surface of the water where all was monotone silence to swim as far across the pool as my deeply held breath could carry me was a passion for my younger self; the coolness of the water on a hot summer day took my breath away and raised gooseflesh on my often sunburned skin. I used to have a recurring dream that I could breathe underwater and how I loved attempting to make that dream come true during my waking hours.
Now in the twilight of my life, June has become a month of contradictions and an emotional roller coaster … and I have never particularly liked roller coasters. In some ways, I celebrate the month for its joys, particularly when I am traveling to the Holy Land, my Mecca, in Glendale, California and the Santa Ynez Valley near Santa Barbara, where the very landscape breathes of the man who walked its sacred hills and valleys with reverence for the preciousness of all life and learned how to milk a cow on one of the farms that line Figueroa Mountain Road.
He was the King of Contradictions, through no intention of his own. His reverence for life was overshadowed, for a time, with monumental irreverence for his life. His sensitivity was met with cold-hearted insensitivity. His compassion and caring for the children of a society that just doesn’t care a fig if two children … or two thousand children … die today from hunger, preventable diseases, or domestic violence was met with disdain, disbelief and accusation. Contradictions.
His laughter, playfulness and curiosity can still be felt in the whisper of the wind as it rustles the leaves on the tree that shades the massive wooden gates and guardhouse of his monument to love, Neverland Valley Ranch. Even in absentia, he plays with the hair of those who congregate to celebrate his life and the uncountable gifts he left us. As the wind lifts my admittedly almost nonexistent hair from my forehead, I raise my face to the leaf-shaded blue of the sky, incandescent in its brilliance, and inhale deeply. It is the Beloved’s fingers massaging my temples and scalp … I sigh.
Some gather at his monument to love to socialize … to renew acquaintances … to meet with others from far distant lands who travel an accumulative million miles from the four corners of the earth to rest on the small patch of sod, always newly laid and manicured, lush and green, near the natural stone-lined rose garden that borders the road. Others come to renew their faith, revive their spirits, and commune with the essence of the man whose presence is still palpable in this most sacred of cathedrals raised to love since the multitude of Gothic spires was lifted heavenward in the mists of antiquity.
Most of the visitors to this basilica are reverential, their voices a low hum, easily ignored. Occasionally, one or two will become a bit more boisterous than absolutely necessary, however, they are usually easily tolerated and eventually become quieter through the example of the many others whose purpose is less about socializing and more about paying homage to the one who draws them all. During one of my pilgrimages to this Mecca, I witnessed a man who had come to aggrandize himself with raised voice and video camera in tow silenced by one who objected to his consumerism in this Holy of Holies. I can still see it … for I am there … and I laugh appreciatively at the memory with gratitude for having had the opportunity to bear witness.
June bears days when our hearts rejoice over victories while, in the next breath, they plummet to the very depths of despair and anguish over the injustice of the battle that should never have had to be fought to begin with.
We see the exhaustion … the soul weariness … in the faltering steps of our Beloved in the photographic evidence that remains to remind us; we see the dignity, the strength, the endurance, and the love … yes, even through the pain. We also see the inevitable, unstoppable, ever-escalating slide toward the day that most of us would give our lives to forget, but which is indelibly etched in our minds by the chisel of the sharpness and suddenness of the pain of this absence. Contradictions.
The contradictions are glaring. Perhaps, they are there to help us see the extreme opposites … and make a choice between them. Which do you choose? My choice has been made. I think, for me, the overall lesson of June, especially the last eight of them, must be to learn to be grateful for both the victories and the routs. Without the defeat that we all so mourn, could the milestones we have all achieved, individually and collectively, have occurred and have been appreciated in the same way? I don’t think so.
This June finds me reflecting on all the dear friends I have made through the love of this one man, all the unforgettable experiences I have had, all the beautiful places I have seen, all the projects I have pursued and brought to completion (not the least of which is this blog), and those yet to come. I am grateful for them all and I appreciate each and every one of you, my readers.
But most especially, I am grateful to my Beloved for always being who you are … and for teaching me to be who I am through an innumerable amount of contradictions.
I once read a story … I can’t remember where. It was about the violet hiding in the grass until along came a man wearing hard-soled shoes who, unaware, crushed the violet. Even crushed beyond recognition, the violet blessed the man for crushing her under his weight because it allowed her to release her fragrance and to bestow upon him her gift, that unmistakable scent that only crushing the violet could release. I am the violet under the Florsheims of the Beloved. Let mine be the sweet, unmistakable fragrance that blesses you forever, Beloved. It is my soul … and sole … purpose. It is my JOY. It is my TRUTH.
May all be safe in their travels in the “love bubble.”
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