Tuesday, September 05, 2006Passion is Anarchy. The closest I can come to describing it is that it was like I was dying and seeing my life pass before my eyes. Over the course of 30 hours I was visited by every aspect of my long strange trip thus far: my first boyfriend from college days (or, as he kept saying, not the first by the best), several cherished friends from high school, people who know me as a stage manager, as a writer. People from work. People whose kids have known my kids all their mutual lives. Women whom I do yoga with, women whom I cry with, women who teach me things. Men I've dated, men I'd like to date, men I couldn't date if I wanted to, men who are married and off limits for all of the above. I started off hoarse, so it's impossible to say I talked until I could no longer speak. That was a given. I tried to trade emotional intercourse for verbal, but probably ended up just sounding like I'd drunk an extra margarita (which was also true but not the reason for my giddy babbling.) The highlight was the burning. People asked me what she meant, this woman made of sticks. This woman we were going to torch. At first I gave the only honest answer I could think of at the time: We're collectively bummed we're not at Burning Man so we're doing it ourselves. We can be hip AND have plumbing, I said repeatedly. But then I came upon a better answer. This woman represents the death of the old life, the burning of the first fifty years, the opening up to a new period of rejuvenation. Like the field burners in Oregon, it's important to alchemize the soil periodically, destroy the chaff, make room for new growth. Not just by shoving it aside, or repacking the garage, but by actually destroying that which is no longer useful. If you've been reading my blogs, this fire thing has been creeping up a lot recently. It seems to be THE metaphor as I'm moving through the last few days of my first fifty years. It's not just time to move on. It's time to be reborn. And birth always involves labor, and pain, and some amount of messiness. So we gather around her, our talisman. Much discussion transpires about the proper type of accelerant to use to inflame our gal. Turns out a friend of mine from the opera company happens to have a tin of denatured alcohol in his car. He's been living on a boat and just bought it for his stove. Looks pass back and forth: no one has any better idea. So bring it on. He brings in the can and I am starting to really get nervous. I mean, this house is pretty important to me after all. I would hate to start off the next ten years looking at a smoking crater, having nothing but my own bright ideas to blame. It's the end of summer. My grass is not, well, as green as it really should be. This may be one of those things that ends up in the Darwin Awards. I turn to the Cub Scout Pack Master, Craig, who happens to be there. If anyone should know the safe handling of blowing things up, I reason, it should be him. He knows, I'm sure of it, what he's doing. But he insists on just saying things like "well, just pour it on and let's light it and see what happens." Not reassuring. But that's essentially what we end up doing. We pour the stuff on, dousing her head and shoulders and legs and base. Then we look at it some more. Then the guys decide that maybe she should have some more, so they douse some more on. It crosses my mind that they really, deep down inside, couldn't care less if my house goes up in smoke. I know they love me, but it's just way too much fun to keep dousing. So they douse. My first, I mean best, boyfriend's daughter comes up. She's quiet and about 10. She says that maybe we should saturate the ground around the bbq with water so if it falls over the grass won't catch on fire. I think that maybe she cares a bit more about me and my property (and probably her own well being) a bit more than blowing shit up. It restores my faith. Temporarily. Finally, they hand me a cigarette lighter, which I (thank God) trade in for a longer lighter. Not having the faintest idea what will happen, I reach out my hand towards the base and ever so slightly flick the switch. WHOOSH! The whole thing is up in flames. I am pushed back by the blast of heat and the whooshiness of it all. I'm in a scene from Backdraft, thrown backwards by the fire ball. Well, not really, but it is pretty dramatic and intense.  And beautiful. Primitive. Anarchistic. Frightening. Powerful. Beyond joy. We used to have a saying, back in Santa Cruz: "Passion is anarchy. Anarchy is bliss." And in those days all three were fairly easy to come by. Passion was in the air: passion for words and passion for the ocean and passion for the air we breathed and passion for each other. Anarchy was at once a terror and a release. We had no money. The future was unknown. The rules were maleable and the limits were still not fully tested. Anything could happen. Good or bad. And the bliss was in living in the moment. The bliss was in Sunday brunches and easy sex and the limitless future stretching out before us. The future no longer stretches out quite so indefinitely. The sex needs condoms and "the talk" and elaborate coordination between Day Timers. Passion has been tamped down by 50 years of keeping it together. The act of moving forward, one day at a time, for fifty years straight is exhausting in itself. The temptation to just sink down and give up... out of sheer boredom at the length of the long haul... is occasionally very high. And at the same time the finish line looms closer every day. If we're lucky we can see it far off, about 40 to 50 years down the line. If we're VERY lucky we're half way around the track. Some of us, tragically, can see it closer than others. But the fact of the matter is that we now see it; and in the passion is anarchy days, we didn't. Sunday morning, after the first night of the party, Jill and I did our yoga practice in the back yard. (It's a new style we've developed: called Dog Poop Yoga). At a precise moment, doing Tree Pose, the sun came through the leaves of my eucalpytus tree in front of me. The morning was fresh. The sun was benevolent. And I stood there, in perfect balance, and thought "This is the happiest I've ever been in my life." And I realized that was true. Not because this was a moment when nothing was going wrong, or because I was in love, or because I'd figured everything out. But just because it was a moment in which I could have that thought. And that thought made it so. This is the place of infinite possibility. This moment. Sometimes it takes nothing more than a deep breath. And sometimes you have to torch something to shake things back into line. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 7:52 PM  
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