A Hawk Walks Into a Bar and Becomes Infertile.

I was never the type of girl who dreamt of babies, white picket fences or a prince riding in on a white horse. I dreamt more of reckless abandon, traveling the world and being financially independent. And so, that was somewhat the life that I created for myself. 

Children, for the past decade, have been an enormous part of my life. God babies, nephews, friends’ children. I love them all intensely. Slowly, through the years a quiet biological clock began to tick here and there. It was often easily quieted with the next great adventure or love affair. And so it went. The ebb and flow.

And then I met my Him. We got pregnant early on in our relationship. Very early. I wasn’t elated. I was scared shitless. However, just as I began to settle into the idea of actually following through with perhaps being a mother, I miscarried. I didn’t wallow in sadness. I believed what was meant to be was meant to be. I ate D’Angelo’s on the way home from the hospital after my D&C. It was about a year or so later that I sort of grieved. In many ways I still do. Maybe not so much for ‘it’—more so of the chance, or even greater, my insolence surrounding ‘it’.

I had just turned 40. My Him and I were now married. Ever since the miscarriage my body hadn’t felt quite my own. Something shifted, something changed. We were never able to get pregnant again and I just knew something was ‘off’. So began the months of being a lab rat at a fertility clinic.

I won’t bore you with the details but it turned out that I was in early onset menopause and the likelihood of me ever conceiving hovered around the 1% mark. Not too promising. I was able to carry a child, just not conceive so they encouraged me to try egg donation. I have a stepdaughter who’s been in my life since she was a one-year-old. So, in essence I felt that I already had the egg donation covered. I already loved a soul that came to me through someone else. I guess selfishly, I wanted my own person. Doesn’t everyone, in one way or another?

Finding out that you are, for all intents and purposes, infertile is something that I find difficult to process or digest. In the beginning I, for the most part, walked up to strangers on the street shaking their hand yelling, “Hi, I can’t have kids.” I felt the need to sort of get that out of the way. I wore it as my scarlet letter. In the beginning, I think I cried every other minute, mid-sentence. And in between that I bounced into, “I am woman, hear me roar, no big thing chicken wing, I am mother to all….” Maniacal.

We always want what we can’t have. And now I wanted it more than ever. I didn’t want to be different. Why me? Crack whores could have children. Those who could not emotionally, physically or mentally support a child—but not me. What had I done to the Universe to deserve such a slight? The intensity of loss, as a woman, a human, was at times a weight that dragged my core. The child that I had lost became a statue, a saint, a beloved being of regret that symbolized my last chance, and I had blown it because I didn’t love it immediately. Because I had been afraid of all that ‘it’ had meant. There are things that I experienced emotionally that pen to paper will never adequately be able to articulate. The chaotic darkness of process that is never truly definable.

It’s been a year and a half now—Christ, longer. Due to logical requests, I no longer announce my infertility upon walking into a room. I think I’m past the worst of it now. I am slowly settling into acceptance. I still do silly things like take random pregnancy tests just because, and I pull out an ovulation test strip every once in a while just hoping for a surprise…but alas, there is never a surprise. Life is filled with so few surprises.

Lately I’ve been plagued with the question “Why am I here?” If I can’t have that, then what is it that I will leave as my legacy? What will be my epitaph? What is my purpose? What is my unconditional love? My work? My thing to mold and shape and be a foundation for? I get that I have many things and beings worthy of love in my life, but there is so much in me to give and it feels stifled by there not being enough places to give it.

I have had a blessed life—that’s for sure. I don’t deny or negate that. I will always bounce back. I will always be OK and I will always see the brighter side of the moon. However, I can’t help but feel this emptiness that is like a quiet smoky ember that burns ever so slightly in my chest, and if I breathe deep enough, it rumbles itself down to my belly where it smokes and wallows in its ashes.

In these moments, like now, like tonight, when I feel so isolated from my own life and terrified of what my future might not hold, all of those things that I tell myself that make life right escape me. And my throat gets tight and music streams around me and I want to smash things to tiny insignificant bits. But I won’t. And I don’t. And I keep it tight and blow slowly on the ember to keep the tiny red coal alive because I’ve been so used to carrying it with me now that I don’t really want it to go out because it, it is better than the alternative of nothing.

It’s not self-pitying or at least not meant to be. It’s just questioning. Perhaps I just wager a question to the Universe. You took this, so could I have something to replace it? Maybe I already do and I’m just not sure of it. Checkmate. Fucker.

I’ll end this torturous pointless ramble with one thing. I remember that day. When I knew something was wrong and the hawks came down and flew in circles around my courtyard. And I knew that it was done. You were gone. And I’m sorry I didn’t get to know you. But thanks for thinking for a bit I was worthy enough to be inside of. I won’t waver next time I meet you. Promise.

Thanks for listening.

Russian Roulette

"Open your eyes, look within.  Are you satisfied with the life you're living?" - Bob Marley

I stood in line tonight at the grocery.  As I idly scanned my Facebook feed from my phone while my groceries were being bagged, the elderly bagger named Louie nudged me and said, “We’ve been having a discussion tonight and I wanted to get your opinion on something.”  I looked up at him intently.  “Shoot.” I stated.  “If someone offered you a billion dollars to play Russian Roulette would you take it?  You’d only have a one in 6 chance of dying. 1 out of 6 bullets.”  Without hesitation I responded, “Not a chance in Hell Louie.  Not a chance in Hell.”  He winked. “Me either kid.  Me either.” And so we went on about our ritual.

For some reason, driving home the conversation stuck with me.  More so because I’m not sure if a few years ago I would’ve answered the question so quickly and with such unabashed confidence in knowing my retort.  A few years ago I was lucky to get through my days without wishing that this life would somehow just vaporize into thin air.  

Every step for many years felt as if I was running in cement.  Going nowhere fast and if something didn’t change I was going to be frozen there, a statue of myself ‘The Girl Who Couldn’t Get Away From Herself’ they would’ve called me.  Repeating the same patterns of behavior over and over again expecting different results.  Yes, the definition of insanity.  I was the poster girl.  I had everything externally, an insane career, piles of friends, jaunting around the world just because but on the inside…I was vacant.  A shadow.  Some sort of lost semblance of something that I was supposed to be but couldn’t find my way to. There had to be more.  I had to be more.  

And then one day, after something insignificant, out of nowhere I decided that I no longer needed to carry these weights.  I could be something different.  Something better.  As long as it took, I would pull myself out of this drowning of the self.  I would find light.  And so I did.

It wasn’t easy.  It required a concentrated effort to unravel myself from myself.  Every time I went to react, I chose to act instead.  I chose to consciously and purposely move instead of chaotically flounder.  What did I want the outcome to be was the penetrating thought with my every word, with my every movement.  If I wanted love, I had to project love.  If I wanted peace, I had to seek it.  If I wanted understanding, I had to understand.  If I wanted something to be beautiful, I had to first believe that I was, in whatever form.  If I wanted forgiveness, I had to forgive myself first and foremost.  

I dusted off the hope chest of myself and went through each shred of paper, photograph, poem, travel, lover, lesson and embraced them all….one by one.  I incorporated the pieces of me into a wholeness of the being that I was now.  I took the 14 year girl in me who had been stopped in her tracks with anguish and held her hand and let her know that she was ok.  I had this now and we were gonna be just fine.  I stared my 30 year old self in the face, hugged her really fucking hard and said, “You will get through this and be far greater than you could ever comprehend.”  And I let her rest.  

I decided to be a little bit more gentle with myself.  To drink less wine.  Absorb more air.  I decided to envision, visualize, believe.  I would whisper as I drove for miles in my car, in the middle of the night, “Wherever you are, the rest of my life, I love you, I’m grateful for you and I’m ready when you are…”  I allowed myself the ability to wait patiently, to flow with the current instead of fighting the tide.  I would get where I needed to go if I could just float.  Just be.

And slowly but surely, it came.  Because slowly but surely I was ready to see it, to embrace it.  To recognize it.

There are a thousand cliches of self help.  But in the end, it’s two words.  Help yourself.  Stop waiting for some lightening to crack from the sky of your being to jolt a change forward.  Be your own electricity.  Stop grunting and start being.  There is no elixir.  There is no magic moment. It’s one foot in front of the other, doing the next right thing.  Being the next right thing.  It’s about being a boomerang.  What you project out will be what comes back.  It’s about releasing yourself of instant gratification and having patience with the process. It’s about having a process.  

I still falter. I am human.  But I would so much rather this, the strangely beautifully confusing moments to be my story than the last moment being that I was stupid enough to lose out on the next chapter because I might be willing to play a stupid game of staring down the barrel of something I might not be able to come back from. 

This is beautiful.  This is life and this is enough.  I am enough.

Thanks for listening.

I Love You Still

Super honored to have a piece of my writing published via Elephant Journal xo

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/10/i-love-you-still/

A year ago....London calls, and home beckons...

-->

"And in the end, we were all just humans drunk, drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The dishwasher hums.  The washing machine churns.  It’s a Saturday night and I listen to him lull her to sleep.  A year ago this weekend I was in London.  I was leaving Noely, Tree and Simon at a train station as I took the journey to Hackney to end the last night, in the wee hours of the morn, in Johanna’s kitchen with her and Amanda.  Things have changed.  A lot.

A year ago at this time I was on an incredible spiritual journey.  I was deeply in therapy; I was working with a Shaman.  I had made a difficult conscious choice to change my life.  At whatever cost that came.  I had decided that I would be alone, for the rest of my life if that is what it all would mean, to find the only true love that I could ever really hold on to.  Myself.  A year ago today, I decided that although I was broken, I was not unfixable.  A year ago today, I decided to rewrite my story.

And so, surprisingly even to me, I did just that.  I took all of my broken bits, beautiful moments, tragedy and confusion and pieced myself together again, one stitch at a time.  Had I met him any sooner, I would’ve blindly walked passed him.  I wasn’t ready.  Not for him. Most certainly not for her.  I was only beginning to grasp the concept of letting go of all that which I could not control.  I was only beginning to grasp that this, all of this, was about so much more if I could only allow myself to see it.

To seek peace – at whatever cost seems like a strange concept really.  Shouldn’t it just be a natural state?  For many perhaps.  Not for me.  It had never been my way.  I always thought too much, felt too much, saw too much.  The majority of my life had been spent trying to save other people all of the while feeling completely selfish in doing what I wanted.  To clarify, some may have felt shorted by me, however I could never find a way to express that it was just that others needed me more.  Until I guess the moment arose that I realized perhaps I needed me more.

I dreamt of London last night and it wasn’t until I sat down to write tonight that I realized the timing.  A year ago today I was in the flurry of a soulful hurricane.  Myself, everyone around me igniting.  Everything I touched kept leading others and myself on a path.  In no grammatical eloquence I can only say it this way – it was the trippiest time of my fucking life.  The Universe was this orb following me.  Pushing me.  Putting me on airplanes, and in circumstances that tested everything about myself that I was supposed to learn and show others.  It was a release and absorption all at once.  The noise of it all was deafening.  

It would be a lie to say that I haven’t been distracted a bit over the past many months.  Of all of that.  The intensity.  The spirituality.  I have him now.  And her now, and my focus has shifted.  But it’s brought about challenge.  Another journey.  Another path. 

Tonight however I am consumed with that time.  The urge to remember that it is about so much more. I hold things within myself again, like I used to.  My back aches for no reason because I don’t know how to release.  I don’t know how to express love and confusion.  I don’t know how to show gratitude with all that I have but to acknowledge and embrace how far I have come.  I don’t know.  How do you hold on to who you have become and release the only thing you have ever known about yourself?  If that even makes sense.

Each night, when I go to sleep, and each morning when I wake, I feel peace.  For both I do with a boy who has decided to hop on my crazy train and embrace the fact that I talk to the Universe, drink too much wine, have more plans than we could ever have time for, buy way too much shit for his daughter than necessary, have long philosophical talks with most of my ex’s and dance randomly in my kitchen.  For that, I would trade nothing. 

However tonight, I wish he knew me a year ago.  Although he was to meet me only a couple short months later, I wish he knew me, as lights burnt out as I walked passed them, as I sought comfort in the stories of strangers, as all of this was unfolding, the finding of me so that I could finally know him. And maybe tonight, I miss me a bit, because she hides sometimes in the shadows of the now…but she is there, fire in her belly, passport in hand….ready…and perhaps the her of then is my clarity of now.  I don’t know.  I’m still learning.

A year ago tomorrow Amanda and I rode in a cab to Heathrow.  She said to me, “You’re a really beautiful person you know, I wish you believed it….” I cried and said, “I wish I did too.” Perhaps now, I believe it a bit more.  All of these things that I’ve done.  All of these things that I have seen.  They are a story within a story.  Perhaps even tonight is too and a decade from now it will be told in a different way, in a different version, with different people around.  But tonight, embodied by a year ago, I am wrapped in the blanked of my now and it is worthy of acknowledgment.

Thanks for listening.  

Vincent Square Chapter 5: Locked

“Hi,” I bellowed with overly perky cheer extending a shaking hand, “Willow”.  He steadied his gaze with mine.  Locked.  He had a mild look of amusement in his piercing painfully beautiful blue eyes.  “You’re American too!  Brilliant!  I’m Josiah.”  I feigned my best smile.  My stomach was pounding in nervous recognition having just grazed hands with my past.  I looked to his left and acknowledge his friend with round spectacles, long blonde hair and a quiet and calming demeanor.  “Hi ya! I’m Noah.” I liked him instantly.  He was much less intimidating and was content to let Josiah command the attention.  I looked down and noticed I was still clinging on to Josiah’s hand.  His amusement continued.  I quickly released it and motioned to the bartender for a pint and placed a cigarette to my lips, without hesitation, he had a lighter to the tip continuing to keep steady with my gaze.  I was completely exhausted already.

They played a few acoustic sets which gave me time to center myself and try to understand what was happening.  Since they were the focus of the pub I could stare unabashedly.  Josiah had a strong voice.  Earthy.  He was dominant on the stage however not in skill, just in presence.  Noah had a much more angelic, softer voice that was a steady compliment.  They fit together well in their reversely striped shirts.  Quite simply put, they were symbolic.  Darkness and light.  

In between sets they would sit with Dave and me and ask us hundreds of questions about America - a land in which they were completely fascinated by.  “No, the streets aren’t paved with gold…” and “No, money doesn’t really grow on trees...” I would respond. Most of their questions were humorous iterations of urban legends that they didn’t actually believe but needed solid confirmation on just in case.  All the while during these breaks and their performance, the gaze remained steady.  I couldn’t figure out what he was looking at, or for.  If this was how he broke women into submission - if it was supposed to render me completely helpless, it was working.  

They had grown up together in Derry – Northern Ireland.  Josiah came to London to find his fame in music, and Noah had come to London for University.  They were incredibly intelligent.  Both from large, loving families I found myself immediately immersed in wanting to know everything about their history.  They spoke openly about their affection and adoration of their parents and siblings.  I could see them get lost in being somewhere else and missing comforts that we all missed but for whatever they missed, they found comfort in one another and perhaps I would now find my comfort in them.  

When they were done playing the pub was closing.  My heart instantly ached at the thought of leaving until they let me know that we could close up the curtains to the pub and stay drinking with Jim – the pub manager who had taken a shining to me.  I made no effort to hide my excitement.  With everyone else gone, including Dave who we had to carry out and into a cab, the energy shifted.  Pleasantries gone, an air coveted the room of familiar energy.  Something of a time before and souls who had long since known one another.  

The conversation shifted to greater depth - to the things of youth that you try to discover.  To what moved our souls, what we would be, what broke us, what inspired us, to family, to history, to the now.  We lit cigarette after cigarette, drank pint after pint.  We raised our voices with passion and artistry.  With every word between us, every gaze and knowing nod everything of my before disappeared.  

When Jim finally waved us out of the pub, we were all stumbling and arm in arm we found our way to Josiah’s apartment in Vincent Square and continued our discovery.  We sat on the floor of his one room apartment and talked until the sun came up.  Hours and hours of catching up, telling stories and asking each other question after question.  For however lost I had felt for so many years of my life, in that moment, in that room, I had found home again.  A home that I traveled across an ocean to find.  I had found a soul mate, perhaps even two. 
  

When the tubes opened again the boys walked me to Victoria Station.  I was in love.  Josiah would wreck me, I knew that already.  Perhaps he had before as well but I could do nothing more than love him again.  Noah had captured my soul and we would be family from here on in.  I had silently decided this. Together Josiah would wreck each of us and together we would save one another from him.  Our beautiful wrecking ball.

“What a fucking brilliant night, eh?” Josiah exclaimed as he wrapped his arms around each of us.  “Epic” I responded.  “Epic,” Noah repeated.  “Well then, let’s get some sleep and do it again soon.” I turned to look at Josiah clinging to “soon”.  Was he going to call?  He had asked for my number.  I tried to steady myself.  Breathe Willow….Breathe. Maybe this one of those nights and this is all that there is and maybe that is ok.  Breathe.  Reading my mind, Josiah leaned over and whispered, “I’ll ring you later.”  Every molecule in my body tingled.  I hugged both of them and ran quickly down the stairs hoping that they couldn’t see the tears streaming down my cheek.  “We’ll see you after, eh…” I heard Noah yell down the stairs after me.  I flung my arm up in a backward wave and disappeared into the tunnel.

By the time I had reached 35 Sutherland I had dissected every minute of the past 12 hours of my life.  Every line on his face, every sound from his lips.  Every look and every song.  I thought of the broken glass at my feet and the words I had muttered.  I felt drunk and full and overwhelmed – more so, terrified that I would never again feel the way that I had felt in that moment.  I thought about the two of them, how different they were but how connected they seemed to be.  I thought about the often empathetic smile Noah would knowingly shoot my way, as if he knew something I didn’t.  

I tip toed in the house and peaked into Tegan’s room.  He was asleep with books scattered all around him.  I wanted to wake him up and tell him everything but there would be time later and I felt too stifled with emotion to speak so I floated to my tiny room on the third floor.  Peeling off my clothes I melted into an unconscious sleep.  A sleep I hadn’t slept in years.   Hours later in a day that had turned into night I was wakened by Tegan nudging my shoulder. 

“Hey, sleeping beauty…you have a phone call.”

Vincent Square Chapter 4: The Fire

"According to most writers, groups of souls tend to reincarnate again and again, working out their karma (debts owed to others and to the self, lessons to be learned) over the span of many lifetimes." - Many Lives, Many Masters - Brian Wiess, M.D.

In our lifetime there are a handful of moments that alter us, define a path that transitions the light of how we see our world.  Moments that covet our internal gauge and guide us into the next chapter.  If you are fortunate enough to have the cognitive ability to interpret your intuition you can be aware of such moments, feel them with every nerve ending and embrace that what is being placed in front of you is for a reason and regardless of the outcome, you should jump fully, and uninhibited into the fires of fate.  

I was standing right in the middle of one of these moments, broken glass at my feet, outside of my body, watching him walk towards me.  

I needed an escape.  A moment to catch my breath.  To compose myself before the fiery leap.  A moment to build strength, take in air and release the vibrations.  Unlocking my stare I looked around and to my right found a rest room.  I dashed quickly, leaving behind me the comforting sound of greetings and the back slapping of hugs between Dave and my future.

Standing in front of myself, hands shaking as I attempted to ground nerves by holding the edges of the sink I exhaled and let my soul calm.  There was no way to change anything – it had arrived, this moment. 

There was no dress to encase myself in for the debut.  There was nothing more than me, a skinny, pale girl with chocolate hair and almond eyes and jutting hip bones through my jeans drowning in my father’s old sweater.  I had no gifts to offer from the lifetimes that I had known him before only that I had found him again here. Would he remember me as I did him?

 As I stared back at myself a creeping whisper began to blanket itself over my entire being…a mild chant, over and over again…and what are we to learn from one another in this lifetime….And with all that I was I knew it to be true – whatever we didn’t get right before, we were destined to try again now.  With that, I released my hands from the ceramic, looked deeply once more into my eyes and then opened the door and dove boldly into the fire. 

Vincent Square: Chapter 3: The Princess Royal

-->

It was an Indian summer day in late September.  Tegan and I were done with classes and we were putzing around SoHo people watching.  We often didn’t say much.  We just were.  It was an unspoken understanding between us.  Each of us had spent most of our pennies getting ourselves into school and paying rent – gathering enough money to escape but having no money to do anything once we got there.  We hadn’t many other luxuries.  I shared Ramen with him when my friends would send them from home.  Otherwise, we didn’t eat much except the one baguette we would buy ourselves a week and slowly pick at to fill the ache - and I lived off of the cartons of cigarettes sent.  Camel straight, no filters.  3 packs a day.  When you can’t eat, you fill yourself with something, so that it was. 

I was leaning against a brick wall beside a café, exhaling a cigarette when a scrawny redheaded kid came up and said, “Are you American?”  I looked around.  Was he really talking to me?  I hadn’t been speaking so it couldn’t have been my accent that gave anything away.  I was sort of a Goth loving hippy and from what I knew of I melded into most environments and I sure of shit wasn’t toting an American flag in my pocket so I was mildly taken aback and more so annoyed.  This was my home and I had believed I fit in like a camelion. 

“Yah.” I responded bluntly while staring aimlessly away from him.  “Cool…you live here?  I’m Dave.”  “Yah.” I turned to look him in the eye.  Sizing him up.  He looked decent enough.  Kind eyes, big smile.  A tad dirty.  He wasn’t lost like Tegan and I.  He was traveling.  There was a difference.  “I’m Willow.”  I extended moving my cigarette to my left hand and handing him my right. “Sorry to interrupt – I just got here and I’m trying to connect with people.  I’m camping outside of the city.  Traveling for a year or so.  London is my first stop.  Heard you asking your friend for a light so grabbed on to the assumption that you were American.”  Oh.  Ok.  I felt better now…there’s a chance I was blending. 

We talked for a bit about the fact that he had just arrived from California and was planning to camp his way around Europe and that we had a pretty large house with plenty of space so if he needed a place to crash, or to shower, he was more than welcome.  We had quickly learned the art of sharing space.  When you have a backpack, it’s like a community.  You share beds, floors, food, and stories.  You randomly knock on doors in the middle of the night of an address given to you in a drunken moment in a hostel and they actually take you in.  And so, I gave Dave our phone number, completely comfortable that at one point or another he might show up on our doorstep asking for a couch or a crumb.

Tegan and I parted ways with our new friend and headed home. 

The next day was tough.  The girls were going to Amsterdam and planning to smuggle some goodies back via tampons and the boys were heading up to Scotland.  Tegan and I didn’t have any money to go away for a long weekend of debauchery so we waved goodbye to our friends and settled into our usual night of bong hits, stories of his life working in the butter factory and my dreams of writing the great American novel, when the phone rang.

“Ughhh….” I grunted walking up the two floors to the dining room where our one house phone existed.  “Hello.”  “Hi, can I speak with Willow please?”  “Speaking.” “Hey – it’s Dave, we met yesterday in SoHo.  Dirty camper guy…” I could actually hear his ease and smile from the other end of the phone.  “Hey man, what’s up?”  “I was just calling to see what you and your roommates were doing tonight?  I met some cool dudes today that are playing in a pub tonight.  Was wondering if you wanted to come?”  Ugh, I thought to myself.  This guy totally wants to get in my pants and he’s so not my type.   But I was bored as shit and well, what could it hurt?  “Mmmmm….hmmm….ok.  Sounds cool.  Where should we meet you?”  “Victoria Station.  Upstairs, outside, I’ll find you.  8:00?”  Ughhhh….misery…god I pray he doesn’t try to touch me.  “Cool man, we’ll see you there.” Emphasizing the ‘we’ using Tegan as my imaginary boyfriend decoy just in case.

“Teeeeg.  Get off your ass and shower.  We’re going out.  I HAVE PLANS.  ME!  PLANS!  Up up, shower shower.”  Blank eyes stare back at me.  I know this look.  “T.  I’m not going anywhere.  I’m good here.  I can’t even afford a pint.”  “Dude, I’ll buy you a pint, a got some cash in the mail today.  You can’t leave me with the redhead to myself.  I can’t bear rejecting him.  But we need to get out.  C’mon!!”  “Nope.”  I’ll be here when you get home but I’m not going.”

“Shit.” I respond as I storm up the stairs to try to find some non-flannel, emo, hippy ensemble suitable for a night of doing something more.

“Do I look ok?” I grumble as Tegan lay on my bed watching me get ready.  “You look like that chic from Popeye.  What’s her name?” “Uhm…Olive Oil or something…”  “Yah.  Her.  You look like her.” “She’s ugly.  Thanks.”  “No man, I meant long and like thin and shit.  You look cool.”  “I hate you.  Have another hit – it makes you incredibly literate, asshole.”  I bend down to kiss him on the cheek.  “You sure you won’t come?”  He doesn’t respond.  “Fine, you better be awake for the recap when I get back.  Love you butter boy.  Later.”  And there I went out.  My first big night in the city all on my lonesome. 

Dave was there, at the top of the stairs, smiling his innocent, life is good smile.  We walked a few blocks chatting about life as a roaming 20-something year old.  We were all in some way trying to live out our own version of Dharma Bums and could all on some level relate.

Eventually we ended up in front of the Princess Royal Pub.  “Here we are.  I think…” Dave muttered.  “Sweet” was my retort.  We ordered pints – and sat down and suddenly I became overwhelmed with the need to set things straight.  And so I went on a rant.  “Hey man, it’s great to meat you and it’s cool to have new friends but I have to just put this out there that if you think this is a ‘date’ it’s not a ‘date’ and there isn’t a chance in Hell that we’d ever hook up.  OK?  I have no interest and I just didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.  Sorry.  Just needed to make sure we were clear.”

Silence.

Dave erupts in laughter.  I shift uncomfortably.  What the fuck is so funny?

“Dude, I appreciate your honesty but I have no interest in you either.  My girlfriend is meeting me here next week and we’re doing this trip together.  I was just trying to make some friends while I was hanging out here until we started the trip.” 

“Oh.”

His mocking smile was annoying as shit but I couldn’t help but laugh as well.  I mean seriously – I just assumed he wanted me.  But I had barely said two words to him – why would he?  Eventually when I got over the weird ego bruise of the guy I totally wasn’t interested in not being interested in me, we began to have a blast together.  Turned out we had loads in common and I felt as if I had met one of the good people.  Those that are who they represent themselves to be.  Say what they mean.  Mean what they say, all that jazz. 

Eventually we got more rowdy, got locals involved, started doing shots, laughing with folks, playing music on the jukebox and toasting to random encounters in SoHo. Out of nowhere and in the midst of laughing I turned my head.  The door to the pub opened.  It was as simple as that.  A door opening.

All feeling left my being.  Light and energy shifted and moved and jolted between me and the doorway of the pub.  In the silence of a second my hand fell loose and the pint in my hand crashed to bits on the floor.  My stare never waivered.  A part of myself was walking through the door and the other part of me was standing still while glass shattered all around me.  It was nothing about him.  Not his piercing blue eyes and raven black hair.  It had nothing to do with the fact that he looked as if he didn’t belong among us – in truth; I never saw any of that.  All that I saw was a blinding light of a link to a soul that had been a part of my story for lifetimes and here, in this life I had waited 20 years to find him and now I had.  In London.  He was standing across the room from me and for all that I didn’t know about whom he was or why I was finding him now, I had missed him so much. 

“Dude, you ok?  What the Hell man, you trashed?” Dave mumbled in a drunken stupor.  My head heavy and lost but snapping back to reality…“That’s my soul mate” the only words I could mumble as I stared straight ahead – at him.  “Who…?” Dave’s voice trailed off while following my stare.  “No shit.”  He let out a laugh.  “That’s Josiah.  That’s the dude that I met today busking in the street.  And the other guy – Noah.  The guy behind him.  That’s them.  That’s why we are here.  Ha.” 

Indeed.  That is why I was there.  Finally.  My reason found me. 

Vincent Square Chapter 2: Sutherland Place

By the time we had landed in London we had already formed our own click and established our roommates.  There were 6 of us that had bonded over cigarettes, weed, beers and fear of the unknown.  Tegan was the lanky, tall, shy guy with a hint of internal angst hippie from the middle of nowhere, Jason was the sweet and stalky outdoorsy intellect from Maine and Joel was the snarky, grumpy Jew from NYC.  The other new female addition besides Maris and I was Liz, the unique, crass spirit from Colorado that twirled her hair and sucked her thumb.  I equated her behavior to an intense phallic tendency and left it at that.  

And so there we had it.  Our own little ‘Real World’ – 6 strangers set to live in a house, on a street, in London. 

Despite the odds of what we were told we found a place fairly quickly.  Of course it was over budget, two blocks away from the University and smack dab in the middle of Kensington but we didn’t care.  We even had an old crotchety landlord named Mr. Darcy which we considered to be an obvious sign that the house had to be ours.  It was a 3 story brownstone; it fit us all perfectly so we settled in.  35 Sutherland Place off of Westbourne Grove.  A street lined with brownstones, a church and pubs nearby.  Perfect.  

The first night in our new home we sat in our enormous living room with windows taller than each of us.  We had scored some hash at the local pub and told stories of our lives as we smoked and poured back pints.  For what was so new and strange we all seemed to comfortably mold into our new reality.  We talked about ‘rules’, and having family dinners every Sunday and of all of the places that we would travel while on our breaks.  Every moment was an oyster to be opened to find some new and beautiful possible path.  

From the get go it was pretty clear what roles we would all play.  Maris was the social butterfly and had more friends and plans in the first 48 hours than many of us had for our entire tenure there however she made it easy for us to just tag along when we felt like it.  Liz was oddly reclusive and spent a lot of time having phone sex with her boyfriend back in Colorado.  Joel always seemed to be networking.  Jason spent a lot of time exploring the city and mapping out all that he wanted to see and experience.  Tegan and I spent a lot of time scraping the bowl of my bong trying to get high.  We were the poorest of the group so our options were always more limited.  We had an affinity towards each other given our financial predicament and often talked about books, poetry and shared our love of music.  I was fortunate enough to have my own bedroom on the third floor and the view from my window was roof and chimney tops.  It was a peaceful hideaway for us to unlock the mysteries of the world. We were good friends.  He was like a little brother.

When I wasn’t in school I was meandering around Kensington Park, or sitting in the Pub writing in my journal, writing letters, bantering with new found friends or calling home and filling Delilah in on every detail of my not so interesting life.  I was melding and molding in.  Trying to avoid seeming like a tourist.  

My first three weeks in London I never saw the sun.  Not once.  Not the sun or the moon.  It was cloudy in the day and cloudy in the night and for all appearances was exactly how I had anticipated London to be.  But I missed my moon and I felt far away from everyone that I loved.  Regardless of how at home I had felt instantly upon arriving.  I was in transition.

But perhaps that’s what I need to explain.  London.

 

The moment my feet hit the ground in London I knew I was home.  I knew that I had spent lifetimes there before and that whatever and wherever this city would bring me, I would be home.  I was home.  Everything made sense without any effort at all.  However I was waiting for the soul bit.  As an intuitive I was driven to London to find something, to understand something that perhaps I had been transitioning lifetimes through to grasp and here was my chance and I was missing it hiding in my chimney top bedroom taking hits from a bong seeking out the meaning of life as opposed to the meaning of my reason for being there.  None of which I really knew.  I just knew at the time there was nowhere else that I was supposed to be.

We do these things…we follow senses and sources.  We wind up in countries and places with people and faces because we know not where else to be.  Some are just steps; some are columns….all of which is determined along the way.  And so I was.  There.  With a lesson and no teacher.  Floating in comfortable ambivalence with a love of a city, an air, energy and not understanding why it was I chose to be thousands of miles across from my life to find my life.  The irony was exhausting.  Something was supposed to be but it wasn’t - yet.

And then I met Dave.