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Dear Souls,

My heart is swelling out of its cage and bursting its seams. THIS is true home. Not a physical place or geographical spot on a map, but rather, the state of mind and joyful ache that comes from freefalling into the unknown and explodes when lit on fire…

I am the prodigal son returning from a lengthy separation… from a careless squandering and wasting of precious time…. letting distractions keep me from life’s honored calling…

This is the place where solitude and heartache and tearful happiness live and breathe… this state of heart… is home…

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In the middle of this carnival freakshow is an island of restaurant food stalls. Once inside this net, it becomes its own dinner theater. The piranha barker vultures are all competing with each other to get passersby from the overflow of the freakshow…. There are over 100 stalls, all BBQ-ing their lamb and chicken kabobs, all have the same menu, all have their memorized rhymes and lines to rap and hypnotize any unsuspecting victim into their den…

At some point, it does work, or I have a breaking point and my resistance wears out and I cave in… So I ate. Meanwhile, or all the while, the perfect dinner music is seeping in and throbbing just outside the island of stalls in the ever-growing, steady steam train of tribal drums and lute and throat yodelers… as it fills any possible hope of quiet peace… a non-stop wall of constant rhythm and chanting and singing… Bon Appetit…

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MARRAKECH
It’s a sunset circus freak show…. as the daylight sneaks away, the town square plaza becomes a hornet’s nest of swarming mobs around drum circles and giant, hypnotic campfire chant-singalongs….. henna tattoo pushers (in full burka), monkey grinders, snake charmers, transvestite belly dancers, midget dinner violinists, dentists with jars and jars of teeth, 3-Card Monte game hustlers and scammers, lute and drum jammers, medicine men and storyteller preachers, the beggars and the cheats, the crippled and the contortionists, barkers and showmen and carnies, oh my…
a whirlwind of beauty in the carnival chaos…

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BREAKFAST AT HEATHROW
Being in the world presents an awkward crimp in my natural disposition of wanting/needing personal space and insulation from other people… the trespassers… however, it seems God has a cosmic sense of humor, and refuses to let me have my way… or rather, knows what is better for me… and continually kicks me out of my comfort zone into the oncoming traffic of others’ lives…

This morning, the airport was hopping…. trying to find any breakfast privacy was impossible… and I got thrown onto a shared table and suffered through… and of course, I had the most delightful conversations… first with a friendly, green-consumed eco-speaker, on his way to give a carbon-footprint-free speech in Dublin… we got to talk about high school teen heroes and various youth-dreams… lovely…

As I started to leave, an elderly man sat down, settled, and I offered a polite, obligatory welcome to “my” table… as I kept trying to leave, he unintentionally kept reeling me in with his starry-light eyes and hilarious life stories. He’s been a catholic Irish priest in the UK for over 50 years, and was finally taking a vacation home to see family in Belfast. I was glued to my seat for an extra hour as we talked and talked… his cheerful, holy sweetness would disguise his incoming f-bombs that laced such precious jokes and yarns (each time was a sucker punch surprise and I tried to keep a straight poker face to hide my shock and awe)…
I asked him if he ever had doubts about his career choice when he first started out… not his FAITH (as all humans inevitably do at some point in their life), but whether he ever considered a different job… he said, “Of course, but that happens to everyone, no matter what they choose to do.”

I am always in amazement at someone who has devoted their entire life to helping others in their suffering… how much weight and sorrow to carry… to feel that much empathy and to be able to give hope in the worst of times… how that would naturally wear your own heart out from exhaustion….

He shared many light stories from his life and we never once talked about God or the church… it was a long, long morning that ended in a flash… like any perfect breakfast… and I finally rushed off to the security check point to get myself frisked and felt up… like any perfect morning…

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LONDON
Flew in to London today… immediately jumped on the tube to kill the day and float around the middle of town… accidentally missed a stop and landed at Leicester Square… it turns out this was opening night for the big BFI London Film Festival, and I stumbled in to the crowds of cattle lining a red carpet entrance…. after several inquiries to different Christmas-eyed, pre-starstruck gawkers, it was clear nobody really knew what or IF anything was happening… George Clooney or Anthony Hopkins and other guesses were supposed to arrive soon…. but after 15 minutes, I was too wounded from boredom and couldn’t suffer any longer (even for the paparazzi-style photo op) and continued on my happy exploration….

It didn’t seem like I had strayed too far off the beaten path, but at one point, I noticed people were getting friendlier and their eyes were hungrier and I could feel I was getting more attractive by the lusty glances and slow motion, lip-syncing to some imaginary song… a real hero’s welcome!

A gentleman stepped out of the shadows and appeared to have a serious, urgent message for me… some important secret that only I was privileged to hear… he whispered in such a low tone that I couldn’t make out a single word.
I stepped in closer.

ME: “Pardon me, sir?”

GENTLEMAN: [Repeated something inaudible]

I stepped in still closer.

ME: “Sorry?”

GENTLEMAN (in a low, thick, South African accent): “Sexy gurlz?… Titties?… Sexy gurlz?… Any-ting you want…”

ME: “Me no want.” I slowly stepped off the curb, looking to the RIGHT… to find some food and light…

I kept wandering until the night ran out of steam, and made my way back to Heathrow in time for breakfast…

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Today is my favorite day of the year… the day after Labor Day weekend… after all the gorging families and hope-filled tanners and barking children… have gone away… back to work and school and inland living…

I can almost accept all the trash and garbage these ill-mannered cows leave behind on the beach, knowing they’ll at least take the noise pollution away with them.

It feels like the day after a war has ended… the day after the circus left town… the air is filled with pretty peace and sweet silence… and I can hear the waves again…

Get off my lawn.

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Sometimes I recognize the feeling of my face… from the inside looking out… making specific emotional expressions… when I laugh at certain jokes… or discover some awe inspiring vision of wonder… I can hear the tone in my voice or feel it in my face, making the same facial expression as my mother or father…. not seeing it in a mirror, but FEELING it…

Distinct moments and circumstances give birth to different reactions (obviously), but I have noticed there are consistent, specific occasions that produce “my mother’s face” or “my father’s face.” It is a strange, eerie sensation, but I know I will someday welcome them and even cling to them, maybe even TRY to feel them after my parents are gone.

For now, they just remind me that I am carrying a treasure inside of me. Someday, I think they will be close, personal friends of mine, waiting to join me in moments of happiness and despair and joy and sorrow… they’ll be unexpectedly triggered by unrelated events, sneak up on me like a tricky jokester, laid on me to produce those facial expressions that were somehow handed down to me, perhaps from generations and generations…

No one will know they’re getting a special glimpse of my mother, or my father… but I will know… and I’ll probably smile even more… which will probably be my mother’s or father’s smile…

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In my sleepy town, in the middle of another silent day, echoing from far away… I could hear random F-bombs dropping… bouncing from wall to wall of the alleyway… getting closer and closer… I assumed it must have been a drunken rage of a fight, or lovers’ spat, or someone in great pain…

Pretty soon, the same expletives were right outside my window, passing like an ambulance siren. I peeked out and saw a crazy, turrets guy leaning into the dumpster down the alley… just staring… he would reach in, pick up some garbage, shake it, and then call it inappropriate, graphic names… eventually, he stormed off down the alley, stopping at other random dumpsters to repeat the operation and finally faded away.

From that moment on, he kept appearing all around the neighborhood. Every time I saw him he was wearing the same uniform… brown jeans, white v-neck tshirt… and violently arguing with himself using loud hand gestures… it was annoying and freaking me out a little that I kept running into him, sometimes several times a day, at opposite ends of town… spooky, even, since he’s a walker (not a driver).

Apparently, he is well known to the merchants and townspeople as “Derrick who must not have taken his meds today.” After a friendly, charitable chat with Mr. Grocery Man, I learned that “Derrick who must not have taken his meds today”…

has…

a…

TWIN BROTHER!! who has the same affliction of the mind… and is also on (or off) the same meds!! – – – – – voila, mystery revealed!

Last night, I started out on my usual nightwalk. Without any thought, I grabbed a random pair of jeans and shirt in the dark out of the closet. As I reached for the front door to head out, I caught a glimpse of what I was wearing…
BROWN JEANS AND A V-NECK WHITE TSHIRT!

For a split second I had a 6th-sense panic thought about the movies “Shutter Island” and “Fight Club!!”
What if this whole time, all these sightings and conversations I had with merchants and people around town were really about ME… What if all this time, “I” was really, in fact, “Derrick who must not have taken his meds!”