"I should have called you, we're together, Alone" The Nifty Shrimp, "Back in Brooklyn"
Yesterday, my daughter found a bag of Jelly Belly candies. I was immediately enthused because I had just watched a Mike Rowe "Dirtiest Jobs" on them; you may know that Jelly Belly makes horrendously awful flavors and that an Asian man, just who you'd suspect, is architect of these gustatory wretches. So, the show was wonderful with vomit, poop, and dirty shoe flavors and my daughter and I had a good laugh at our good fortune to happen upon this modern day marvel bag of beans. The first thing we did was delightedly scurry to the couch and turn over the bag and look at all the flavors: Juicy Pear ended up being my favorite... it literally explodes with flavor. My daughter really liked a lot of the reds (Very Cherry, Red Apple), mixed with Pina Colada. She really liked Green Apple, too.
Where have I been? I feel like a changed man. The experience was extraordinary. I recalled my Mom's ex-husband really enjoying Jelly Belly's, and maybe it was because it was him, that I had an aversion to the experience myself, but there it was, for the taking. But even before today, I've eaten Jelly Belly's, but just kind of popping in my mouth. No cognitive satisfaction, other than sweet variety. But yesterday, with my daughter and the dawning of the revelation that these people had to make such a wonderful product, I reveled in the experience. It was joyful.
I started to consider that I am not sitting on a secret here. I am the one late to the party. This is not new. I've been here before. My brother, 2 years younger than me, lost his virginity at least 6 years before me. He had a relationship with a close friend of ours that I knew nothing about until way later. In college I worked in a lab in the early 2000s where one of the grad students put me onto all kinds of new music: Radiohead, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots. The Garden State movie... The Shins.
I work in data, and all the youngsters do SQL, I do spreadsheets.
But DO NOT let me discover for myself a better way! You shall immediately know about it, the brilliance that makes it brilliant, the luster and the sheen and the cutting edge of it. The absolute mastery and sheer illustriousness of a thing meant to be, finally come. To me.
Finally come, to me. I am now here. Welcome, you say. We've been waiting.
It's not that I'm late to everything. But I am late quite a lot. It's a pattern worth investigating. Was I a baby that watched everything and didn't start toddling and walking until I was absolutely sure I would not fall? I don't think so, but could be. Is my vision so narrow that I can't see beyond what I'm seeing. That could quite possibly be. Closer, I think, is that I have a propensity, almost a compulsion, to live very much within myself, to consider things for myself. That's good, you say. Ah, but the counterpoint to that is that I DO NOT benefit much from the experience of others. Maybe none of us do. But maybe riding the wave of our collectivism takes us much further than I am willing to admit. Maybe I am reluctant to see that I can get much further together than alone.
But I'm addicted to alone. It's so elegant, so simple, so strident, so American. One Man.
Yet, at 44, and the world racing ahead, I've got to consider my options. I could continue to go it alone, or maybe some revision is necessary. It's funny, because everything in my intellectual life points to togetherness as the way. Something I quote often: "If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together". But the going together seems beyond me.
It's not me only. I know this. We live now in a culture that goes together so long as you are going with me. We've lost, perhaps, some maturity. Then again, because of this propensity I have to live within myself, to not get out and ride the wave of us, that I could be missing it again. I could be suffering from nearsightedness, refusing to toddle and walk until I am sure I will not fall. But it's not that, I don't want to walk unless it is I who invented the motion; I who looked upon my two legs, relished in their fine construction, lifted one then another, wrote of it, and shared it for all the world to see in a blog, only for no one to see it, and should they have, to be retrieving their eyeballs from the back of their heads at the gee-goshness of it.
So, yeah, this go-it-aloneness. I really have to ditch it. It's something that has served me well, until now. I made a way as a solitary creature, as an n of 1, as a burst of possibility. But it's now come to the limits of its power. It's not persuading anyone. Maybe it never did; it was only me who was being persuaded about the mission I was on. The radical candor that must be displayed. The barrage of humanity that we ought to all exhibit for the sanctity of our selves and the flourishing of a people.
But when I finally write it down, I see how discordant what I say is from how I live. I'm a together person, I really believe that... but do I?
Finally, it comes to this. I'm setting upon a month of reflection with some pretty good company as guides: Toni Morrison, Joseph M. Marshall III, and Whosoever (I'll explain later). I've got to make good on Finding a Way That Works With You and Works With the World (a rule of life "I came up with" many moons ago). Except, I have to make one key distinction necessary: Find a Way That Works With ME and Works With the World. I've been good at leaving myself out of the change needed. But, maybe at last, a Johnny-come-lately will get to March 1st. Along with everyone else.
