The day my first book was published, I thought my life would change, that people would read my work and react glowingly, calling it creative and imaginative, even visionary. I imagined leasing a small office, employing a part-time publicist to schedule small book tours across the US where I could talk about the book, about writing, about how I meant this as a symbol, as a metaphor, as a link to another work, as a point of reference. And inevitably as people asked what’s next, I would just smile and say I have been waiting for this moment so long, there are a dozen in the oven and many more to mix up. And I pictured myself writing in a house in Queen Anne with a nice porch and a kitchen with a view, a place within walking distance of nice restaurants and a grocery store. In fact, none of this happened.
Once I wrote a song, and when my friends in a band were recording it, I listened in the sound room with the engineer. “This is a really good song,” the engineer said, “I have a friend at a radio station...” I figured this was a moment when everything would change, that from that moment on anything was possible. But nothing changed, and nothing came of the song, although I still really like the lines with the close rhymes:
Some people have skeletons, but all you have are ghosts
They come out haunting anytime someone gets close
When I was younger yet, I spent hours on the soccer field doing the same things over and over, believing repetition was the key, that the more I did something, the more natural it became. I had my own set of drills for an hour and a half session, which I completed like clockwork. I had a bag with 8 or 9 soccer balls, so I could take the same shot 9 times within 30 seconds to the same spot. I knew in my heart that if I worked hard enough, then I would get noticed, get invited to a national team camp and one day become part of the national team pool. I would play in the World Cup. It was only a matter of time. Simple as that. All in time.
It all seemed so simple, so clear, and yet the problem was never finding something you loved doing, but getting paid for it. That was a whole other thing. And the sad truth of the matter was I no longer held the illusion that what I wrote, what I did, that anything I created would amount to anything. In short, I had lost it like breath on a cold day, lost it in the summer heat, lost it like a shape unable to return to its original form, and though this had been happening for a while, turning 50 exacerbated the decline. And it is disappointing because I always figured I would be more accomplished than I am, that I would have something more to show. Maybe the real kicker is that when I was most under the spell of the illusion, I also was more depressed, less stable, and generally could not escape a melancholia lingering like too long of a winter. Although I am happier now, I can’t help but scratch at the very resigned desperation I tried so hard to avoid, that life of the masses, of broken dreams and dead-end streets with nary a streetlight lit. They have burnt out. The new LEDs might last longer, but they don’t burn as brightly. And I see them now, see them glow in the night when I step off the porch light into the madness, into the path where I cannot see but hear the rats scurrying around, the racoons prowling from atop storage sheds. It won’t take long before the sound of sirens fills the air, or a car speeds up the street like the high water is rising and the only escape is up, and up, and further away.
I miss the possibilities, belief in the impossible, the journeys no one in their right mind would have ever started if they knew how long it would take. Because that is the essence of the illusion. And without it, that is the end of hope.
Today, today…what to make of today? I’ll ride across the river to the other side. I’ll think more about this, delving deeper than before until I can find a way to trick myself again into thinking I have some magic left in this box. I always write, although less feverishly. Last year was a wash after my five-year five book run, but every day is new. I remind myself. The past is not the future. The definition of success cannot be culled from the headlines, from TikTok snippets, or from anyone that says they know. Success is hope.