When I Dream of Michelangelo

I can't see why
you wanna talk to me

"You seem to need a lot of unplugged time," she offered; a subtle ultimatum.

It was time, I guess, to take measure. As my twenty-somethings might say, to - well, check your junk. Or something close.

It reminded me of a woman calling down into the basement, to her long-estranged husband in his man-cave. Alone with the Bears, working on a paunch and faithfully growing his Blackhawk beard. With 400 channels of hi-def, wife-cancelling isolation - alone with his buzz, his beer and the W flag, deaf to the call from the top of the stairs.

Well, that wasn't me. Mine was a different sort of Walter Mitty existence. It was a love for escapism - of the word and of the ink, the spoken and the scrawled.

For I was the the writer and the dreamer, working on my blonde-grey stubble on some barrier island.

A barrier of sand, water, and Trumpian walls of isolation. Moody and reclusive. Alone with smoke and the rich and real smells of caffeine and the sea. Shuddering with the hangover of the most recent nightmare.

"Yeah, I've heard that," I said, acknowledging her discovery.

She added, "I need to be around other people; to be close. I'm not sure if this is going to work."

It was part challenge, part reflection. And I understand, I do.

I dream of Michelangelo
when I'm lying in my bed

If you know me, you might understand. That you wouldn't be kicked off the island; you wouldn't be asked to leave. You'd just give up.

And I wouldn't blame you... all the smoke and the isolation; the endless days of humid mornings and stormy afternoons. How could I expect you to understand the zen of a horizon filled with anvil-like thunderheads, building and darkening and shifting the barrier world?

She wanted to snuggle and plan and plan. To build a raft of plans and float to the mainland.

I wanted to read, to dream, to think. To meditate my way, Thoreau-like, among the sounds of pond-frogs and summer cicadas - well into the deep night.

I see God upon the ceiling
I see angels overhead

"I think you need something different than what I can give you," she said, slipping some sodium pentathol into the dialogue, as if she were adding it to my wine during a bathroom break.

"Look," I started, "Sometimes, I just want to be alone - in a place that's safe from all this pain I've known for the last four years. Alone, inside my head. A place that I control. I can't pretend that's not true."

And he seems so close
As he reaches out his hand
We are never quite as close
As we are led to understand

I wanted to tell her that her John was just a confusing string of emojis that only existed on a screen until it was deleted in frustration. That her John might be an oasis without water - an optical illusion of shimmering heat waves. I don't know.

But an answer needed now was an answer already there.

She already knew that.

Here, on the barrier island, there is a kind of existential loneliness; in the dark; in dreams, in shadows and under clouds.

Yet, I can hear my son's voice in my head, telling me about his day, telling me he loves me. My sister calling me, telling me her dog misses me. My daughter is texting me green hearts. My friends occasionally checking on me, having remembered our laughs, my redneck voice echoing in their heads.

And there are those, like her, who need to know if their John is real. Or simply ethereal, like the blowing sand and swirling smoke and warm wind; an illusory oasis, with the promise of drink and water and solace.

Wondering if their thirst, also ethereal, can be quenched there - on the barrier island. Or, if they should start looking for driftwood, other driftwood, to make their own raft.

And float away.

#unplugged time

On the Barrier Island