Oh Captain, My Captain

I used to have utopian dreams of sitting in a dark café, air filled with thick white smoke whirling with the smell of coffee and cologne. Just a group of friends talking about life and what it means to be human. In our conversations we would discuss Voltaire, Jung, Nietzsche while reciting poetry by Longfellow. Our conversations would be filled with discussions on Thoreau and Bacon, a free exchange of ideas and passions, teaching and learning.

These discussions would be a foundation for a new wave of philosophy and we would be the builders. In our discussions we would weave the threads of a whole new way of thinking about life and the journals written from these conversations would be incorporated into conversations in generations to come. We would encourage and help each other in becoming the best that each of us could be. No one better, no one worse, all equal and valued as members of a chosen family. We would have a voice, united and individual.

Perhaps it is all the fault of DPS, one of my favorite films.

I have not found this utopian dream instead, I feel the loneliest I have felt in a very long time. In only a few day’s time I will celebrate the one year wedding anniversary with the man who has managed to do what no other human being has done, fulfilled my every want for a partner in life. Our love is stronger than it has ever been and grows stronger each day, yet even in our love of each other, I find myself not totally alone, but as close as one can get while still a part of a partnership.

There are no cafés, no Nietzsche or Bacon. There is life going on all around us, but for whatever reason, we are not invited. No calls or coffee, just us. But maybe that is just “what ol married folk do.”

They spread my grandmother’s ashes yesterday and no one in my family bothered to call me. This doesn’t really surprise me, they say it was accidental, but the total strangers who were to be there found out. I haven’t exactly been a member of that family for a very long time. There were only two people that I felt understood me, one is now dead, and the other, I guess never really got me at all.

This may all seem quite bleak and like the opening scene for a Bergman film, perhaps that is where I am in my life. Perhaps if I cannot find my café I can create it, here on the page. In a world full of ideas and hopes and dreams, the world that I have lived in most of my life, my world, where everybody knows my name.