Ripple in still water, when there is no pebble tossed, nor wind to blow.
Long ago, I went to Dead shows with the man who became my first husband, and danced. Always, I hoped to hear this song. It makes me happy, in that connected to music kind of way. I’m not sure if it’s a deep song, or the total opposite. It’s just Jerry, you know? I miss that dude as if we were really friends. I guess that’s what music does, and writing, and art. We want to make it all complicated, but what it comes down to is connection. It’s a hug across time and space, an extension of a hand for a friendly shake, or a smack on the back of the head. It’s a reminder that as alone as I sometimes pretend to be, I’m not. There are others.
I forget. I fall into the deep holes and think I’m the only one who ever had to climb my way back out. I sometimes want to paint the story of me on my face, so people can see, and know what I’ve been through. But there’s not enough paint, and that’s okay, because it’s not like I’d be the only one with face paint, we’d all be covered, and maybe that’s what tattoos are for. Maybe that’s the point, telling our stories on our bodies, in our music, words, anything, everything. Life is stories, and mine aren’t more special than yours. They also aren’t less special. That’s what art is, stories that remind us we’re connected.
I’ve wondered since I was just small why it is that most people can’t see that we’re all the same inside. Ask a shark who’s bitten us, we’re the same inside! This crazy existence connects us, and we’re born knowing that, getting it on some basic level, and then we spend most of our lives convincing ourselves that we were mistaken. And the world, the human world, just gets more and more whacked out every day with all these people trying so hard to forget that we are all alike inside. It’s so off-kilter now I don’t know how it stays in orbit.
People tell me to lighten up sometimes, when I tell them something isn’t funny when it’s not. Like rape jokes, race jokes, hate jokes, mean jokes, and stuff that separates, stuff that makes someone else smaller. And I tried for a long time, because like Amy in Gone Girl, I wanted to be Cool Girl. It meant so much to me to be Cool Girl, I was willing to step into someone else’s outline and try not to push it out of shape. It took a long time to see that it was a chalk outline, and I was dying inside. So I want you to know I’m not cool, and I’m okay with that. Those jokes suck, they’re a way to tell yourself that you’re better than, above it all. And you’re just not. Even if you own a thousand hotels, you’re not. You’re just one of us, living on this crazy spinning marble that somehow keeps making trips around this wild, hot, fierce star without burning up. And ever since I was little, I’ve known on the most basic level that we are so lucky to be here. Even at my lowest, I’m grateful for the trips around the sun.
I’m grateful, also, for the connections. The musicians and writers and poets and painters and thinkers are part of all of us. I wish I could live long enough to hear it all, see it all, read it all, write it all, and to just watch things unfold. So two lines from Ripple for you:
Reach out your hand if your cup be empty,
If your cup is full may it be again.
I wish you full cups of life, say a toast to all your neighbors on this planet, and suck that stuff down.
