John

Caveat:

As I had mentioned a few blog entries ago, I planned to tell the story of John. Then my friend emailed me asking “to hear more about John!” I began writing down all my memories, but when I got to the dream I wondered, what the heck was that dream? I knew I had written it down years ago, so the hunt was on to find it. That took 2 or 3 days, and when I found it I found much that I had written about John many years ago when my memory was fresh, which served as a reference with which to put my memories in proper order, and add much that I had forgotten.  I had written down whole conversations! Wow is me. Impressed with myself, am I! I left myself my own personal time machine to my own personal magical mystery tour.

I became possessed. I went on an archeological dig to find every single artifact of John that existed, pry out of my brain every single John memory. I have stayed up way too late for way too many nights, and my daughter chastised me for completely disappearing for a week. I have gone through old sketchbooks, handwritten journals and poems, electronic journals and poems (god am I old!!!), etc., and tried to figure out which poems I wrote for John and when. I have been drunk all week on this creation of my own personal John museum and archives.

While abducted by this project I found myself going off in tangents about the times, and finally decided to limit this to just the bare bones story line of John.  It was better without current events references anyway, as we were outside of time, and could have happened at any time or place. I have no idea if this is well written or interesting. Frankly, this is pure self-indulgence for which I apologize.

If you still want to go ahead and delve into “The Book of John” (my obsession clocks in at 13 pages long), you must know first and foremost that everything John was about, what oozed from him, the way he lived, his legacy, his mantra, was "you gotta live in the here and now."  I had no idea what he meant by that, but he forced me to live it.  Nobody around him was getting the message, least of all me.  But he was everyone's messiah.  Also, be aware that we were only 18.  So young! 

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

Note: Most of this is taken directly from old journals, with parentheticals, as necessary, and with poems thrown in.

Oakland, CA, 1968

The phone rings. "Hi, this is John."  Pause while I try to figure out who he is. Was this the guy Lary meant when he was trying to get me to understand something and was having difficulty and finally stopped trying and said, "you have to meet John?" I had asked him if that was the guy I had seen taking pictures of him, and he said yes. Lary had been playing jazz piano in the college dorm lounge one afternoon and a boy was taking pictures of him from all angles, climbing on top of the piano and crawling under the piano bench as he played (nothing distracted Lary). I had seen the same guy with a camera around Lake Merritt. I was inside some bushes on campus drawing one time, and he had come and sat down next to me like he had known me all his life, and just started talking. The same guy was at Lary's the day before. People kept coming over. There had been a lot of dope going around which I refused. The reason I refused it was not because I didn't want to smoke it, but because there was never as much as I wanted at "pot parties," which this was fast becoming. I never liked being around a lot of people and parties, anyway. I was uncomfortable and wanted to go home, but Lary wasn’t willing to drive me home yet. I found a far corner out of major traffic to wait it out. This guy appeared offering me a joint. I was about to say, "no thank you," when he smiled and said, "it's ok, I've got plenty more." I stared at him and asked, "how did you know that's what I was thinking?" He just smiled, left the joint with me and was off again, appearing with a new joint whenever necessary. I was pretty sure that was John. 

I asked him how he got my number and he said, "Oh, Lary had it somewhere, how'd you get it?" At that moment he was suddenly in the room with me, laughing with me, and I fell truly madly deeply in love. Boys put me into autistic episodes, so I couldn't talk to them. You just had to plug into me like those flying dragons in "Avatar," which is pretty much what that moment felt like. ***CONNECTION.*** He asked me, "Do you have an address?" and, "Is it ok if I use it?" He was outside honking from an old, blue VW within the hour (this would be at the same house I was living in when I wrote my first blog post about People’s Park).

I was shocked to see a guy sitting cross-legged in the back seat, staring out into space with an eerie grin. John said not to let his being there bother me. I didn't. I would get used to Ralph going with us everywhere, like a pet dog. John drove us to the Edgar Allan Poe festival in Berkeley. Just as a hand was creeping out of a coffin he grabbed my knee and I screamed. The whole movie theater cracked up. John's smile at that moment was the warmest I had ever seen.  It glowed.  He glowed.

He called a couple of weeks later and asked me to come over to Lary's. Apparently he was living in that room he first saw me in and Lary's other roommates had moved out. I gradually realized that John had had so much presence that night because he was actually in his own home among his own friends. Till then I thought he was just something the wild wind blew in. I would never know where he lived, or think of him as living anywhere. Those weren't the days with cell phones. Long distance calls were prohibitively expensive, so there was a lot of wondering "Where the hell is John??" but John was always able to find me without phones. He was always plugged into me.

It was a typical day at Lary’s except for some subtle differences. Lary was still in and out of his darkroom as always, but instead of jazz belting from the speakers in every room it was the Firesign Theatre or Van Dyke Parks. Since I don’t like jazz, this was a really welcome change! Also, Lary's album covers (the photos he took of bands) leaned against the walls, probably because John had put them there. John and Ralph were talking about it being a very dry season (they meant for weed) and talking about getting some wine. When I mentioned the beach John really wanted to go.

I could see why Lary had trouble expressing some of John's views. John’s words didn’t “flow,” they were waterfalls. I often couldn’t take it for more than 10 minutes without begging him to stop because I ached so much from laughing. Lary never wanted to lend his car or be a crash pad for all of John's friends, and was always griping about it, but when John started in on him, you had to admire the genius. John not only got the car keys that night, he got Lary to smile.

The sun went down as we drove to the beach, and it got pitch black. John stopped the car. I didn’t want to leave the car, but John dragged me out. I was afraid to let go of his hand because I could not see him. I was nearly screaming in terror when I saw a bright, orange flame burst onto the black canvas the world had become. So other people were here too! Whoever had made the fire had left, with my eternal gratitude. I was so cheered by it, and relieved to have something to see in the darkness, when all of a sudden I was walking on diamonds, and the world turned into a moving, dazzling, fluorescent, light show. I didn’t know what I was seeing, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. John whispered, "phosphorous," as I kicked diamonds in all directions and let them pour from my hands in big scoops. My world changed that night. It's where these come from...

for example, here:

Before, my drawings looked more like this.

I haven't been able to find an image on the internet of what I saw. But in trying, I came across this in a blog, which I just read the entirety of (there were only 4 pages).

http://holierthanswisscheese.blogspot.com/2009/04/puerto-escondido-where-waters-glow.html

John took me back to Lary's after the beach instead of dropping me off at my house. It was about 2 a.m. and I asked him if he was going to drive me home. He smiled to himself and said no. I started saying things like I had to feed my cat. Still smiling, in a very soft voice, he suggested I take my clothes off. I was too embarrassed to. He got undressed and crawled into bed enjoying my predicament. He finally said, "You're not getting out of this." He would toss simplicities out like that with his wry smile and it would just destroy me. I threw off my clothes and dove into his warmth. He said we’re the same distance from here (knees) to here (shoulders), which was funny, because standing I came up to his elbows.

I knew I wasn't his first, because he joked "Don't worry, I've done this before," but neither of us ever inquired of the other about whether we had been in love before (and we never told each other that we loved each other. I don’t mean just that night, I mean ever). He asked me if I had slept with Lary and I told him only when he doesn’t want to drive me home. He makes me sleep over in one of his borrowed T-shirts, and we never "do anything." John shook his head and said, "I'll have to talk to that boy." I asked him if he was a photographer like Lary, and he said no. So I asked him what about all those times I saw him with a camera and he said he had just borrowed Lary's equipment a couple of times. He remembered taking walks around Lake Merritt , but not the day he sat next to me in the bushes while I was drawing.

About a week went by before I healed enough for us to try again. I watched him as he stood at the foot of the bed and there was a golden light all around him. I looked around at all the lamps and windows but could not see light coming from anywhere. I told him he was an angel and I was seeing his halo. He didn't think I was making any sense but I never saw a light around anyone else like that. As he lay down on me I thought my heart would not hold so much love inside me without breaking. I told him I thought that nuns were missing the most holy experience of all and he smiled.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

how I love nearing my head

to the beating, listening to

your golden field heart

to rest between your ivory blades

I love to nestle in the soft glade

and slip up and down your

apple jade smoothness

just to sleep in the peace of your palace

and wear you unseen in a strand

of layered silent moments

walking alone in the morning.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

I didn't want to be sad watching John packing up his stuff a few weeks later to move to Colorado, and his irritability and harshness were strange and upsetting to me. He didn't have much. Everything he had rolled up into his worn, old sleeping bag and knapsack. I went downstairs and sat on the front lawn and Ralph came down and sat beside me. Later John told me Ralph had been his best friend before he flipped out. Ralph had been a mathematical genius. I had never asked any questions about Ralph, and that was the first time John talked about him. So, I was upset John was leaving, and John was upset about losing his best friend.

John (and Ralph, of course) came over to my house that night to say good by. John started drinking clumsily out of a jug of wine and making me laugh, when he suddenly put his head in his hands and closed his eyes. He was having what he had told me were called "psychomotor seizures," left over from shock treatments when he was a baby, in an attempt to cure epilepsy. He continued to get short seizures the rest of his life that would last only a few seconds but would leave him completely disoriented. He would forget where he was, and who I was. I began to warm up some milk (he liked hot chocolate after a seizure but I had no cocoa.) As he was drinking the warm milk he told me that one of Ralph’s and his discoveries they had made together was that his seizures would leave him “not knowing when he was in time," which gave me an interesting glimpse into what their relationship had been before Ralph's brain fry, and also gave me a new understanding as to why John could just be walking down the street, stop walking for a few seconds, and suddenly not know what planet he was on. John told me a little more about Ralph's history that night and then went to lie down, leaving me and Ralph alone in the kitchen.

Ralph started talking to me for the first time. He started saying things like God is in everyone, therefore we are all god, therefore it wouldn't matter if he and I were to go to bed with each other. I began to feel very uncomfortable, but not because of Ralph. He was harmless. It was because I knew John felt the same way, which depressed the hell out of me. I just assumed he slept around. I went into the bedroom to get John but he was fast asleep. I lay down next to him. Next to him was the only place on earth I ever wanted to be.  He woke up in an hour and took Ralph home.

The next day John didn't leave because Ralph had cracked up for good. He refused to put his clothes on. Some of Ralph’s relatives came to get him and put him in an institution in Florida. I don't remember much about the next few days. John eventually left for Colorado.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

sunshinin’ along the raindrops

I saw you

as down the wintersides

you flew

now you put away your sails

and a new world you have found

you came home and they beg your tales

from miles all around

oh but come to me if you ever

need to hide

your ride inside

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

At the end of the summer Jessica (college roommate, and best college friend) and I discovered we had both met "Johns" that summer.

"John went to OUR school?" Jessica was incredulous. "CCAC?? California College of Arts and Crafts?"

I could understand her incredulity. There were only about 200 students in the whole school, and only a quarter of them could have been freshmen, so John would have been hard to miss. "John who?"

I told her his last name. "Oh him." She remained puzzled.

"Then you do know him?"

"Not exactly. I know his name. He was never in class during roll call. He was the one who never answered to his name. I think I saw him once. Tall, curly blond hair, angelic face?

"Yeah, that's him," I said. "The one that was never there."

(Note: Jessica would confess several years later that she had always been jealous of me because John looked just like Jim Morrison. I wasn’t a Doors fan, so I didn’t know that, but it did explain a few things.)

One day walking by Arts and Crafts I nearly got run over by a bike. I looked up and there was John smiling at me. He said, "I knew I'd run into you."

It was good times at Lary's house again. I'd make dinners for the guys. It was cozy. John was working for a candlemaker who lived on the beach. He made the candles using molds in the sand. In the morning he hitchhiked to work and I took the bus to the Post Office where I worked. After a few weeks he would go back to Colorado and I would miss him terribly until his return.

Jessica and I shared a cottage for about 8 months.  I remember John visiting me there, but nothing in particular about any of those visits.  I just remember when he was there I was ecstatic, and when he wasn't there I was ecstatic because he soon would be.  Jessica moved to San Francisco and I rented a room in a house in Oakland owned by a girl around my age, Patty, with whom I became good friends.


John came by shortly after I moved into Patty's house with the new Firesign Theater album.  He bounced onto the bed and asked me, "What do you know?"  The question so badly flustered me that I started dithering and John picked up the album and pointed to the name of it, "How Can You Be Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All?"  We laughed and laughed and he would say it to me often after that.
 

One day at my house John noticed something on the carpet and went crazy over it. He said, "I haven't seen one of these for ages." He picked it up and handed it to me. It looked like this:

(Note: My drawing did not survive the many conversions my journals have undergone over the years. The closest thing I could find on the internet to what it looked like is this):

He told me it was a certain kind of seed that would be carried in the air for miles before getting its point stuck in the ground. He suggested I put it in amber, and he told me how.

I had to get up before him to go to work. When I got home the bed was made and I found the first of John's famous rhyming notes on the pillow. He wrote he didn't know when he'd be back and signed it "Honest John" (because he knew it always bothered me that he never knew when he’d be back, but he refused to lie to me).

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

“Some people,” you said,

“suffer everything twice.”

and you laughed

but I cried out, “I DO suffer twice.

I suffer everything twice.”

but you did not cry out “I know,

I know!”

There came no sound from your lips

but the breath of sleep.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

One day a girl came to the door looking for Patty. She was just a lovely creature, with long, strawberry hair, wearing a denim skirt and peasant blouse. I liked her immediately. Her name was Tori, she lived in Colorado, and she stayed for a few days.

It had been several months since John was in town, and one night I came home around 9 pm. and John was sitting in the living room. I threw myself into him, but he was tense, jumped up and herded me into the bedroom, griping that he was just about to leave. That’s when I noticed that Patty and Tory were also in the living room. I wondered what had transpired in the living room before I got home, but I didn’t ask, and he didn’t tell me.

When we were in the bedroom he asked me what I thought of Tori. I realized if I found her fascinating, so would he. I was consumed with jealousy and overcome with a sense of dread.

"She's different," I answered. "I like her. What do you think of her?"

"She's pretty."

"That's all you think of her?"

"Yeah. Just pretty."

Then John told me that he was going to ask Tori to help him drive back to Colorado with him. My world went black.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

Why is it not enough

that our silences have touched

isn’t it a miracle you

silently can grow with me?

isn’t it enough

that I can love you so much

and you can hold me as I cling to you

eternal in discovery?

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

Tori called Patty from Colorado that evening, about 12 hours after they left. Patty knocked on my door and told me Tori wanted to talk to me. Patty saw my face and seemed surprised. "It's not like that," she said.

I got on the phone and was worried about how my voice would sound, but I needn't have worried because Tori babbled away, doing all the talking. She told me everything about the trip. John had some cocaine they kept sniffing so they could drive straight through without stopping. She told me they talked for 10 hours straight. She told me everything they talked about. Why was she telling me all this? She paused a moment, told me how lucky I was because John was such a great guy, and then fell silent. I said good by and hung up, crying with relief. She was jealous of me! Patty told me later that Tori had flirted constantly with John when I wasn’t home, but couldn't get anywhere with him.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

My love, the lost, that used to sail

can only float,

My heart so weighted down

it could anchor a boat,

My memory a stone tossed so far out

it’s beyond the sea,

And my love the wild wave

that always comes back to me

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

I went to the plastics store John had told me about to get the amber for the seed. The seed ended up a little lopsided in it, but it came out pretty good. I bought a chain for it and wore it around my neck.

I quit working for the post office that summer and Patty and I went on a car trip across the country. We both wanted to go to Colorado so that she could visit Tori and I could visit John. I had written John and asked him if he wanted me to visit him in Colorado. I was worried he had given up on me, but he wrote back that he was really looking forward to seeing me and signed his letter "A. Pismo Clam."

We arrived in Colorado during a bad heat wave. Denver was the hottest city I had ever experienced. Patty and I stayed at a friend’s (Thalia's brother, Teddy's) house in Denver until evening. After it cooled off we went to the ranch where John was living. It was almost impossible to find. When we finally found it, it looked semi-abandoned. Plums were hanging from the ceiling on little strings (home-dried prunes?). No one was there except some guy who was on his way to Steamboat Springs. He was going to hitchhike so Patty offered him a ride - we really had nothing else to do. After we took him there we returned to Denver until I could find out where John was.

There was no phone in Ted’s apartment, so I braved the heat the next morning and walked to the corner store to call the ranch. Some girl answered who told me John wasn't there, so I left a message with her for him to call Lydia. The girl said, "Oh, you're his old lady?" I supposed I was, although I had never been called that before or since. She talked nonstop: "Yeah, John told me all about you.  I've been trying to find John myself. Let me know if you find him. Are you ok? Do you need any food? There's a lot of canned stuff here." She seemed very lonely for someone to talk to, and we talked a long time. She wouldn't let me hang up until she was sure I had a place to stay and didn't need anything. Her name was Molly.

"Do you have any idea where John went?" I asked her.

"He's staying in an apartment in Denver, but he hasn't told anybody where, except for his friend Ken, who also isn't here. John ran off when some girls he went to high school with had found out where he was living and broke the windows trying to get in."

Of course. This was about the most bizarre thing I had ever heard, but she said it happened all the time. (Years later as a married woman, after I knew John had married (he always said he wouldn't get married until he was 40, and he was right on time, I think he was 38), for reasons I can no longer remember I wanted to reach him so I started by calling his parents.  His mother, upon hearing a female she didn't know, immediately spat in a voice dripping with monotony, "He's married now, dear. He's not going to date you.")

I told Molly we'd been out to the ranch and drove some guy to Steamboat Springs. She told me it must have been her boyfriend she just broke up with, who was the father of her baby. The reason she was trying to find John was she needed a ride to the hospital because she was hemorrhaging. I freaked out, and really wanted to help her, but Patty wouldn't drive back there again, and I didn't drive myself, nor did I have a car. I couldn't believe she spent hours talking to me, worried about whether I had enough food, while she was hemorrhaging, but she didn't want me to call an ambulance.

John finally went back to the ranch, saw where someone had scribbled down my address, and hitchhiked to me in Denver. Patty drove the three of us back to the ranch. We only stayed that one night at the ranch because John and Ken were leaving the next day for someplace. We slept outside in his sleeping bag. In the morning Patty drove us back to Denver and I sat in the back of the station wagon with John and showed him the seed around my neck in the amber. He loved it so much that I asked him if he wanted to keep it. He couldn't believe I would give it to him, and I couldn't believe he wanted it. I told him I had really made it for him anyway. He thanked me, almost reverently, and put it in his pocket. I felt that I would never see him again, and that the seed would be a remembrance.

I did see him again. After returning home to Oakland John came out and stayed with me, but he wasn't into visiting me. He came for some other reason. Each morning I left for work while he slept and each night I thought I would come home and he would be gone. This went on for 4 days. Finally he told me he wasn't really my boyfriend any more. He had met some girl named Ann in Colorado.


We shared one laugh during those bleak 4 days. John told me he sent the whole series of Zap comics to Tom (his little brother who was still in highschool). His parents thought they were obscene and had them banned from school, but by that time Tom had shared them with the whole school, and all the students had memorized them and went around talking like Zap comic books, driving the school and all the parents in town crazy.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

If a man came

and took away my eyes

would you not feel that a glimpse of heaven

had been stolen from your sight?

If a man came

and grabbed the handles of my heart

would you not feel a little fear?

and dragged her away, spilling,

would you not feel a little pang

when my whole world would have snapped

from the edge of its string?

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

On February 27th, 1970 at 5:28 in the morning I had a dream that John died. It was so real I do not remember waking up from it, as though it were a vision. I was sure he was dead.

One day, maybe a year or two later, I remembered my dream about John and the terrible sense of gloom I had had when I dreamed he had died. I wanted to know for sure, so I decided to call his parents in Ohio. I figured I would just ask to speak to him, and wait for his mother or father to hesitate and stiffly inform me that their son had passed.

When the phone rang my heart was pounding so hard I thought it would burst through my chest and I almost hung up. When I heard a young girl's voice answer I was sure I had a wrong number. "Can I talk to John?" I managed to get out.

She cheerfully asked, "the elder or the younger?" I never realized John had the same name as his father until that moment. The question startled me. I just wanted her to tell me he was dead and get it over with. I replied, "the younger."

"Just a minute."

"You mean he's there?"

"Yeah, he's here. Do you want to talk to him?"

"I was so stunned I couldn't answer her. "I was just thinking about you," John was on the line. (I hadn't told the girl who answered the phone who I was).

I told him, "I must tell you I wasn't prepared to actually talk to you. I'm so amazed I can hardly breathe. I called because I had a dream that you died and I had to find out if you were dead."

"No, I'm alive.” We both smiled (don't ask me how I knew he smiled over the phone).

"What are you doing there?" I asked.

"My parents went to Florida for a week, so I'm staying in the house while they're gone."

"That's amazing. I called during the only week you would have been there."

"That's right."

"Who's there with you?"

"A friend."

"Just a friend?"

"Yeah, she's an old friend of mine."

"How's Molly?"

"She's fine."

"Did she have her baby ok?"

"Yeah, she did."

"Are you still working at the car museum in Aspen?"

"No, I'm working at a gas station now. I'm not living with Ann any more. What are you doing?"

We chatted a while longer. That was the last conversation John and I ever had, but 10 years later, as a married woman, I would dream this:

I was at Lary's house talking to John. I asked him if he were living there now. He said yes and mumbled something.

"What?" I asked.

"Do you want to come live with me?" I put my hand on his arm and leaned my head on his shoulder feeling sad. At one time I existed just to have him ask me that. Suddenly I realized he was still talking and I broke in saying, "I can't live with you, John, I'm married now."

He smiled and nodded that beautiful nod of his. I threw my arms around him, crying "can't we still be friends?" my heart breaking. I didn't want to lose him again.

"Sure," he laughed.

My heart was filled to bursting. I was flooded with happiness. In the dream I went home and dreamed a beautiful and mysterious story about a young girl's adventures abroad during war or some sort of troubled times. As things got worse in the war I wanted to make a story out of it (in the dream) if only I could write a satisfactory ending. Suddenly I dreamed the perfect ending. In the dream I woke up (I am still dreaming in the dream, here) and immediately wrote it down, then ran to call John. He wasn't there but I left a message with Lary that I must see him immediately.

When John responded to the message I was delighted. The fact that he actually returned my call assured me that we were really friends again. We took a long walk and I told him the story I dreamed and I told it to him exactly the way it revealed itself to me. He walked along listening intently, his head bent toward me, smiling. While I shared my story with him he shared various wonders of nature with me, pointing out funny scenes that were going on around us that I would have missed, being too absorbed in the telling of my story. He would not stop listening, just silently point something out, smiling at both me and what he was pointing at.

There were many more times like that. I was never so happy. Life was never so beautiful. Jealousy did not exist. Sometimes I'd call wherever he was staying (he moved around a lot) and not be able to reach him. He'd find me in a few days and tell me what he'd been doing. He'd always have some crazy reason for moving. We'd laugh as he'd tell me about it in some new place he'd discovered in his new neighborhood, such as a very high building overlooking a community of cats, where we could see what cats actually did for miles around.

One day I called where he was staying to be told he'd gone away for several months and I asked if I could leave a message. I left the same message I usually left ("must see you immediately!"). The person taking the message said, "Don't you want to receive your message from him?"

"Oh, yes!" I exclaimed.

He asks two questions, "when is your vacation?" I was wondering if he meant my 2 weeks annual vacation, but my husband and I would be going to Detroit then. I was so long in saying anything that I heard the voice in the phone going, "hello? hello?" I finally told him I'd have a 3 day holiday at labor day (in waking life this was really true). Next question was "what is my address?" I suddenly realized he had never been to my present house. I didn't know our address and had to ask my husband for it.

A few days later the concierge at the hotel John had last been living at personally delivered this letter to me:

"By now the concierge has delivered this letter to you. I did not mail it because with the terrible service we have these days I just could not imagine my letters getting lost among all these other everyday letters:

• sarcastic ones: 'if you wrote me a letter I'd die of shock.'
• ominous ones: 'Please see me in my office at 2 pm on Friday.'
• unimportant ones: 'I must see you immediately!'
• check that anyone would like to receive: $48.17
• dull ones: '. . . and we had such a nice time at Uncle Stu's and Aunt Harriet's.'"

The letter continued in this ridiculous vein. He wished me a nice vacation and he'd see me when he got back. That was when I woke up, still giggling over the letter. Amazingly, I did not feel regret to discover it was only a dream. I felt marvelous. It all might really have happened. I've often wondered if there isn't a fourth dimension in which the things you dream about really do happen? Perhaps my counterpart and his counterpart are still playing in a never never land unbeknownst to us. Sometimes I laugh at things that seem to belong in his mind.

Epilogue:

Here’s a picture of John. God, he looks like a total doofus goofball, but this picture sends me into ecstasy anytime I look at it. With all the cameras around me, I don’t know why it never occurred to me to take a single picture. No one took one of me, either. The only reason I have that photo of me for my People’s Park blog entry is because I was in a camera store at the time, and the counter guy took a picture of me to test a Polaroid and then gave me the photo. John probably doesn’t have a single photograph of me. That never occurred to me until this moment. This is the only photo I have of him. One day John handed it to me. It had obviously been developed in Lary’s darkroom, but who had taken it, who had developed it, or why I don’t know - John didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. But it was magic for me from the moment I saw it, and still is to this day. It’s like a token to another world from that other world – the magic coin that transports me right back to it. It’s proof that he really happened. I like to think that John still keeps my seed necklace as his token to that world, in an Oh Henry - Gift of the Magi sort of way.

I spent my life wondering why wasn’t I ever enough for him when he was my everything? I had so much doubt. So much doubt, and no self-worth. I was insanely jealous all the time.  I doubted that he had ever loved me if he could leave me. His leaving was a death I never got over.  I heard something today: “You can never find what denies your own beliefs.” I could never believe John loved me. I could never find the love I never believed in. There was no other way for it to end than for him to leave. I left him no way to stay with me.  I had no belief in him.

He was the dearest, sweetest, most magical of soul mates and I weep with such sweet sorrow. His leaving me forced me to grow.  But being with him was the happiest, most sparkliest time of my life. I still feel his radar. And truthfully, he never has left me.  We have always "kept in touch."  But until just this very moment as I write this I denied it and disallowed it and refused it.  Perhaps he had denied it too, for fear of hurting me.  And now I vow through my tears to do that no more.  I'm letting John's radar in and it feels like the world just gained another sun, and I am basking in its glory.