Exodus

An exodus is a "going out," as one might gather from the major narrative known by that name.  It is a compound of two Greek words, one meaning "out of" and one meaning "road/way." 

I have been struck in the past two days by the contrast between my life journey and the Odyssey.  Wily Ulysses had a long and adventure-filled journey home but it was a journey BACK to Ithaca.  My life has been a journey AWAY from Fresno.  Looking back at old journals as well as the course of my life, it seems I knew it long ago.

Northward

I continued climbing, occasionally glancing back down and out to the sea.

Well, not really—it was just a small bay. But beyond, out where those little fishing boats were headed, was the sea. And above the sea were clouds stretched across the sky like last Wednesday’s washing. Or perhaps the thousand sails of another fleet, navigating the winds alone without the water.

            The rocks were getting steeper as I turned my back to the sun—the sun, which seemed to lay its flat hand on me and push down, down, back where I came from.  But I had no more to do with that little village.  So I climbed, climbed, climbed,

κατά τὸ βοριά, ξένος.

29 May 1965

This is from the end of my freshman year in college. The closing phrase is adapted from the first poem in the Mythistorema series by George Seferis: κατά τὸ βοριά, ξένοι  (northwards, strangers).  Here I recast it in the singular.  I am journeying alone, a stranger.

We had taken a break in classical Greek the second semester and read some of these poems, a bit of modern Greek for different.  I still have the ditto sheet text in Greek and my translating notes, tucked in a copy of Seferis’ poems in English.  For some reason this phrase lodged itself in my memory and has been with me now for fifty years.

I have removed the opening fragment of this since it seems stupid and irrelevant now.  The rest of this handwritten page in my journal still speaks.

Divergence

The commonplace divergence of two ways

respects itself and forces men to choose

the roads they travel. Each choice means they lose

the other way, the speculative days

they might have lived, companions they’d have met

and shared these journeys with.  But none should call

his path the poorer for the loss, for all

that he has gained in what he chose, and yet

shall gain, exceeds in its reality

each ‘might have been.”  Thus, with finality,

I go another way than yours, alone.

I ask no absolution, as my own

quietus I have made, I ask but peace,

and friendship when the bitterness shall cease.

4 January 1972

This is a sonnet written in my final year of seminary.  I can think of a particular context for the poem but now I see a larger theme.  "Thus, with finality, I go another way than yours, alone," really leaps out.

Roots Redefined

I felt I was a son of the soil,

The dusty earth of the San Joaquin Valley

Where Thompson seedless grapes were raised

Then sun-dried into raisins.

This was one of the ways

That Mother Earth spoke to me

And held me firm.

And on Sierra hillsides

Amid pine duff and fallen cones

Where firs and wildflowers also grew

And there were great slabs of granite;

This too was my terroir,

Soil of my vintage.

But there were toxins,

Perhaps not in the soil but in the air I breathed,

A miasma of true believers,

Of the resentful obedient,

And the broken soul.

Dreamers came to California

And dreams died or were surrendered.

Maybe now I understand

Dante’s judgment on the broken vow.

My grapes now grow in New Mexico,

A conscious homage to ancestors

Yet my soul’s feet are not drawn

To walk the earth between the vines

In that distant place,

That Golgotha where men were crucified

But women will not weep,

Where souls are dry and thirsty.

My garden is in high grassland

Far from the place of my first birth,

Mercifully separated by miles.

The first shaking of dust was when I left

To go to college, and another was when

I crossed the ocean for France

To return a stranger to family.

Another was the adamant refusal

To return after dropping out.

Sleeping in the streets of LA

Would have been preferable to such a death.

When I chose New Mexico and left my past behind

It was a mighty shaking of the dirt from my feet.

Perhaps it was then that the powdered soil

of the Valley no longer claimed me.

My home is here, anchored on east and west

by the Sandias and the volcanoes,

Nourished by the Rio, graced by boundless sky.

The moon is closer here; the heart is freer.

Art is valued here and some still dream.

I left the prisons of family,

Of rigid doctrine, of propriety

Without regret.  I like my life.

My garden flowers and bears fruit.

This is home.  My family now is one I choose.

No accident of birth or choice of others defines it.

A few close friends and wonderful acquaintances,

Tasks I enjoy, nourishment for the soul—

All this is mine.  Here I am eager to live

Sans peur et sans reproche.

I am free to change my own narrative.

I leave Chorazin and Bethsaida to their own fates.

3 July 2015

This is a backward look, and forward.  My roots are no longer in California; they are in the Rio Grande valley. It is a reflective, wistful, and angry poem.  I recall thinking to myself (not sharing with anyone), "What am I running from?" This was in the early 80s.  The answer that came was this: "myself." Well, I am not running any more.  I feel at home, I like myself and my own company.  All those rounds of shaking the dust from my feet and moving on...make me shake my head and let out a small sigh now.

I have been sad this evening, sensitive to abiding wounds and the drive to keep migrating.  This post is about finding peace in one's journey.

I conclude with a sonnet that is the story of almost every LGBTQ person.  It alludes to The Chronicles of Mídhris and Ian Dyrnedon, who slipped through the dimensions and found himself in a parallel world, never to return to earth.

I have a family

In truth, I have an earthly family

as Ian has a Mithron one. It works

like this. Whatever DNA now lurks

within us, here’s the charming oddity:

for all that blood or forming may have done

our kin is now the people we have found

or have found us in life’s great whirling round.

Together we hold hands beneath the sun

and moon and stars with fierce united hearts.

We have a history, a journey shared.

We face each other, souls so fully bared

that life no longer lies in scattered parts

but in a new and glorious chosen whole.

We’re a forever family of soul.

2 July 2015

 --the BB