When in London...
The sign is everywhere in the London Underground. And it is an important warning because minding the gap is pretty fucking important - there is quite a gap between the train and the platform and one could really fuck oneself if one did not mind the gap...
But in life, I am finding, there are so many gaps to mind....
The gap between me and my home
The gap in timezones
The love I feel for myself and the way I treat myself so often
The distance between my interior life and the one everyone else sees me living
The gap between who I am and what I am
The gap I feel that exists between me and everyone else in this world
And it is those fucking gaps that will get you in the end. Just like on the Tube in London - you must be mindful of them or the space between will fuck you up every single time.
And it is this space between, that I have spent so much time putting between me and everyone else that needs a little minding these days.
I see the incongruence of myself. How much I love the intimacy of close pairings and also how uncomfortable being vulnerable makes me. How much I attempt to still live my life on this very superficial level. Like some sort of never ending game I play with myself of hide and seek. Living in close proximity to others but failing to see how much I need them and love them until they are away from me and then feeling like I want to be closer, yet I just do not know how when they are right in front of me.
There is so much of me I do not understand. So much of me that remains buried in a part of me that God denies me access. Or perhaps that is me...God might have nothing to do with it.
I guess this time away has shown me all the little gaps in my relationships, all the places I could connect up but chose not to for reasons I don’t completely understand. I still have this pathological need to have you close but remain distant. I am not sure what that is about...although I am sure it will be revealed to me on this trip. I can feel it coming like a tube train that has my number on it. I can feel its windy summoning as it threatens its imminent arrival at my current station. I am just there standing on the platform doing my best to mind the gap...and while I see it and avoid it, I get the feeling I am going to come to know this gap quite well in the next two weeks.
This gap, this distance between me and others, will be made painfully obvious when Tuesday comes and off to Ireland I go, alone. I am not worried, I am not afraid but I do have some trepidation of what my minding of this gap might reveal to me, about me, to me. I know the distance I require in relationship is about to be challenged. And also the gap inside me, the places I hide within me too are about to be minded in ways I cannot yet fathom. And I think I am ready for it...I guess it doesn’t really matter either way, I will be reviled, leveled, knocked off course, or lifted no matter what else I might wish to happen.
And I think this is my first lesson in minding the gap...I do not have any control over what I find when I attend to it. It is not something that I can control. There are demons in that gap and there is God too. And it really depends on the motherfucking moment as to what comes flying out of this gap I mind, then don’t. The gap serves its purpose. The gap shall always threaten me with all its perilousness. And there will never be anything I can do but mind it. Take heed of it. To be aware there are things within this gap that shall forever remain, and perhaps, there are those things too, with a little examination and care, I might ferret out and away in order to know myself and others more deeply.
For now, I shall just observe its place in my life. This distance between myself and the oncoming train. A place I would do well to avoid at the moment. It is perilous in its current manifestation, much like the Tube platform here in London. For now, I shall give it a nod of acknowledgment, “I see you, you dangerous fucker, and I respect you. And I will delve more deeply into you in good time...” For now, I just give you that nod of knowing that there is work to be done minding the gap.
Again, still.
