Oh, Jack

Dean and I are embarked on a tremendous season together. We're trying to communicate with absolute honesty and absolute completeness everything on our minds.

The text message made me smile. I knew he was reading it, and that he was again ready to be ignited by its spark. I remembered that day, ten years ago, when he first wrote me of it, when I sat in my dark, confused existance, needing a light and being given this bonfire. The short email was written in a blur, in jumping sentences and crazy giggles, and I caught his bug without even having seen the book. I said Why the hell not?! and ran out into the world.

"I can feel it. I understand it and I am held there... I'm inflamed and I just want to hang out with Mad mad people. Even if they completely abandon me before I'm through, I'm there for the ride... you know? I have too many things I want to do and not enough time to do them in... But do you know what this means? It means that there isn't time for stupid petty things or stupid grievences. It means there is a world out there. And I can learn from it."
(email, November 7, 2000)

When he gave me Jack, he gave me the Key to the riddle. After years of running in mazes, I finally knew where it was I was heading. I had tried so hard to dig myself a safe cave of inertia that I forgot that what I truly wanted was to run head-first into the world and Live it. When he gave me Jack, he gave me the Road on which to do it. Ten years of a burning heart, and my gratitude has not even begun to cool off. We grew up, we changed shapes and shed cloaks, but with every reading, the book changed to fit the place we were now.

His last text came in as I walked down Christopher street at dusk, New York City a warm, vibrant buzz of a city, the streets crowded, and I thought how right he has always been. He gave me my dream of New York; I can never repay that.

I am reminded that I love this book because it is, as is life, poetic, beautiful, holy and haunted by inestimable sadness.

Could not the same be said, for ourselves?