One Step at a Time

I write to you summoning all the reservoirs of honesty I can gather. (Sometimes, I confess, they are not much.)

Honesty for me is not something willful or controlled. The greatest lies are those we tell when the truth is something we cannot even pronounce in silence.

As a friend once told me, “I do not lie because I am afraid I will believe the lies I tell.”

I know my recent stumblings are because I am about to embark on a big project and I am terrified – so terrified that I cannot even begin. Call it artist’s block or whatever the hell you want to call it. It is horrible and it is happening to me and I want it over.

I want to look back on this time, bemused. “Hey Kevin, remember when you were thrashing around like a caged octopus, grasping desperately at passing illusions? Yeah [chuckling] that was really something to see.” And then, soberly, I would pat myself on the shoulder with the sort of endless and all-understanding compassion for which we are forever longing.

My whole life has been about getting to truth. Writing is truth serum for me, a sort of drug that exposes lies. That’s why I write.

My time in Buenos Aires has been about that, about getting far away from the things that perturb me in order to get closer to myself. Tango dancing has been a splendid spiritual guide in this respect, repairing what ails me, showing me a way forward. When I am screwed up tight and floating disconnected above my life, dancing brings me back down to this place where I ought to reside but too often don’t.

I will go to that place and from there I will begin to move forward, one step at a time.