Closure

Five days ago, after not hearing from her for nearly eight months, my ex-wife Jennifer emailed me, saying that she was passing through the Bay Area, and wanted to get together. She now lives in Italy with her husband and children.

The last time I saw her was 10 years ago, in the summer of 1998. These past 10 years have been profound ones for me, with my understandings about reality undergoing dramatic transformations. After all this time, I have come to a place I would not trade for anything in this world.

But still, I was interested in seeing Jennifer. Certainly, to catch up with an old friend. But I was also looking for something more. Someting deeper. I was looking for closure.

I know what closure feels like. My blog post of last year - Tingling Upon Closure - describes the feeling. For me, it is an intensely pleasant sensation of tingling running up and down my body, especially along my spine. These sensations come in waves, ebbing and flowing, surging and subsiding.

This is what I was looking for in my 2 1/2 hour walk with Jennifer yesterday afternoon in and around Palo Alto and Stanford. I was looking for this sensation, but it didn't come. 

Don't get me wrong. It was a lovely 2 1/2 hours of quiet chatting. We covered the terrain of our failed years together, and the more productive ones for each of us that have followed those earlier days.

I went to sleep last night around 10. Normally, I sleep right through to 6. But on the rare days in which I am aroused, I wake up in the middle of the night, and have difficulty returning to sleep. At such times, I meditate in bed, and that usually allows sleep to return.

This morning I awoke at 3am. Couldn't get back to sleep. So lying on my back, with one hand on my abdomen, and the other on my chest, I began meditating. Very soon thereafter, the waves of tingling came. They lasted for many minutes.

But this time, they didn't close things for me. Instead, they revealed something even more interesting. When I meditate, and I am able to completely relax (the tingling is truly relaxing) I feel disconnected from my own body, and can sense the shape and contour of the cord of life running the length of my torso. This "cord" is normally straight, running up and down my spine.

But last night, after the tingling subsided, that cord felt like a kinked hose. Not straight at all. But rather bent and twisted.

So I rolled over into the fetal position -- in the direction that the kinked hose inside me was turning. And having assumed this position, the tears finally came.

These weren't tears over anything that happened yesterday or about the future. Instead, they were tears that had been "left on the table" more than ten years ago. They were like the sort of shit that comes out of me toward the end of my 3-day fasts (see That Which Shall Remain Unamed).

They were tears of loss, disappointment, rejection, hurt, vertigo, and sadness - feelings having nothing to do with my present circumstance nor anything about yesterday's meeting. Instead, they were simply an old, yellowing bill that had been left unpaid for a decade ... that is, until this morning.

After the tears subsided, I lay once again on my back, and this time meditated with arms resting beside me, my palms facing upwards. The cord inside me was now straight. It pushed up from my tailbone through to my forehead, lifting it slightly.  The words of the 23rd Psalm came to mind: "Thou annointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over."

The tingling sensations returned, this time flowing through my palms, surging up and down me, straightening the hose even more. A feeling of deep gratitude pervaded my being.

By the time all of that finished, it was almost 5am. So I got up and started writing this up.

It is now 5:35am. The predawn light has emerged above the horizon beyond this computer screen. And in this early morning light, on this summer morning of late July, I now know that what began in a freshman class 24 years ago this September is finally, mercifully, closed. The books are in order. All bills have been paid. All receivables collected. And the account is now closed.

That, my friend, is good feeling.