Rituals of Life

I found myself reaching for my journal after I came home from swimming this evening.  Writing is such a integral part of my life.  I have a novel that is ready for the editors.  I have two more in the wings, the characters patiently waiting for their day in the sun.  I have a number of short stories in various forms, all waiting for me too.  I haven't though written in my journal since the Ghostship fire last December.  I'm not sure why.  I'm not even sure I need to question why;  the act of writing is organic for me, happening in its own way and on it own time.  I have learned over the years that it is never subject to the ticking of a clock or the changing of the seasons.  It just exists, fully and authentically, in the way I wish I could exist.
Before I started writing in my journal this evening I reread that Ghostship entry.  It was all about loss, of me grieving the lives of those who died so tragically that cold December evening in Oakland.  Those mostly young lives never to be lived into their natural ends; their lives stopped in a brief second of time, swallowed up by the intense smoke and flame; the very things that we interpret as symbols of cleansing and of rebirth, of the Phoenix rising.   Dad's death seems to have brought me back to this place of deep grieving again, of me questioning my life's purpose, of whether I'm happy or just contented to show up each day for the rituals of my life.
As I have said many times before I have a very complicated relationship to loss, one that was created when I was a small child, then reformed again and again through the loss during the height of the AIDS Pandemic, from the loss of partners, of friends, and later of family, both chosen and blood.  I also have said that no one should be forced to have such an intimate relationship with death at such an early age.  We were in our twenties, thirties, and some older.  Most of us were new and fresh to the world, intent on claiming our rightful place as queer men and women, as transgendered, standing together against a hostile world that was intent on slamming the closet door closed again.  We, as those who came before us, created rituals that connected and grounded us to each other.  We created community with our rituals,  ones that sustained and fed us in our youth.  Through these rituals we celebrated life, and love.  We celebrated anniversaries, both personal and collective.  Of uprisings, and street battles, and protests; of weddings, of our love, for each other, of the birth of our children and in some cases, their deaths.  Rituals were and continue to be at the core of our personal and collective lives.  They are tied intrinsically to our identities, they inform how we view the world around us and how the world views us.  We have ethnic rituals, ones that bind us to each other, we have religious and spiritual ones that are marked by their calendars.  We have rituals marking the personal, the collective, ones that mark the passing of the seasons, ones that are millennia old and deeply connected to the core of who we are.  So why is it when I claim my seat again at the table of grief I begin to question the very core of my being?  Of whether I am happy or not?  Of whether my lifetime of rituals that I have established that bind me to myself and the world around me are still valid?  The key seems to be in that Ghostship entry and my deep seated feelings of Otherness.
Those young men and women at Ghostship were living their Otherness, creating rituals with their art and music.  They found joy in embracing it, they found community, and love however much their celebrations and their rituals were looked upon as less then, as an affront to society.  They refused to conform to the "accepted" definitions of wider society and were chastised for it; however, they did it and with an eagerness and zeal that most could only wish for.
I seem to not want to embrace my Otherness; still; even when it is mirrored so beautifully in the lives of those who died that night and in the lives of my many of my friends.   It is a frightening place for me.  It reminds me too much of my childhood, of those years of fear and degradation.  I jettisoned so much of myself during those years.  I suspect but I am not sure that my Otherness is about those jettisoned pieces of myself that still orbit just beyond my consciousness, the ones I still struggle to reincorporate; or better said, the ones that I till the soil for, preparing for their return when they are ready.  So much of my spiritual life is about that preparation, no wonder I am so deeply connected to the act of gardening; besides the genetic predisposition that is.  I do know that my authenticity is to be found in my Otherness, that I will find great joy there.  I just fear that Otherness and joy that it will bring.  It creates that well oiled dynamic of waiting for the other shoe to drop; don't be too joyous, that part of me likes to say, because it will be all taken away from you in an instant.  Better to be content than joyful.  It's that fight or flight thing within me; as always.
I was speaking to a close friend of mine last night and I realized that I still hold onto that understanding that my authenticity is a goal that I am working towards instead of a state of being in the now, one that is perpetually organic.   I suspect if I sit quietly for long enough I will find that I am already deeply grounded into my Otherness and that my life reflects that fact.  And that I am joyous more often that not.  How does that old saying go; I am already at where I think I am going.