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THE KITCHEN SINK - a column by Benjy Eisen
Installment #6How To Enjoy A Divided Sky
I'll never forget the day I held her for hours upon hours by candlelight under a tapestry with elephants and mandalas and the smell of sandalwood lingering faintly in the air. It was our "holding day" - a day we had both set aside to do nothing but hold one another and talk softly in each other's ears and giggle playfully as we tickled each other beneath the sheets of an early summer afternoon. The following morning American Airlines was going to take her halfway across the country to Interlocken, Michigan for the next eight weeks. So the idea was to spend a day snuggling, giving every second full attention so that during the next two months we'd take that feeling with us. That was June 23, 1995 and I still take it with me. Of course.
I can remember being simply intoxicated by the smoothness and the warmth of her stomach, the way she'd giggle and sigh when I kissed her neck or the small of her back, the way her hand would gently move across my palm as she traced my lifeline. Everything had my full attention. How could it not? It was all so effortless because when you're sliding down the waterfalls of the Milky Way who has time to wonder what time it is or who won the ball game or if Mrs. Parker is right after all and the produce really is fresher at the new Super Stop and Shop? Those things are ridiculously trivial when you're riding shotgun down Interplanetary Freeways, passing sexus and nexus and plexus on your way down. Snuggling like spoons and holding hands, my entire everything was given over to the sound of her peaceful breathing as she lay there half asleep and fully naked beside me.
I can remember running the back of my hand delicately down the side of her face, amazed to find a warm wetness there - a steady stream of tears flowing swiftly across her cheeks and as I searched deeply into her eyes, she smiled - these were *good* tears.
The following ten days I hit nine Phish shows and I sent her a post card after every one with nothing but the setlist written on it. It was my way of saying "I love you."
In the summer of '96 I was in Morrison, Colorado for four shows at Red Rocks. My father had just died of cancer. The girl I was talking about above had just left me. It had been a year since the "holding day". Neither her, nor my father, would ever be a part of my life again. At least not in a tangible sense. On both sides of me there were breathtaking rocks rising hundreds of feet from the ground in a decidedly "upwards" motion. They were pointing to the sky. TO THE SKY!
And although I often had my back to them, looking instead at the purple lightening and the Denver night and the Rocky Mountains beyond, every moment that Phish was on stage I found myself in the constant movement of the dance. It was not a dance that was choreographed nor was it a string of calculated moves followed one by another. Rather it was as if somebody rammed a soundboard patch directly up my ass and the notes and melodies and vibrations were tapped into my spinal chord giving me an electrical charge. I was mainlining the sounds straight into my veins, with Phish as both the IV and the drug.
During one of those nights at Red Rocks, I closed my eyes for a second and I felt her there beside me again, like the time I stayed awake all night just watching her sleep peacefully in my arms. And so too did I feel my father there, who appeared before me as he did before the cancer took his strength and his hair and the color in his face. No, he appeared in-front of me as he always will - that is to say healthy and smiling and with sparkling eyes as he watched me dance. The sparkle was there to say "I don't understand...but if it makes you happy."
I think my only regret is that I was never able to figure out if my father had something in his life that made him as happy as music made me. I asked my mom about it once though and she said, "Sure he did - he had his family."
I am not going to try to claim a definition for love. That would be as silly as trying to describe a Divided Sky using words alone. That's not how you do it! If you want to explain to someone what a Divided Sky sounds like you pull them close and kiss them deeply with all the sympathy and compassion of the gods and with all the tenderness of a rose in the springtime and you let it unfold every bit as slowly and you make it as deep as the Red Sea and as giddy and unbridled as Pooh Bear in the morning when he stretches and rubs his tummy and says, "Oh my!"
And you do it deliberately without hesitation because a Divided Sky doesn't leave much room for doubt. And you make it last as long as a sunrise which is to say all day if you wanted it to, although it'd still seem like but a moment when night fell. And you drink its juices as you would that of a dorian fruit - that is to say slowly and succulently and savoring every drop. That is the way to enjoy a Divided Sky!
You see there's a certain something that exists although it is not tangible and it is invisible to the eye and it may even be elusive sometimes. It is the Pearl of Steinbeck and the IT that Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty talked so excitedly about while crisscrossing the country in the backseat of a Plymouth. Some call it "joy" and that it is, but it is a joy so intense that it is also full of a particular kind of sadness and curiosity and bewilderment and all of these things. And it is a feeling so fulfilling that I get the sense that joy may only be a very base part of it - as though pure ecstasy and nirvana were also involved.
It was the feeling that I used to get when I was around her and that I have now and again when I'm around certain people, whether or not they know it...or feel it too. And it is the feeling that I get when the music is really *on* and everything is just right and there are no two ways about it. And it is the feeling that I have when I'm getting down with my friends and I'll close my eyes and for a second I'll feel the waves rolling over me as we roll straight through the great American night with angelic halos, howling like lunatics at the starry dynamo above.
It is all the same feeling. Get it? It's all the SAME THING....
and oh what a beautiful buzz, what a beautiful buzz.
Columnist Benjy Eisen would like to dedicate this month's column to the Bisco kids since they seem to understand.
benjy@archive.phish.net
Copyright 1999 - The Toga Rogue Publishing
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