I have spent a lifetime writing over myself in search of the Other. I have sported sportscoats and dashikis and saris and once, a pair of six-inch heels for 30 minutes that left me agonized and quitting. I have talked plumb lines with carpenters, babbled nonsense with mystics, thrown handnets with fishermen. Each time I have found myself lacking in the comfortable magic held by my partner. I have ridden a bus down to Birmingham and was not happy with my level of passion. I have ridden stallions so as to sweep women off of their feet only to find them too stiff and hesitant to make me feel right about it. I lived in the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a week and a Norfolk Southern boxcar for a month. I picked fruit with migrants and was shut out of their daily prayers. I climbed mountains like a goat and stared on high into wide emptinesses from brilliant summits. I wrote letters to writers and found myself embarrassed. I spoke German with Germans to similar effect. I proclaimed a love of music and could not force a simple chord change. I studied market reports, invested wisely, made some money and bragged of it to businessmen who did not care. I pawned everything I inherited when my parents died and rode a train from Darjeeling to Calcutta giving coins to every soul I met only to be called selfish. I drove a truck and was not well liked in the truckstops of America. I combed the libraries in search of ancestors and their descendants and found my name missing from their rolls. I dove deep underwater and found myself drowning. I plunged headlong into the sun and found myself burning. I dashed rocks together and created a spark.
I have written my name in chalk. I searched for the Other and boy did I find him.
