Super Mega

So my name’s Kelly and I live on this great big farm called Anngar in Kent County, Maryland, about ten minutes north of a place called Chestertown. This is not where I am from, and it’s important to me that you know this, because one of the things I’m busy trying to do here is write my way through to a better understanding of my own cosmological belief that connection to a place, and/or the lack there of, is a number one factor in today’s struggle of What Defines Me. And I use Me here to speak of the macro, of the all of us, as a collective, and how we shape ourselves, and thus one another, in the process.

Here is me, Kelly the micro-individual-me, how I came along: It is 1977. I am born in March, in Baltimore, during a mammoth year that saw mainstream explosion of the dark side of our culture’s id, social mores be damned. The year that not only Gay but also Swinger Clubs boiled the streets of Manhattan; when not only punk rock at CBGB’s but Saturday Night Fever and MC battle wars on the streets of Harlem sung out in forward marching battle hymn what it meant to be young and in the glamorous world of Americana. I am someone who believes in energy. The energy of that year, imprinted forever on me in waves of mutated pop-culture cacophony, I’ll describe with one word. Harmonically, I am SuperMega.

Here are some things you should know about me. I am sober for seven years off drugs and alcohol. Mine was a short but gnarly, ton of fun run and it lasted until I was 23. I got sober largely because my friend Brian died and I was always afraid that that would happen to me. Brian is one of three friends, who at one time or another in my life I was dramatically, passionately involved with, who died from this thing, from this addiction disease I have.

“This death,” to quote my friend Josh, “that surrounds me.” Death has, and continues, to shape me. Brian’s death started a new phase of my life, though I hope not to be so callous or selfish as to say that he died that others of us could live. I don’t think that’s the case. I do think that the numbers of youth involved today with the deadly disease of addiction is absolutely epidemic and that as a society we are largely uneducated about it. In fact, I think that addiction in general is the pervasive ill we as a modern society are most primarily teeming with. But inside of this, inside of whatever larger forces, be they of disease proportion or mortality or dynamics as big as the personality of an entire society, there exists the invitation for the individual to accept himself, whoever he is in whatever circumstances he finds himself, and from that place take personal responsibility for the choices he makes from here forward. Which brings me perhaps to another thing you should know about me.

My whole life, or at least since high school, people have said I’m witchy. I don’t really know why or what that means and I don’t necessarily like it, or more true is that I like it in the secret way people like power, a dizzying sort of way that you don’t fully understand and that makes you embarrassed like when you get caught stealing a look of yourself in the mirror. I like it but I don’t, see—sometimes it’s hard to accept what on some level you already know is true. Now the truth is witchy ain’t the right word. It’s not accurate and most people that jokingly refer to me in such terms don’t have proper knowledge of what that expression, what that religion in fact, refers to. I would say that the central defining fact of my life today, to be summed up in one word, is Spirituality. And that the basic belief I subscribe to, spiritually, is one of Common Sense. A kind of pragmatic cause and effect understanding of things. As you sew, so shall you reap. This is a kind of spirituality that has to do with me living, not with ideas or claims or even beliefs. It’s a more day in, day out experiential type thing. Indeed it is very true that there was a time, a long time in fact, that I truly thought it was only spiritual to feel a certain way, or to live up to a certain pre-prescribed idea of how to be. And stuck and caught as I was amid that bitter circle of self-recrimination and denial, I suffered to overcome myself, dominated by the idea that one day by my own sheer force of effort and sacrifice and will I could get to that final plateau where I was forever more All Good and Right. I still find myself battling this rigidity at times, the irony of it being I usually don’t see my struggle for what it is until my battle is over because finally I’m ready to let go. It is my most common human flaw, and perhaps the blessing is now sometimes I can see it, the rigidity that causes me to suffer and strain in fear. And when I see it I can summon self-compassion, which has inherently opened me, bit by bit, to willingly experience more of what life is all about. And to be more accepting of me, the me that’s all I got. But battle I still do, with that old idea sometimes, with my own plain and straight harsh judgment of me.

Overall what it has taught me is that perhaps the most spiritual thing I can do just for today is to be human, to truly and sincerely avow myself of this experience, unanswered and mystifying, this experience here on earth that I get to have of Being Human. You dig? To live, that is as spiritual as it gets. I do believe for myself that this comes down to affording myself, one day at a time, the opportunity to take on life in a conscious, open-eyed way. And so far that’s the toughest part. So many of us are asleep, I think, at the wheel. But underneath us, just beyond our oft-shut eyes, there is real power. The pure power of potential, the true raw power of what happens when we are courageous enough to believe in our depths and willing enough to engage our Human Spirit in our daily lives, and that’s why I call it Spirituality.

Finally, connected to this power and potential thing, I would say that writing, this, this thing I am doing right now, is the act central to My Key to Being Real. This is my way of showing up, regularly, honestly, to me. How I deal, and I mean that literally. Writing has always been my one sure way out, or perhaps better put, through. Whatever life hands me, my words not only cut a path through which I can find movement and release, they also always leave behind a better gift for me of understanding. So writing’s how I get to process, my main tool. And it’s such a sacred gift, because it’s how I honor me, and I am awed, always, by the power, the unadulterated transformative power, of creating. How when you create, you too become equally and newly created. This is magic to me, of the purest form.

Now before I get off in to way too much telling, before I bore you with my periodically righteous going-ons, let’s start with those things. Those couple details fleshed out and defined along the edges by commitment. The passionate pursuit of commitment to one’s self. What, so far, this pursuit has taught and offered me. And how very much different I am now from when I first learned the act of surrender, and began in a real way to be taught, and to let go.