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Lessons on how to skim the surface and plumb the depths of living with HIV.
Letters from Here by Jesse Cameron Alick
Dear KS,
One should ride on emotions like a boat rides on water, never indulging in diving into the depths. This is a practice I learned from a childhood of meditation and chanting. Buddhism tells us to know the ocean but not to let it toss us around like a rag doll. Thus we are all made into sailors! This is a practice anyone can learn. Calm is always there, always waiting, like a line of surface tension at your fingertips. So much power. But then there come times when an undertow pulls your leg and draws you into its rich consistency. Emotions asserting the nature of their true strength....
I’m sorry that I have been so terribly out of touch. The words you taught me have guided me through more dark places more than you can possibly realize over the last eight years. Has it been so long since I was that overemotional student of yours up there in the mountains of Montana? Time flies too fast. How should I update you? I moved to New York City when I was seventeen and it was the best year of my life! I had never been to the East Coast before and I decided to move here by flipping a coin. You know what a smug little Zen Master I used to be. I thought I could go anywhere, do anything. Ride the emotions, calm at your fingertips, so much power. I suffered from the common teenage ailment of thinking I knew everything about everything. Things have changed. I was infected with HIV when I was eighteen, found out when I was nineteen, and now I am a different person. One day I was a teenager, the next I was an adult. No one should have to grow up that quickly. It’s not fair. I know, what else is new? But as screwed up as it may sound I’m going to say it anyway; HIV was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Before HIV I was about to start a long journey down the wrong road. Before I learned I was positive I had a lot of plans. I took each one and laid it on another, building a rigid house of what I knew my life would become. But then the Universe, in its infinite wisdom and kindness, looked upon me and dashed my house of cards to pieces. God was like, “Nice try, plans flawed, start over please.” Cool emotions branded hot images forever in my mind; leaves falling off a tree in Bryant Park, a rooftop in Harlem, a stain on my best friend’s shirt, forgetting all the poems you’d taught me. We all mourn when we lose.
But in a surprise turn of events, loss is gain! I lost a good portion of my youth and the things I would have done in that youth. But at the same time I have been advanced past years of trouble I know I would have gotten myself into. I’m here. A new man. The old one is gone and his plans and house with him. Now I get the chance to build a structure that can really stand up to the wind. That’s a beautiful thing.
Now, in the Buddhist tradition of contradicting myself, I will share one of my most guarded secrets: If I had one wish, it would be that I wasn’t HIV-positive. I know, I just said how badass it is that I’m a fifty year-old in a twenty-five year-old’s body. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the maturity. But in the end, it comes down to me just being a bad Buddhist: I’d give up the suffering in a second for the chance to have my old life back.
To just be a young person living and making mistakes like we tend to do. I have fantasies sometimes about how I’m cured: by prayer, religion, magic spells, hell, sometimes it’s even a vaccine! I have this nagging hope that if life throws us enough crap to deal with, and we carry it with strength and patience, then one day we will get the thing our hearts long for. I dip my fingers too deeply into my pools of emotion. And I enjoy that indulgence. What can I say? I may be a Buddhist but I’m also a terrible romantic.
Write soon. I miss you always.
Peace, JC
Jesse Cameron Alick is a poet, playwright, and Zen Master. He works as associate producer for Smokin Word, associate artistic director for Subjective Theatre, and as assistant to the artistic director at the Public Theater. He sits on the executive board for LID.
February 2007
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