signing on

Such a thing (imagine it, please, as spoken by an aging and shocked yiddish Bubela: "Sawchuh Theing!") as a contractual obligation does exist.

I was ushered into the realm of promise keeping by my father very early in life. Once he made me promise to never walk too close to the creek that ran behind my house. When I ditched one too many classes (that is, I found, the one way to get caught in the act) as a freshman in high school he addressed the issue with militant aplomb as we sat in the cab of his truck: "You're not going to do that again, are you?" To my shaking head he replied, "Well, then we don't have to talk about it again." It was a preliminary sketch of grace to be fleshed out by a steady hand over the life of the issuer.

Then, before I knew it I had signed student loan promissory notes, a marriage license and a mortgage. How does it all happen?! Terms and conditions apply to a promise. Take, for example, marriage vows: "For as long as we both shall live." But live what? Why, this life, this way--of course.

There is much consternation about folks walking away from properties--entire neighborhoods-- in foreclosure [now so far under water they are more like Atlantis than their owners ever hoped], marriages [now shadows of their former selves and partners of the same hue] or lucrative careers [now viewed from 6 months in to be more like missionary positions in the lands of remote deserted cubicle].

We keep signing on, signing up. The promises are made so that another (an other) person will know that I'm good for it, in it to win it, for the long haul. I know I'm trustworthy so it is easy for me to predict my own fidelity.

And yet... I am only looking for someone who will remain faithful to me...

But not because I need a house of my own, more money, or an ideal partner. No. I sign the dotted line because I like to make promises. I really like it, in fact.

The act of promising something is personal, basic and a means to establishing selfhood.

When I make a promise I do so knowing that I can't control anything or anyone but myself. Most promises are made in the midst of heated perceptions weaving and waving like the sight of a Death Valley highway in the noonday sun. The illusion of a solid road ahead is just enough and so I trust that I have eyes more assuredly than I trust that the road is real. I am promising to use my eyes even if the road turns out to be little more than rubble on the horizon. And in making that promise to you, I make a promise to myself, I commit to myself.

I have broken a lot of promises and reveled in the guilt of it, narcissistically so. It was much easier to focus on the guilt I conjured by speculating the other person's esteem for me had hit an all new low. The harder task was to deal with the pain of facing the reality that in doing so I was also breaking a promise to myself.

These days I sign on for gym membership, a year long certificate of deposit at a laughable financial institution or an annual contract to work at an impossible job and all these are not exactly the picture of interminable nor are they the type of commitment to keep me awake at night--whenever they do I know I'm living a life dangerously off balance anyway. I still do make the daily promises that make up life in a capitalist society and the daring commitments that determine a tradition or maybe a future but the promises that mean the most are those I can make first to myself, then to you: to be myself, to tell the truth, to be right and wrong and human and wild which means sometimes I must walk away when you wish I would stand my ground. It means sometimes I must sit still when you thought I would run to your side...
Because if I do I will also understand that you must sometimes also.
Sometimes, when the sky is clear and the restless Starlings quietly pruning, the Cricket busy with his midday chirrrrrupping, I miss the train, miss the phone call, spill the coffee and all the stuff of life's mess is close to my skin and then
I myself am,
the very someone I was looking for when I went in search of someone who will remain faithful to me.