Queen Mary

This major relocation to Pennsylvania has involved many cardboard boxes and plastic tubs containing my worldly possessions, and the re-allocation and/or disposal of it to new places. Occasionally a stray item turns up in a wrong box, and I find myself suddenly distracted and intrigued by some relic from the past.

And so it happened that a 13-page letter from my late brother George literally fell out of a box of old videotapes. This letter was one of the very few I received from him, and it was by far the longest and most passionate.

Also the “deepest” in terms of its subject matter, pretty much over my head back in 1978 when he wrote it. He was 35 at the time, I was 27 and up in Canada traveling and gigging around with a band. I had written to him, complaining about our mother and other family matters, with the idea that everybody was crazy and I wasn’t. His answer was unexpectedly long and philosophical.

As so often happens these days with me, I am impressed and astounded by things re-visited after many years. Be it a piece of music or art, a marvel of nature, a human accomplishment, a biography of a great person, there are so many wonderful things that I was too oblivious or impatient to take in when I was younger.

In 1978 my brother was exploding with revelations that came from a new philosophy he had discovered. Philosophic and well as spiritual and psychological. He was growing by leaps and bounds, feeling a spiritual awakening, and in me he’d found someone to express it to, someone who perhaps was also ready to receive this teaching.

It certainly was a teaching, since it was not all book-learning. He was meeting up with a group of people in Manhattan every week, with some very impressive wise people leading him, and providing interpretation and practice to the things he was reading.

By his own admission a negative and belligerent guy for his entire life, George found teachers who woke him up to his own sense of vanity and self-righteousness, these things being destructive and leading to a miserable and un-spiritual existence.

The letter goes on about evolving, becoming “godly” with proper guidance and discipline, defeating our negative tendencies. Actually the very recognition and acknowledgement of this negativity is half the battle, he seemed to be saying….

“Christ could walk on water. What is the water in this parable? It is all exterior life which is stormy and windy. As Plato said, Life is a Beast. Like the Apostles we must get in a boat (an inner discipline) until such time as we can walk on water and not get swallowed by the Beast. Steve, you need a boat. So do I, in fact my low level of being requires the Queen Mary.”

Unfortunately George never quite found a Queen Mary. The letter captures him at perhaps the most optimistic and clear-headed time of his life. Clear-headed and clear spirited. He had demons, and in a few years they came back and plagued him for the remainder of his life. And it was a short life, much to everyone’s surprise, as cancer claimed him two months short of his 54th birthday.

There Are No Coincidences, so some people say. Perhaps it was not a coincidence that the letter fell out of that box of videotapes, on a day that I was relaxed and sentimental enough to sit down and peruse it for the first time in 32 years. And I find that I barely read it the first time, especially the last ten pages. It was simply too much to grasp at the time, or I was simply too wrapped up in other things.

But it seems to resonate with me at the present moment. I could use a Queen Mary, and so could most people I know. Instead of tucking the letter away in a box, I’ll be keeping it nearby and immediately accessible for a while. It’s a marvelous testimony from a man discovering big things, a testimony written 32 years ago to a little brother who, after decades of stumbling around, might be able to use it now.