Fun Guy with Equal Depth of Soul
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
In the same vein as Allen Ginsberg, I offer this poem … in the guise of a Yahoo! personals ad. Ginsberg’s piece is as honest as anything I’ve ever read. When I was first putting words together, I thought I held the license to deeply personal writing – complete openness to readers – and words that were spontaneous and flowed like music. I didn’t realize the beats had beaten me to it some 30 or 40 years earlier. The times have changed since the original members were writing poetry, which was well into the 1990s. Newspaper classifieds today or the tabloids you pick up in the vending machines downtown are more likely to contain ads for erotic services than ones from innocent hearts hoping to make connections. The following advertisement is fictional. It hasn’t been posted anywhere. Given its themes and proximity to recent changes in my life, it should not be regarded as accurate or as a serious post for what I hope to find from a friend or lover. This site is not about me making a connection (that would be a side benefit.) I am merely playing around with the medium – playing the field, if you will – as a creative writing exercise. I couldn’t tell you what I want now. Probably not for another few months. But it’s fun to imagine that true love can be found through a well-worded sales approach, which is what personal ads are, in the end.
In a few hundred words, it’s almost impossible to condense a person into an accurate portrait while also making them sound appealing. So this is my attempt to make a few broad brushstrokes with a nervous hand – at least turning the sky the right shade and showing the flow in the hills. The landscape is me and you are the audience filling in lovely details from a general description I’ve presented. This metaphor may have something to do with my background as a writer. Or it could just be optimism.
Ten years ago I thought I’d found my soul mate, but after a divorce and three children, I have a hope that souls can be matched more than once. I don’t believe that love is different than I expected – I anticipated a mixture of the sweet and the bitter, the gentle and the hurtful – and I got what I found. What changed was the people, and when people change, their connections sometimes break. We attained more wisdom than depth of love.
I still believe in love. It’s a real emotion, but now any emotion comes to me with caution – I’m more awake to it, which is the way a single father of three should be. But I am also more alive in every moment that passes and to smaller details.
For a recent divorcee, I am not what you would expect. I have calmness and the wisdom I mentioned. I am on my way in a successful career at a fantastic company. I am not lacking for options with the opposite sex. I am not having trouble meeting people. What I want is to find someone truly amazing and if that meeting is brought on through these words and this photo rather than at the bar ledge, so it goes (depending on the day, I find either way appealing).
This ad might seem to suggest some rigidness in the way I hope to find happiness, but I’m offering only guidelines, not parameters. I want to be me: a fun guy with equal depth of soul, who likes to break away to ponder things and write down his thoughts in notebooks. I’d like to pass time with a woman who is easy going, fun and intelligent, but genuinely so – not just the outer shell.
Professionally and personally, my life revolves around creative endeavors. I write for a living and I am very literate, but that doesn’t mean you have to be. I still like simple things, especially in regard to entertainment. I am just as likely to be caught watching football or “The Soup” as I am to be reading On the Road or East of Eden. I am a romantic at heart and empathetic. For example, I feel for all the faces I see on these personal pages. They look similar to missing persons ads. I suppose we all are missing something (or searching for something that we don’t know we missed.)
My three beautiful children are well behaved and bright. They truly might be the best kids who have ever existed. I am an exceptional father and spend part of my life chronicling my time with them and what they teach me. I was put on Earth to be a dad. Never would I have expected to be writing a personal ad in my early 30s, and, probably like you, part of me feels I deserve better, but there’s nothing rational to put behind that thought.
I am hoping to find for fun, foremost, and in the end, someone who’d like another person to make this life a little more interesting. I’d like to talk to someone about the most important things in life, everyday. I would hope that something is more important to you – that you are searching for something, maybe understanding or a reason why we’re here. And I hope that search is conducted with some laughter. That the little things roll off your back. If you want something better than what you have alone, then we have something in common. That’s me. Is that you?
