Greek to Me
Looking for the I in Me
by Michael Raysses
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As a transplanted Midwesterner living in Southern California, I have made the drive across the country on numerous occasions. As I traversed the varied and majestic expanse between Los Angeles and Chicago, I was left with one inescapable conclusion: It's a good thing this country wasn't dependent on me to settle the untamed west–we would never have made it past New Jersey. This really hit home whenever I was proceeding westward across the impossibly flat Midwest, and off in the distance I would see those snow-capped sentinels, the Rockies, jutting up, seemingly out of nowhere. Clearly, some divine power wanted a little privacy, I reasoned. Who I am to question that unambiguous expression of virulent territoriality? Despite that, though, I continued on, however reluctantly.
I think it is safe to say that I brought the same approach to exploring the unseen frontiers of my inner landscape as well.
Twenty-three years ago I quit being a lawyer to pursue an acting career. Now up to that point in time, I was very invested in the notion that my identity sprang from what I referred to as my “primary activity.” A primary activity wasn't necessarily a job, mind you–it was the thing that took up most of my psychic energy, which, coincidentally, I have always tried to be whatever job I held. And though I never articulated it, one of the occupational hazards of being an actor as I thought an actor should be, involved a deep exploration of the identities of those characters I was hired to portray. This conveniently allowed me to avoid any real meaningful examination of my own terra incognita–I was justifiably too busy trying to depict the people I encountered in the theater for any self-exploration.
Not only was it fun, but beyond the variety and contrast of characters I encountered over the years, it played right into a congenital flaw of mine–a dysfunctional trifecta comprised of my unwillingness/inability/distaste for excavating my true nature. This state of being was buttressed by my unspoken fear of what it would say about me if I set out to explore my inner being, only to discover that I was nowhere to be found. Who would I be if the identity I unearthed was less than the towering pillar of virtue I hoped and even fantasized myself to be? Thusly bound, I reminded myself of a favorite toy of mine growing up–it was a battery-powered car whose front wheels were essentially fake. What powered it was a single spinning wheel on its underside that propelled the car forward, until it hit something. Then the unseen spinning wheel would rotate, redirecting the car in a new, albeit random, direction. It would proceed until it hit the next object, when it would repeat its manic bump and veer all over again. Though not a bad modus operandi for a child's toy, as a blueprint for a healthy life it was nothing more than a roadmap for the straightest way to hell.
I suppose I would have stayed on this illusory course ad infinitum until I hit a wall, of sorts. But I was so filled with fear, I couldn't even bring myself to hit a wall. So in the name of self-inflicted-wounds-masquerading-as-acts-of-salvation, I began to graze it with alarming regularity. Upon moving to Los Angeles, film and television roles became my objective; thus, acting in theater became a rarity. But with ever increasing frequency, the film and television roles became smaller and smaller. I felt like a man standing on what he thought was a large piece of ice, only to discover not only was it not that big, but it turned out that there was some global warming to contend with, too.
Oops.
It was around that time that writing crept into my life with more than a little urgency. Unlike acting, though, there was something about the act of writing that didn't make me want to hide. In fact, just the opposite occurred–I suddenly became very interested in what I was writing, if only because it proved to be the best barometer for what I was feeling. Emotional states of being that would carom within me, unidentified but definitely felt, were being defined in these words that felt as familiar as if they had come by way of me taking dictation from a Ouija board. And as that reality set in, I felt a new-found disinterest in speaking other people's words–they didn't resonate with me enough anymore to justify speaking them.
That was four years ago. I have benefited greatly from participating in an expedition I didn't even know I was embarking on. Perhaps the thing I am most grateful for is that I feel I was given a gift, one which prompted the absolutely necessary journey that we all must undertake–that of investigating who we are in our deepest recesses. Not by examining what we do for a living, or by the possessions we own, but by scrutinizing the forces that drive us from within. The ones that spring from some subterranean well within us. The unfathomable, the unknowable, the essential–Me. (And if that's Greek to you, just think how I feel.)
©2006 Michael Raysses. Michael Raysses, a contributor to National Public Radio has been recently published in The Right Words at the Right Time, Vol. 2: Your Turn! by Atria books. Email him at Greek2Me@comcast.net.