I am very fond of the concrete head we bought in Provincetown, Mass., perhaps because it reminds me so much of what goes on inside of my head.  I look at the Mums sprouting up out of our head, and I think “that’s what my head feels like.” I have a sense of what some other people think about what goes on in my head, but I am really the one who has to live with it. Earlier this year, I struck up a friendship with a creative and interesting man I really liked, and I sensed after a few talks that he was uncomfortable with me.

I asked him about it, and we talked about it over a cup of coffee. He said I made him uncomfortable, I had a lot of strong ideas about things, and none of them were things he liked or were especially interested in. In fact, he said, I made him uncomfortable every single time we got together, he felt he wasn’t being heard. I was sorry, I felt badly for him – me, too – but we agreed that while we liked and respected one another, it was probably best that we not pursue our friendship too intensely. I told him that at a minimum, friends I make ought to like each other more.

I am making friends, new friends and good friends, and they seem to accept what’s inside of my head.  I have never had so many friends, and so many good ones. Scott Carrino has as many passions as I have and we love the fact that we are both crazy, our heads spinning around like the girl in The Exorcist. We are both always on the road to somewhere, we never quite seem to get there.

I suspect if I were tested, I would have enough learning disorders to fill a therapist’s calendar for months. I have never been able to learn math or long division or multiplication, I have no sense of any possession that I can’t see, when Maria moved in she was stunned to find many shoes, boots, jackets, shirts everywhere that I didn’t know I had. When I couldn’t see something, I forget it was there, I just ordered another one. Amazon owes much of it’s early success to me. Now, I don’t order anything without asking her.

My head is full of passions, memories, hopes and resentments, ideas and impulses, it is like a busy subway platform in New York City, trains and people rushing and thundering  everywhere. Maria has learned to interpret me, odd and random thoughts coming out of nowhere, and going nowhere much sometimes I am equally astonished by what comes out of my head, it seems to function independently of me. There are fireworks in my head, ideas I call my little angels, they are always sailing out into the world, some soar, some fall, some return, others are never seen again.

No one who knew me as a child thought I would ever live outside of an institution, let alone write books. I never did well in a single class in school, most of the teachers I had thought I was dumb or disturbed – one math teacher wept when told I was being held back for the third time –  and I didn’t make it through a single semester of college. I just didn’t go to class.

I was a problem child, then and now. I guess now I am a problem adult.

I am fortunate no one came and through a net on me for most of my life and locked me up. I might have gotten shock treatments or been put on mind-numbing medications. I think it was my crazy head that drove my heart crazy.

It is important for me to come to terms with my head, it is the only one I have and I spend a lot of time with it. It my only substantial resource. I’m lucky to find Maria, she isn’t put off by my head and the way it works, she thinks it is fascinating, “you have a wonderful head,” she told me, “I am always curious to see where it goes, you start one place, and go another, there are always new ideas coming out of it, I never know what you might say, but you always seem to bring it around and land somewhere.”

I have known a lot of people in my life who were not so generous about my head.

I’m glad she feels that way, her head is not really all that different but it more solidly put together than my head, I think. My head on the porch is a mirror of me, I think, he reminds me to love and accept the head I have.