Just a few more sips

"On the good nights
when the bottle's empty
we always want
just a little more,
half a glass,
a few sips,
a taste.
We know
this desire
can be dangerous
to pursue,
that it can make
mornings difficult,
so usually we
brush our teeth
let the dog in,
lock the doors,
but sometimes,
even as we say
We really should
get ready for bed,
instead of loading
the dishwasher
we will search
for the corkscrew,
all the while
shaking our heads
in wonder
at this willingness
to ignore the clocks
and the fact we have
to work tomorrow,
this irresponsibility,
this evidence
even after all these years
of the unquenchable desire
for each other's company."
"The Good Nights" by Joseph Mills

Symmetry and Asymmetry

Difference and this infinite postponement of sameness in the encounter with the beloved other.  So much the same and yet in between is the chasm of difference that is ever insurmountable.  Is this the torque that charges and electrifies and enlivens the sharp edge of encounter?  The depth of seeing and knowing the other is unable ever to be crossed into absolute knowing.  It is beyond us both.  Each of us an entire universe of the unknown if we choose to look.  And so much of our meeting counts on the vagaries and inconstancies of time, timing, and the invasive, abrasive and indispensible world.  And yet each time I hesitate. I cannot take it for granted that I will be for you what I hope and that you will be for me also as I hope.  We have both symmetry and asymmetry in being which means for me that our encounters, the colours of our entre into that space of poignant meeting are unpredictable in the degree and the vitality on both our parts.  The richness and the fabric of our encounter is a changeable yet rhythmic and aesthetic landscape.  I would not be without our perplexing misunderstandings and cross-pathed sorrows and our capricious and exquisite moments of paradise in the breath of the other, our disappointments and our unpredictable journeys through each other's galaxies, nebulae and stardust.  A beautiful diversity to our being and the enriching process of our journey of knowing.

I sleep, but my heart is awake. Son 5:2

The dysfunction of yearning

Sate me with raison cakes
Succour me with apricots
For I am afflicted with love...
Son 2:5-6

What a fine line there is between desire and dysfunction!  There is nothing so close to the tipping point between sanity and madness.  Am I sane; am I mad?  Am I willingly deceived?  How exploitative, how irrational my own biology in the mad passion of love?  Nothing can drive a person to the edge like the onslaught of chemical obsession.  And nothing can rip appart the foundations of the world like the failure of love.  That line stretches out until it snaps.  And the vulnerable die at the point of paralysis.  At the point of being missed.  At the moment of sinking into the earth unseen, unknown.  I dissipate and lose substance.  I lose breath and vanish.

My soul went out when he spoke

I saw C. today.  His outline, his form, his eyes.  Heard his voice.  Still a vestige, still a million miles away.  I reached out to touch this mirror, a mirror into another space.  A white room, his face, even his voice.  My body and my bones reached out through my unmoving hands.  My cells, all the water and the blood, my humanity, my earthiness spilled over into my raging present.  but in the reflection I appeared absolutely still, i stilled the whirlpool, caught it behind my eyes, caught it up behind gates.  If only the rushing and swirling could be visible, the pumping and racing, and depths, depths like the primordial watery depths of the deep... rushing raging water, streaming out of my quiet eyes.  And he saw, he did, he must have seen me.  I felt the peace of being seen.  and not the disappointment of being missed like two meteors passing in a distant part of the universe, in the cold emptiness of space, passing a trillion miles apart, passing by without meeting and continuing the journey into the cold dark for what reason, for what purpose, only absurdity.  I saw him and he saw me, we saw each other.  And maybe my mirror tricked me into the sense of being seen.  maybe through my mirror I saw myself, only myself.  did i paint his edges, his softness, read into his eyes the gates holding back his own ocean.  i question the memory of this vestige, this moment of present, that moment of being released from the pain of desire, that space that i already feel the loss of... an emptiness, and the thirst returns, and the separation returns.  feeling held back.  feeling trapped behind this face.  and behind this face I am adrift and alone in the deep darkness of my own wild seas. great waves, i am swept up to the foaming top of a wave and i am sure to be plunged deep into the rolling waters, pushed down deep, spinning, and trying to breathe.  but with one look he stills the storm.  that moment when he saw me, the peace of a thousand summers flowed through me.  i suddenly came to rest.  ... and now the vestige is gone and i try again to breathe.

I rose up to open to my [b]eloved/ and my hands dripped with myrrh/ and my fingers flowing with myrrh on the handles of the bolt/  I opened to my [b]eloved/ but my [b]eloved had left/ He passed on/ My soul went out when [h]e spoke/ I sought [h]im but I could not find [h]im/ I called [h]im, but [h]e did not answer me.

Son 5:5-6 MKJV

Being in motion and stopping still

It is a dark and stormy night and it is a painted space ...  The wind, the creaking wood, the glow in the dim room.  Both real and unreal...  I contrive it.  My being in the dark and stormy night, being alone in the creaking wooded room.  I ought to be asleep.  Lie asleep and dream sensible dreams.  Wake and progress in the morning.  Progress through the minute to minute being-in-the-world.  But the painted space, a vacuum in the roaring night draws me to infinity.  The written moment that transcends the tyranny of linear chronology.

C. is not here.  And two pieces of my soul lie sleeping like angels.  I need an elixir because I am being dragged down to the wasted sacks of unused moments.  It is as if this fever draws me to confront these raining moments.  An antikythera - I need the antikythera.  I need the calculation, the orientation that will free me from my fears, at least to rise above the morose realities and to loose this cowardice.  Tied to C. his absence is like acid on my skin, tied to my sleeping soul shards - my every waking moment concerns their continued existence in my world ... and the fear of any harm towards them is my shadow and daily companion.  Love too much.  Possess too much.  Aladdin's treasure trove asleep in my room, in my big bed.

I find myself alone in the darkened flat in the darkened street, of a darkened city, in a darkened world spinning in a dark universe.  Spinning recklessly out of orbit.  Daughter of a reckless race.  I want to stop still.  Afraid to stop still.  I'm tied and my bonds to life run like veins through my arms, my soul shards throb against the wound they left in my heart.  I am not free.  And the greatest fear is that none of it should matter.  That it should be absurd.

The slow dying in absence

There is a peace lily wilting in the corner.  Dying in the midst of its verdant leaves.  Its my grandmother's and I must keep it alive.  Its her last green thing.  I feel stretched taut beside its presence.  We pass by each other not seeing each other.  I look past it.  My edges are fraying privately.  Peeling off strand by strand.  And I don't share this splintering with the green plant.  It wilts on its own, in its own reverie, its own memories of her hands, her room, her bronze watering can, the bergamot scent of her tea.

I can't sleep, even though when I close my eyes and then open them it's morning.  And I am not fully awake because I have to will myself to be in the speaking and the doing of the everyday.  I am all future and all past.  I am the last moment and the anticipation of the moment to come.  But the present is abject.  Because the present is the parched plant.  The cognition of the pain of loss.  The dull ache of the separation.  The hopelessness of the emptiness of a desire.  Its shameful really.  Its a vanity, to be so unsatisfied with this moment.  Blue skies, chirping birds who cannot think of desire delayed, only flitting from present to present, the worm, the insect, the ant, the flick of a leaf.  I am an Empress of Moments, so sated, and so petulant, nothing else will do but the gratification of that desire that by the arrangment of the stars, cannot be, not for all the gold, in the right now moment.  And so it manifests itself as a tangible shooting pain, in the lung, in the small of the back, at the back of the throat; a restlessness, a darkness, an absconding from the horror of the reality of it not being present.  And what is the shape of this desire?  In the strength of my desire his shape is set, I imagine his words and glances and looks but can I even predict that the alchemical reaction that is ours will be as my memories and my anticipations paint it?  What if he may slip by, look through, god forbid he should misunderstand my urgency, or fail to see, overlook my anxieties, dismiss my phantom pains that have built into a fortress of tumult.  And all this power he has over my fragile substance held so precariously so that even a puff of wind will disperse it to the nothingness that I secretly fear.  This is consciousness and sentience at its most scandalous; making us vulnerable to a multitude of small deaths.