You never know when something will change nor from where it rises. Even then, perhaps it’s an opportunity and perhaps something else. What to do? I claim that all the main turning points in my life come out of my life rather than me deciding to follow some plan. This is true, but it is also true that the responses I make must be immediate and generally with some kind of clarity. If anyone should ever wonder if my way of living is responsibility avoidant, it cannot be for the simple reason that I say yes or no to the opportunity. Recently that has happened again. Several years ago a man with a unique way of living in the world came into my life as I followed a lead. We interacted for a bit and I felt an old hunger rise up. I remember a time before this one:
Back in 1973 I began a partnership, active for six years and I thought it might lead to big things. It did, though not what I thought. What came of that partnership was many things but not the change of life and way of being in the world that I thought. Instead, in 1981 I was awarded a degree in completion of college level work based mainly on our partnership. I thought he was going to be a partner in building a new life. Instead I had my new Oregon life and in it he transformed into the mentor of my completed degree. We did not partner much after that, though he was a lifelong friend. When I married, he was my best man. When he married I was his. He was thirteen years my senior. At the end, he contracted a form of Parkinson’s and died of it. I have his dictionary and several other books, left to me.
I lived hungry with him, wanting developments which could lead me out of the life I lived. I didn’t have a clue how to do that but I thought he did. It turned out I misjudged him in this way. He was living his life not building a new one even though he talked about it. Talking about these possibilities was a fun thing for him. It was not only me that misjudged. I know his wife went through a transition of realizing that he talked plans he was never going to actually do. One famous one was the book he was going to write (he had already written one) and that book turned out to be about different subjects over the years. From time to time he would even get three chapters in or so. Then something else would turn up. He lived for research, not for the book.
When I met this new man a few years ago, the same hunger rose up. Here is another established man in a world I feel better suited for. Last time with him I became the subject in a training video. There are people who have knowledge of me that I do not know through this video I have never seen. Then we parted company but we both knew not necessarily permanently. This time there is a project, and we have agreed to explore how I can serve the project. Who knows where it leads? I am much closer to the end of my life, not nearly so sure I need to go anywhere.
Still Sleeping
You woke up today.
I can tell because your rim
has gone all rainbow,
visible, growing
the bubble of clear vision
all around your eyes.
If you look into
my heart perhaps I too will
awaken today.
February 28, 2009 6:21 PM
Contraction
1 week ago
It's funny isn't it, how people inspire us to do our 'work'....inner, outer, whichever....
ReplyDeleteYou have this rainbow, for me. Your words lead me to paces inside me that need touching and I thank you for that.
I would call you a master....or indeed, a shaman. It is so.
It is very cool :)
xxx
I am completely touched that you should say such things to me. I have no idea how to respod adequately. "I love you" sounds strangely inadequate, but I do.
ReplyDeleteNone of what you say happens for you can happen without love, yours and mine. It is a current and must have at least three poles. You do know that not everyone sees something like that in me...and they're as right as you are. And me, I see it in me just like you do, but not always, and just a little less than often.
I went to a meeting tonight Christopher, one that my intuition has been trying to get me to for weeks, and guess what, I was in a room full of magic. I felt like I had come home. It was kinda weird but I felt you there. I'm going back :)
ReplyDeleteAnd I know you do. Me too.....
You Stretch Me
here,
inside
these words
I find myself...
stretching to fit
questing to comprehend
I throw me into the empty
knowing all the while
that love is what the
answer always is
What a gift you give me
xxx
interesting fellows you describe. i'm sure you have heard the expression: "It's not the destination, it's the journey".
ReplyDeletein life, people often expect to arrive somewhere and end up someplace totally different, totally unplanned. perhaps this always happens with people and it is just a matter of whether or not they recognize the fact.
some people live in the potential for great enterprise, great adventure, great expectations.
some of these people are charismatic attracting many fellow travelers.
for some of these, the grand project is harmless. whatever the outcome of the endeavor, everybody is happy on the trail and better for the excursion.
for some, the results can be disastrous.
should we choose to follow the Piper, we can hope that it isn't Bernie Madoff, or that the path doesn't lead to Jonestown.
and we can hope that our wisdom and experience might help us differentiate between the harmless joy of hopeful endeavor, and ugly self deceptions.
"..if you believe, there's nothing up their sleeve, then nothing is cool. REM
Isn't that the task between us Michelle? Thank you for saying so. The best love is not about togetherness so much as it is about the stretch. It's tidal in nature and a matter of gravity, like in the earth-moon system. That is also why love is tri-polar.
ReplyDeleteWe approach each other, two masses of potential love and perhaps set up an orbit rather than a glancing blow, a two body system. But each two body system that stabilizes in any fashion has a third pole, the axis of the system itself.
For example, in the earth-moon system, it is tidal with the tides happening on the earth and the correlate moon effect being the match of rotation with orbit so that we only see one side. The third point is within the earth, which is the center of the moon's rotation about the earth. This point is dynamic and moves around within the earth, matching the moon itself as it goes around. There is a "circle of tides, bigger than the "circle of earth" itself, and why there are tides both near side and far side, and this bigger circle of swelling is more or less drawn about the point of the system.
For the earth-moon system that is a too simplistic description, and it would be for us too, but we speak often of love as tidal, like when we say that you swell my heart, or for example in sex, part of the preparation for union is a swelling of special parts of us. And like with the earth-moon, the tidal forces are most obvious with fluids involved.
This tri-polar nature does not change no matter the size of the "hearts" involved for no two body system can be a perfectly aligned, perfectly matched system of two exactly alike bodies. Thus all pairings are dynamic and tidal. And like the earth-moon, there are changes over time, that depend in part on the stability inherent in the pairing.
Unlike the earth-moon, however, we have the opportunity to add to our systems energetically in ways that add to our systemic stability or to destabilize. In other words, to some extent we guide the nature of our love. However, nothing we do will overcome a system too unstable at heart.
Like gravity, love can be described as a curvature in heart/time.
As for you, my ghostly friend, you describe concerns about trust and observe how we make the assumption that the outcomes tend to be thought more important than the journey. What my journey was and is, is not described by who stays around but by who has come around, not by as you say the destination but the journey itself.
ReplyDeleteI heard love described once as a royal hunt after the Chinese fashion, in which there is always one degree of freedom so that the attraction always allows for the seduction to fail if the heart of one lover yearns too much to escape. Then the rest takes care of itself, come or go, long or short, and how close we are is always described in two ways, by our love and by the one who yearns the more for freedom.
And all this is true of course whether or not the nature of our love is sexual, because sex is but one feature of the whole love system and can be absent as we all know very well.
All this a sky full of rainbows!
ReplyDeleteThanks
Splendid!
ReplyDeleteWe want to count on others to pedal our paths, if not clear them. But a wise man once told me..."Annie, no one's coming." And I set out to clear my own paths and ride my own bike and traverse as only I can.
ReplyDeleteInterestng, Annie, that you should take your observation to that place. It is true, what you say, in its way, but not how the Beatles did it for each other for a few years as one obvious example. They did not stand separately, and in fact could not have been the fab four without many other people hitched to their star.
ReplyDeleteIt is in a far different way, the demonstration of corporate America, how linking and partnering yields far more than the sum of the parts, like it or not a tremendously complex corporate nation. Most science is corporate success, as is most dramatic art and ballet and symphony and on and on.
I have been a singer in choral groups, in fact the only way I ever feel successful as a singer. I have a true voice, with something substantial to add to the mix, but I think I am way too weak to ever solo successfully. I can even be a pretty good member of a quartet under the right conditions, which comes very close to solo, but my voice works much better in group. Octet is better.
So much of my life would not exist, including how I make my living if I did not hitch up.
And then coming at it the other way, it's me who chooses to join. I am not sought out. I have to audition. Just as you say.
Perhaps the difference of vision is in the thought of "inspiration" as Michelle uses the word, and your idea of others actually doing our personal work for us.
Here in poetry land I have been so prolific by "stealing" vision from others. I may always contain my own broad view, but the specifics of the particular poem nearly always come from somewhere outside of me. If I reverse the view, then I say I am inspired by others and it comes out the same.
I don't know about anyone else, but I need others to bounce off to do my best 'stuff'. It isn't about expecting to be saved, it is about validity.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes wonder if falling in love is something one does with oneself, and the other person is merely the mirror every time?
But then I am a creature prone to fantasy, so they say......or am I?
This illusion we live can be compelling.
xxx
There's so many observations here already that I can't really add anything substantive, but this might be my favorite one of your poems that I've read, definitely in the top... I don't know, three. Simple and beautiful and heartfelt.
ReplyDeleteAnd, there is always somewhere more to go.
Michelle, to say one falls in love with oneself has a certain ring but I think may reduce this thing too far. I noticed the last time that I fell really hard romantically as an older fellow, the many things changed shape and clarity. I was full of kindnesss for many people, gave more to charity, and found a new capacity for poetry. I felt decidedly more open and trusting in general, and more completely involved in all the possible emotions. I was more awake, not less, which would be the case I think if I had become narcissistic. I am pretty sure these feelings had actual behavioral consequences.
ReplyDeleteI can only go by my experiences. They lead me to the conviction that there is an Other that I fall in love with, One beyond my boundaries. I have always felt that it is difficult to tell whether the love song is to the lover or to God (Goddess) when it is really moving. I do think it fair to say I may fall in love anew with God in disguise rather than really with my lover - some variant of that.
And yes it gets confusing when you consider all the God is your Self talk. I still think that even with this in mind love will always be a two body in a system of three poles situation, thus a matter of five minimum elements. It is essential to the nature of love that there really is an Other.
Joseph, thank you for rating this among my best poems.
this is a wonderful piece, and so connected to the commentary....the very idea of others on a wayfinding, with a plan, can be so hopeful, that hope is enough; some days, it is.
ReplyDeleteHarlequin, I started from there, back in 1966, with the simple fact that there IS somewhere to go profoundly placed in my heart. I don't mind that my entry to things is the servant's entrance around back instead of the Grand Front Portal for those who actually have earned their entry, legitimate members of the millenium.
ReplyDeleteWithout this I would have died. Knowing I have somewhere to go however I get there, wherever there is literally saved my life.