Monday, August 2, 2010

The Dangers Of Living With Dragons

The end of things is often so complicated that there is no graceful way out. I have been dumped by my last three loves, though my marriage was so obvious and necessary that I had no real hard time losing the relationship but instead relief that she was going into the distance. Not so with the last two. I fought hard to keep and make permanent the first relationship after my wife. The second, I thought was going to work, but then things happened and they led to introspection and that led to decisions that led to a severance after four years and nine months or so. I am not sure how long she really intended to end us, but she had given me a task, saying that it would lead to a continuation and then as I was doing it successfully, she ended us as lovers anyway. That was tough. One of the partners is usually far more invested than the other. She had plans she knew I could not join. During our time, I had mixed feelings but so much respect and warmth for the woman that I knew I would be fine and I mostly assumed that conditions would break in our favor and lead to permanence. She questioned our relationship and waxed and waned throughout all the years.

That permanence did not happen, not even close. In its place I was given a prayer discipline out of necessity and I succeeded in making the transition without rancor. It was a reasonably close thing. The work was easy enough but the patience called for was considerable for about a year. I was poised to fall into hostility, and could easily have done so. The prayer discipline has held me in good stead for a number of years now, used in many other issues and I am still very good friends with that woman. This pleases me any number of ways.

The Dangers Of Living With Dragons

I realize I've
burned your trust as if I breathed
dragon's fire through holes
in my wizened soul.
I would slink off like weasels
do if I weren't caught
here in the web we
wove long ago together
out of dragon's hair.

June 23, 2009 12:34 PM

9 comments:

  1. I like your new visitors map. i am flashing there all on my own, oh well you know i like to be special:)
    Ah yes i like to feel special, and especially men can make me feel that way. For me now to find a man special in a way that i want to stay with him in a commitment of some kind, i haven't figured it out yet. Is it that they make me feel special, what makes me want a permanent relationship. I know it is not. For 18 years i knew Don was my man, permenantly, why did that change? I feel there are so many variation in this dragon's net.
    But i do know, when i feel this kind of longing for permanency. which does not mean....
    My oh my i am weaving my own web, i'm stuck.
    my question today is; when do you know?! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jozien, that Visitor's Map has been there since May. :)

    As for the question, when I was asking it, I decided that I would know when I was with someone and the questions stopped. On the other hand, I mainly know that partnership is more often an arrangement and agreement with each of us deciding we are better off together than going on our way alone. It is important to believe that my chosen one is going to behave with integrity and dignity, with an open heart and a willingness to bend with the changes. I believe I must have a certain minimum of passion but as well my eyes wide open. I would rather not be completely smitten and I haven't been for a really long time. I am in love with love but not with foolishness or insanity.

    I have been told by more than one woman that I trust that in general older women if financially secure do not need marriage and that on the whole it is a losing proposition for them, much more so than men who tend to depend on women to complete their living situation. Financially secure older women have generally learned not to rely on men (generally for good reason) and manage their living situation fine without them.

    Someone put it this way long ago: A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

    Even so, as a man who likes to partner with a woman, a man who wants a woman secure with herself, a man who really doesn't have that much to offer, I still hold hope that someday this can happen. As I continue to have health difficulties, I begin to suspect that I have even less to offer. This is an area I pray about.

    ReplyDelete
  3. goodmorning love,
    i love men, more then money :)
    or do i think that because i have no money, it's a tricky one.
    But i do know; i like to wake up besides a warm body, i like to feel safe that way and money can't buy that.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think there are probably as many variations on motivations for love and relationships as there are people in the world, and then many more than that again, as each person's journey is never static.

    I, unfortunately, have been the dragon recently, and it is a great weight to bear. I don't mean to evoke sympathy. It is what it is. I am generally a soft person and so these burdens are heavy, but necessary, I think. There is always responsibility to bear in a relationship. Now, what I do with it, that is the important part. I need to use it to be stronger, yes, but more empathetic, too, I believe. I need it to grow me more in an open direction, without it bruising me in a hardened manner, nor should it break me. (It will not.) I try to be a little quieter than I was a few years ago. That seems to help me along a bit.

    This money thing, though, Christopher. I've said it before, money is such a construct. There are those who do not lay such importance on it. In the end, even coming up to the end, it has no real significance. It is what we value and how we treat one another, how we like to spend our time, that is what is important.

    (Your poem today was especially beautiful. Just saw two Mennonite boys with their knees torn out of their jeans and their hair spit pasted, I suspect, over to the side. That was the sort of voice I heard throughout it, of that boy.)

    xo
    erin

    ReplyDelete
  5. You have to get well over fifty to begin the understanding of money and end of life. I sure didn't in my younger days. These days end of life comfort becomes money dependent in bigger ways. Health issues for one. That changes much. It is better if you take the wisdom from the culture and do your best to plan. Chasing money and amassing enough money are two different things.

    I don't chase money. But I flat don't have enough. I am going to be living a really sparse old age without enough even for my health if things don't change. I see it coming clearly. Even so, I am not stressing. Knowing what is likely to come in some form is distinct from fretting about things. I made a promise to myself that this forum is an honesty place, so I bring up the things that matter.

    I will lose the house unless someone helps because I can't earn enough between now and seventy to keep it. I have no way. Of course there is God's help. How that manifests is not mine to guess. I won't have enough to supplement the health insurance needs so I will have to divest of assets in any case to qualify for Medicaid.

    That's just true without some form of intervention. I will need to use the library for computer access. I won't have one. I will be living very poorly just to make it possible to meet my health needs. I am already failing in that regard, heart and lungs.

    As far as the broad range of relationships, that may be true as a general rule but also true, I have a much narrower destiny as do you. This also narrows down the themes of love. I sense you both, Jozien and Erin, yearn for more freedom in this realm than you actually have.

    These things come clear as we go along. At least I know that I think about them very differently than I did even ten years ago when I was only 54.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Christopher, perhaps being poor now changes it for me somewhat. I am lucky to eat. I am lucky to have a home to live in. I am one small disaster, or even turn of events, away from not having either. But I have been lucky so far.

    I do not believe in planning for dying, although I have thought about it more recently.

    I am lucky, too, that in Canada, I will mostly be cared for. I don't believe I will starve to death. I don't have that fear. But one day, I (kind of) know that things will be more difficult.

    Once I was a planner. I can not let myself get mired there.

    And too, I've seen planners lose everything on a dime. I don't understand the work and work and work at creating wealth, even for the future's sake. It can and probably will all be lost in a moment. And so I think it is much less age, but more spirit, that divides us on this one. But perhaps it is a generational divide in spirit, you and I coming from different places in history, really. (But then again, as much as I reflect my own generation, I am very unlike it, as well.)

    No matter. I'd still be elated for you to meet a woman with as much disregard for sensibility when it comes to money, as I have. Let her have dirty hands and a zest for life instead.

    xo
    erin

    ReplyDelete
  7. sometimes i wonder if anyone really leaves... we remain entangled in a web somehow...

    ReplyDelete
  8. HB, I guess it matters if one wants to engage the senses or not. Part of you being here for me has me feeding you, touching you, smelling your presence in my life, making room in my life with small sacrifices for you, listening to you kvetch on the same subject for the forty third time, and all the other signals you are really not a dream.

    If I am okay doing without those facets of the relationship jewel, then indeed you will never leave. All my lovers are still with me in some sense. This is so completely and obviously true. I would have no poetry without them dancing in my back rooms. I hate it when they get together and gang up on me.

    ReplyDelete
  9. you are absolutely right, christopher... many times we don't want it to be just a dream...

    the impact is always there... but the presence... ah!

    ReplyDelete

The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


Get Your Own Visitor Map!