20 - she electrifies me

I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other…. All companionship can consist only in the strengthening of two neighboring solitudes:… for when we abandon ourselves, we’re no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up in order to come close to each other, there is no longer any ground beneath them and their being together is a continual falling.

      —Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Love

~~~

Missing someone? Giving oneself over to the feeling that there’s an emptiness and a longing, hearing them speak when no one’s around, feeling them touch you when they’re not there, seeing them in a crowd and when you get up close, it’s not them. A kind of vertigo, losing one’s bearings, a weightlessness… maybe “falling in love” is not romantic nonsense, maybe the thing that makes us a most distinguishable primate is this capacity for romance and intimacy, a willingness to give ourselves unconditionally to another, that some instinct, some deep down darkness that makes no sense, where reason and logic and light have no power, that it’s in the mystery, in the unknown, in the shadings and shadows, in the not seeing clearly, in trusting the sensation and feeling that comes, when we acknowledge we’d do anything for them, anything to assist and support them, a kind of selflessness.

There’s danger in this. Again, it’s about risk taking, about letting one’s guard down, about letting go of one’s preconceived notions, about admitting to our imperfections, about acknowledging our mortality. When we stand before our beloved, when in a crowd we see ourselves in others, when we feel connected in a way that transcends ancestry, ethnicity, nationality, religion and culture, when it’s clear there’s meaning outside our created concepts and categories, when language fails us, when there are no words, when we can no longer justify, sanction or legitimate our actions, when there’s simply a compelling need to reach out, to empathize, to love, this then, ever so dangerous.

Love a kind of insanity, a not “normal” moment in our lives when we’re enrapt beyond what we might characterize as our own best interests, beyond the boundaries of our singular self, family or in-group. Love defined not as a pursuit of pleasure, or dominion over and possession of another/others, not something strategic, or goal-oriented or attainable through diligent planning and practice. Love not linear, from point A to point B, not diachronous or an accumulation of and development into; but asynchronous, independent and free-flowing. Not something fixed and circumscribing or reliably predictable. Love as instantaneous result, of being off the rails, anomalous, atypical, not the way we usually deal with one another.

Imagine someone walking among us, someone extraordinary and we can’t quite see it, someone who loves in this way, someone unconventional and unorthodox, someone apart, in the midst of.

I think I saw this when I first met her. So unsettling, an immediate recognition and awareness, that there wasn’t a barrier, that she was approachable, that anything goes, that nothing I would have said or shared would have mattered, she would have engaged it straight on without judgment. And now, she’s in my life, if only for a moment. We’ve made contact in the most intimate way, physically and intellectually, in spiritus as Whitman would say.

I don’t want to make the wrong move here. I have imagined in other moments that the healthiest, sanest and most honorable way to be with someone would be to try and be alone together. Is that possible? Can two strong and forceful natures be in close proximity, to share, and support and love without impinging upon, dominating, possessing, haranguing, castigating, manipulating, lying, cheating…? Always honest, always forthright, even in the worst moments, to see and feel it all, to not veer away from the travail that inevitably comes?

I want to love her in a way I've never loved before. I want this connection to be unique, and there's ground for this, we're androgynous, genderless, both strong, both gentle, both tough, both thoughtful; she's 33, I'm 58. I'm old enough to be her father for chrissakes!, that alone makes us unconventional and odd, and inappropriate. Don't know, don't know, am already missing her, feeling needy, still lost in the touch, she electrifies me.

Comments

[A Artan]

Electrifying indeed.