1 - love elemental
I should like to cast the die for Love or death. I have no Patience with anything else…. I cannot say forget me – but I would mention that there are impossibilities in the world.
—John Keats (from his letters to Fanny Brawne)
~~~
Nearly two decades together, a bond unthinking, existing, and she comes to the dinner table, in tears, silent. I ask the question, she answers, “I can’t do this anymore.”
So much can be forgotten in eighteen years, so much that it can’t all be remembered in the moment you decide (to sever the ties), in the moment these memories might be useful. Not in some salvaging sense, some rediscovering and renewal, but in laying the groundwork for understanding. What just happened? What lies in store?
Two years worth of cancer treatments had inured me. I am numb, stoical and restrained. I answer back, “It’s a good decision.” No heart sinking, no tears, no railing at the thought of isolation and loneliness, only a recognition. This, the right thing to do. So daunting, so surreal to be cut off from what brought us together, what kept us close.
No melodrama. Only imagination, quick and piercing, glimpses into the future. Me off to a solitude long-dreamt of, to read, write and study. Immersed in book and film, a regular in the libraries and art-houses, a tracking back toward mystery and the adventures of spirit. To die and come to life again.
She off to a more physical love; to a rediscovery of desire, of a life more prudent and engaging; to fill a need for companionship free from death so near; quotidian.
Had no way of knowing what would come.
Remembrance of a time when the daily round included wonderment and rapture, and the Whitman spiritus,… a day-to-day not so banal and spirit-murdering.
This a ground for an emerging and harrowing despair, so unfathomable, so immense that bitterness and tears erupt without warning, fueling further, a descent into a liberating hell; a kind of joyousness.
That tears of pain and sorrow can be liberating and joyous, what crazed paradoxical?
The hell of our own making; the hell of ignoring how we had become different, how we were holding on because we were strong and loyal, and committed; the hell of turning away from the truth, of how we began to dislike each other, that the journey along the way wasn’t a growth together but a growing apart.
To acknowledge with honesty and to move on, with love and consideration, without snide remark and belittlement, without rancor and fear,… a further descent, understanding and realizing we were not honest, that we did NOT acknowledge, that we could not face the truth.
I can’t see a way out; a hellaciousness so defining and real.
The thought of sitting with her, of remembering, can’t manage it, too insufferable; the remembrance not of mind, but cellular and organic—love elemental.
So I sit in cafés, and I watch, and listen, and attempt to conjure a time, when I might reach out, in warmth and affection, that in a meeting, platonic, to see her up close, to hear her voice, to hug her, touching her cheek, to resist the intoxication, the scent of her; an impossibility.
Sunday, April 4, 2010 at 4:52PM 
Reader Comments (8)
Mark,
Your penetrating descriptions made me relive the death of my husband. During his illness I often thought how difficult it was to be the healthy one living with the daily loss of his exuberance and the pain. Your statement,"This ground for an emerging and harrowing despair, an unfathomable so immense that bitterness and tears erupt without warning" described my existence after losing him. But I felt a descent into hell which was not liberating until years later. Fortunately for us, and for you, you survived the cancer and the pain of the loss of the relationship.
Michele:
The events in Mark's life have conditioned the events in mine. As he says in the "about max & this novel" these are my words not his. I have indeed seen, heard and felt it all.
I know it may seem like splitting hairs but Barthes nails it when he writes of "imagining oneself as 'individual.'"
This is a fictional account and I am that "fictive identity."
It is so trite to say, I feel your pain but in fact, your words are so poignant and sharp that the resolve of the pain is real. Your sentences, short, descriptive and to the sharpest point reflect for me the resolution that you have felt. You must have seen the end coming, or maybe not. I take a deep breath and am ready to read more.
I'm entranced to learn more about Max, to hear more of who he is and how he got to be who he is. Or perhaps who he was and how he's changed.
wow! heady, heavy stuff! beautifully written.
After reading this one can't help but to deeply reflect upon those "small" things that we allow to take up so much of our time and energy. There are other life altering issues surrounding all of us that we normally turn a blind eye to and refuse to acknowledge and accept. But what happens at that moment when it smacks you dead in the face....... Wow, this is great. I can't wait to read more!
How your writing makes us ponder our choices and experiences in those few quite spaces of time -- ponder why we have not allowed ourselves to contemplate both the ecstasies and sorrows. What are we afraid of? Is our manical busyness a web to keep us "whole." We dip our consciousness into your reality -- a first step?
Mary Catherine... you nail it. How often do we slow down and sit still, in those "quiet spaces of time" and ponder and reflect? So infrequently... Yes, our pace IS maniacal, and to resist the quiet moment is to continue along "whole" or "sane" and then we have to ask, what are we missing, what are we not seeing clearly in our "sanity" and "wholeness"? Is there something larger, something that we miss in our presto-pronto ways?