14 - warming and familiar intimacy of the daily round

… If your heart is bleeding, make the best of it.
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.

      —Tanya Davis, How To Be Alone

~~~

No denying it, intimacy and love bound up in words and language. If I am able to express myself, to conjure the thoughts and feelings I have, if I can put them in a form to share with others, something I can then reread later, see what I am conjuring, to glimpse how I am in the world, then what “in life” connections I make become more profound and meaningful, more real.

I certainly understand that words don’t soothe the way a hug does when we’re in need. And I know now what disconnection is, what loneliness means when we sever ties with our lover or spouse, and go alone. Not sure I ever understood the power of the elemental connection between intimates; and I’m not talking about sexual passion, not about the crazed energy that comes in the natural attraction and arousal that we can understand biologically, the physiochemical urges. I’m talking about the warming and familiar intimacy of the daily round. Something that can so easily be taken for granted, the simpler and near mundane touches that come when living with and loving another:

- good-bye kisses in the morning: So simple yet so affecting, to actually look forward to getting up in the morning because you know you’re going to get to say good-bye. A reason to slow the routine down or imagine it differently, to get playful with it. How will we get to the kiss?

- sneaking up behind and giving them a hug: In the kitchen when they’re cooking or when they’re at their computer, engrossed. And they reach behind, grabbing your hair, and in this, a stillness, a recognition and realization, that love is not splash and dash, not sensational, not wild adventures traveling the globe, but right there in that spontaneous caress in the simplest and humblest of moments.

- kissing them on the neck or cheek: No matter where you are, in the produce section in the grocery store, exiting the theatre after seeing a play, meeting them for a drink after work, on and on, ever so spontaneously, you lean in, nuzzle up, on the nape of the neck or on the cheek, the kiss.

- holding hands on a stroll in the park or at the beach: The stroll. There’s no one who hasn’t taken it, and conversation’s a part of it certainly, but there’s always a silence, a rhythm of the two as one, and the connection, hand to hand, the simple touch, of one strong and idiosyncratic soul with another.

- easing onto the bed in a cuddle, the nap: Exhausted on the weekend, a respite from the day-to-day, or while traveling…. One moment in my time with Maya, we’re in Paris, had coursed from the Bastille to the Champs-Élysées and back, and in the hotel, just like at home, we soaked our feet in the tub, then eased onto the bed in an Old World cuddle; a nap like no other.

- slaps on the butt or playful punches to the arm: Used to chase Maya around, Quasimodo-like, and she’d giggle, and when I'd catch up to her, she’d punch my arm, “STOP!” And I’d smile…. Now alone, I find myself playful at work and the urge comes to slap the butt or punch an arm of a comrade. Then the dawning, a realization, these playful touches are an unthinking, involuntary motor skill in the intimate confines of love; a brutal bit of insight, you’re “out of touch” and there’s no remedy.

- reaching across the dinner or breakfast table and touching their hand in acknowledgement or support: The most compelling of scenes where we’re sharing a doubt, a fear, a sense of defeat, admitting to a failure, or expressing worry and concern about mother, father, sister, or brother, and often it’s not a comforting word that makes a difference, but a gesture, the physical expression of our empathy and love, the reaching out, again, the simple touch.

This solitude of mine is indeed touchless, and it’s a challenge; and this relationship to Camille, it’s something new. We’ve not crossed over, not engaged in the physical intimacy that would be an “infidelity” for her. There has only been the one kiss. She has not told Martin about me. I can’t say I’ve fallen yet. And I can’t imagine the two of us being together in the usual way, she breaking off with him, and then endeavoring to settle in with me. There’s a kind of romance, certainly, but there’s something else working. And I’m just going with it. Ever so curious and open to what transpires.

Am thinking of Joni Mitchell now; she experienced something quite stirring, turned to 1 Corinthians 13: 1-13, and captured it in her song Love:

If I had the gift of prophecy—
And all the knowledge—
And the faith to move the mountains
Even if I understood all of the mysteries—
If I didn't have love
I'd be nothing…