43 - if it's timbuktu, then so be it

It is not enough for two people to find each other, it is also very important that they find each other at the right moment and hold deep, quiet festivals in which their desires merge so that they can fight as one against the storms. How many people have parted ways because they did not find the time slowly to grow close to each other? Before two people can experience unhappiness together, they have to have been blissful together and possess a sacred memory of that time, which evokes a kindred smile on their lips and a kindred longing in their souls.

—Rilke to Lou Andreas-Salome, Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salome: The Correspondence

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Feeling like we’re entering into a period of calm, a time where the elements in our lives begin to mesh and meld. In the last two months so much despair and sorrow, death all round, Pops and two deaths at work, and I think Camille knows how to manage it all, knows what it is and how to measure its impact; always something to learn from this phenomenal oncology nurse. I am with Dana Jennings, NY Times editor/blogger on this, “I love and admire nurses.”

I love, admire and ADORE Ms. Durand. It’s her time now, she’s preparing to apply to medical school. Her MCAT scores were through the roof, and it’s not a question about getting into med school but more about where. We were sitting at the dinner table talking about it when she asked the question, wanting to hear it, loud and clear, unequivocal, and I responded, “I once told you that 'this' would follow you, and I will. If it’s Timbuktu, then so be it.” I smiled and leaned over and kissed her. I’d follow her to the ends of the earth and she knows it. What she doesn’t know is that in my head I'm thinking I should ask her to marry me, such a contrary thing; we’re so not typical, not modern or traditional. Why marriage? How’s that different than simply giving your word, person to person, to be faithful and committed, honest and forthright. Love is love, inside or outside the marriage contract. Of course, I just let the cat out of the bag; as I’ve said, she comes in now and again, reads what I’ve written here. No matter, if she asks, I’m up for it. L O frigging L.

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Am in a new place, quite new. Pops’ death shook something loose, am all audacious and repentant, feeling like stirring things up. About an hour ago I sent a message to Maya. It has been far too long since we've been in touch. I apologized to her for being ugly and cruel, said I’ve always loved her, that I’d never stop, but in order to move on, to begin again, I needed to disconnect completely, to not see, hear from, or think about her.

Easy to conjure the worst, to see the worst, to focus only on what went wrong, not on what was right for so many years. I realized it was time to make amends, to go on record. I won’t hear from her. And that’s fine by me, life altered, we moved on, and it played out the way it had to, no pretense that the severance was peachy-keen, hunky-dory, a perpetuation of some happy–go-lucky illusion that the friendship can remain while the love connection dies. So much horseshit; and there you have it, all-of-a-piece, disconnection’s fucked up, and if you can’t dive right in, feel the torment and pain of it, if you can’t embrace the loss of what was elemental and essential, then there’s no way you’re going to move on and get over it. It will just fester, brew and boil, and you’ll turn angry and sullen, bitter. And that applies to every dang thing that we lose, any tragic moment undergone, any failed expectation or desired outcome, anything we’ve gone to sleep on and in the waking realize that what was once there is now missing, and, well, shit, you just have to get all despairing and depressed, go with the flow, denial and avoidance really don’t work. You simply have to trust the emotion and believe that relief will come in its own time.

Often we’ve got mixed feelings, we want something to change, need it to change, if only, and simultaneously we just want it to end, to cut the ties, walk away, a paradox…. We are who we are, seriously, and it’s wacked when you think about it, the idea that we’re this one thing, this “I,” this “self,” what a grand misunderstanding. We are only a particular thing in a particular context, self as nexus, different given the elements of that interrelationship, and most of us believe we’ll be consistently this way or that, and the truth is there’s always something hidden, always something that has not been revealed, hence the mystery, the alchemy, so unsettling to admit to or realize that you can, given a set of idiosyncratic circumstances, become someone new, create something new, step into the unknown and voilà, the unexpected, you surprise yourself and others; it’s what makes this all worthwhile.

The mystery then, stepping into the unknown, unloosed and loving, and now I’m thinking about Diana Krall (and Elvis Costello), about what they have together, about the love that’s there, you can see it, it’s in what she gives off in her performances, in her music, in her manner and tone as an artist, yet, it's beyond the music and the artistry, it's something, hmmm,... you tell me, check out this clip, in particular about 1:25 in, through 1:38, Let’s Fall in Love, an unguarded and spontaneous moment, revealing, she takes a deep breath, sparkles and exudes love.

You paying attention?, these moments exist, just a second or two or three, significant durations of time where we pause, where we see clearly, no thought, just a “wave of euphoria,” where we understand how happy we are, how in love we are, and yes they come and go, but they’re there, and you have to make way for them, open yourself up, be vulnerable…  

So very good to be alive~!