First of all. Why such critical and condoning tone? Why not such question posed with love or concern? What does it even mean to you? Does my life effect you in some way? Do I cause you pain? You say that I have no stability or foundation. What do you expect from me? I'd build a house if I knew where to put it. I'd make a home if it agreed with my heart. Both are not for lack of resource. I'm not an unwise and foolish penny-less vagrant.
Are they monuments, a wife and children? Are they things to erect on my lawn? Everything happens in its own time and I trust that everything works out as it should. So let it be.
You fail to see this journey I'm on. And I'm working it out slowly. I've been studying and I've been discovering, and I'm lost somewhere within the depths of me, the universe makes sense.
I've learned what it is to look through these eyes. I've stepped through the past and come to terms. I've held things in my hand and let them go. I've taken hurts and lies and thrown them into the light.
Because this journey is not about a destination. You see, it is so deep and amazing that we never truly arrive. It's not about milestones or trophies. It's not about accolades or comparisons. It's a personal and shared experience. Blessed are those that sink into it's weight, and feel it's endless bounds. Do you know what love is? Are you in awe of its power? It will collapse your knees!
So what about my years? So what if I'm thirty?
I am a deliberate man and I am deliberate in my actions.
So please don't criticize me when I can honestly say;
In a one time shot we each traveled through hundreds and thousands and millions of years and settled on this particular time and space. We found ourselves in the same hemisphere, in the same country, in the same town, in the same street, in the same ten meter square perimeter. We’re only going to be here a short while and then this experience on this earth will cease to exist. Hundreds and thousands and millions of years will go by long after we are gone. Millions of people like you and I will meet on this very spot. They will have traveled for eons through time and space just to find themselves in the same predicament. In this moment. Both here and now. Amidst millions of years that exist when we are not.
The future is already happening and so is the past. We are dimensions folding and unfolding. Reference points in time, minor blips, yet in that, possessing the inexplicable spark, depth, complexity and endlessness of the universe. Each moment in our reality on some plane is timeless. It reaches into the future and it reaches into the past. It is connected by something absolute that is, was and always will be. I'm a part of it and you're a part of it. Before we were and beyond when we are.
But right now in the present held by earthly dimensions, I’m here and so are you.
ON A GOOD DAY it feels like nothing can stop me. It's like I am channeling the powers of God, I have been called and counted and this remarkable understanding of love and sense of self, others and purpose oozes from my fingertips. In many ways it feels as if I am uncontainable, like I am bigger than my body and greater than a sum of my parts. I am not alone and I feel a connection to humanity, nature and the universe. I get a sense for how it spins: wheels within wheels, circles within cycles, micro and macro. It all comes down to the same glorious design and purpose and I'm looking at all, touching it, feeling it, inhaling it and I realize that we are inseparable. I was made to walk this earth just as every other. Our lives where made to collide and intersect and although there is pain and other inclement weather, this is not the status quo and these are not chains that are set to bind and confine us.
On a good day I feel as though I am found and placed on a high shelf. It is not because I am better than anyone else, it is simply because that is my value along with everyone else. On a good day I am raised up and can see so clearly. Beyond what I can normally process in my head. Beyond what is dragged around in my heart. It lifts like helium. It shoots into the sky and explodes like fireworks in the dark. All my conflicts, all my fears, all my inadequacies, all my guilt and all my wrongs. They become huge explosions resonating throughout the sky, sending shock waves throughout the earth. There is an explosion of light. A multicolored spectacle of space pioneering sparks.
I'm with friends, family and strangers on a good day. We're all watching the firework display and letting it all go. We link arms together and watch it all explode. On a good day we're all up there. So, so high. So, so free. But we are also on the earth. We are extensions of ourselves. We are in all things and we are in each other.
On a good day we are clutching at something intangible.
Okay, now that I have your attention, I bring you an original short story. I dedicate this one to the lovely but elusive Mari Van der Vyver, who has the most amazing chuckle in the history of the planet, and needs to contact me ASAP.
Juliet, and Romeo
The bed was coercing their bodies together. It was an old lady that had grown up in tough times, witnessing all kinds of pains and hardships, and now in its old age desired only one thing – to witness love. The sag in the bed and resultant roll-together was that bad.
Ron is awake and clings to the side of his bed tightly. He knows that he must not wake her for if he wakes her, she will sigh and it won’t be any ordinary sigh, but a sigh that speaks of pain. It will be long and drawn out. It will be a sentiment alluding to all of Ron’s short comings and inadequacies as a man. They will be rattled off in exhaustive details, both exemplary and metaphorically, covered from every angle and perspective. Simply put, it will proclaim her unhappiness in their relationship and her bewilderment for volitional persistence with the current situation.
Ron thinks back to happier times. He thinks back to the beginning. She had been so beautiful and radiant that night on the stage. She had a light about her, her voice like innocent and transcendent yearns for love, their source completely pure. That was when he first saw her. It had interrupted his admiration for the Oxford grass on which he sat. He had never seen or felt grass that was so soft! So lush! He wanted to roll all over it, to body slam it, but he withheld such urges amidst the sophisticated crowd. He would only talk about Eliot or Lewis, the weather, Darjeeling first cut teas. He had researched such topics earlier and kept repeating them in his head.
She has her back turned to him as she sleeps. She had begun to lie like this as of late. Ron, while still clutching the bed edge, carefully turns his body over to face hers, his movements slow and laboured to minimize vibratory ripples through the springs. He looks at her brown mousy hair, long and wildly splayed on her pillow. He traces down her neckline to her shoulders, her night shirt wide at the neckline and nearly falling off, then down around her chest, each breath a small expansion, a gentle rise and fall. Longing and desirous for connection, he starts to breathe in time with her. Their chests expand together and then passively deflate. They share the same proximity, oxygen, life, and then let it go. Ron takes satisfaction in this. He desires to be one with her, that they would breathe together to make one giant breath. He wants to spoon her so that they would become one giant body, because he is convinced that life is better when two are one. Everything is stronger. It is the way things should be. Instead he clings to his side of the bed awkwardly, the distance between them a gulf.
Ron had not given much thought to fate and alignment of stars, but when he saw her for the first time he had felt an energy and connection to the universe, it sparked an instantaneous belief in such things. It was ironic and rational therefore that she was playing the role of Juliet in the play, the epitome of romantic love, her bare feet dancing upon this most amazing grass like an Eden, the beginning, where loves intention first set ablaze without defect. He could feel his heart pounding as if metronomic for the world, its pace perfect, to the rhythm of Romeo’s courtly strumming. And at that very moment her eyes did meet his in the crowd, a conclusion to all the tension and energy, an explosion of both metaphysical prognosis and resolve. They both knew that they would chance upon the same pub later, phone numbers exchanged. Through telecommunication they would build a bridge, from that bridge a bed, and in that bed sweet, sweet love.
Ron looks across the bed and sighs. Things were so good in the beginning.
He remembers the days and weeks that ensued where they both floated on clouds, the hand holding and skipping through Oxford’s leafy streets, the laughs, the banter, the joyous drunken moments of youth, a world seen through new eyes. But then came the cracks, at first small, minor complaints; mismatching musical preferences, hygiene habits, views on each other’s parents. Then the perfect world split open, minor grudges becoming full scale arguments, heated exchanges screamed at close proximity, doors slammed, toilet seats left up, food chewed too loudly and with an open mouth. Every action became symbolic of protests, cunning and suggestive. Deliberate. They would plot against each other silently but in each other’s presence. Hubris fuelled psychological voodoo, Jedi mind tricking, the atmosphere ominous and potent, a chaotic imbalance of Yin and Yang.
Distraught, Ron starts to think about the story of Romeo and Juliet, his arm fatiguing as he does so. He looks for reasons, answers to how his relationship could fall so far from grace. Then it dawns on him. Romeo and Juliet were only together for days! All they knew were the initial moments of attraction! The lofty passion! Their whole relationship centred and ended in the honeymoon phase! They didn’t know each other well enough to hate! Their visions were clouded by desire, faults overlooked by lust, discrepancies trumped by chemistry!
Ron’s eyes are opened wide with his epiphany. He sees everything clearly. The story of Romeo and Juliet was wrong! The real tragedy would have been if they had remained together! They would have learnt to hate their only love! They would have fought and argued then run back to their respective families, the Capulet and Montague feud newly replenished and inspired. This was how the real story went! This is the real tragic love story!
Again Ron looks over at her sleeping placidly - the gentle rise and fall of each breath. This was her in her most peaceful state, she was harmless but still – Ron’s arm turning numb from its persistent grip on the bed edge – making him suffer. With Ron’s free arm he glances at his watch. It was past ten in the morning. She was so lazy! And still, if he woke her up now he would have hell to endure, she would moan and hold a grudge all day. She would complain of her robbed sleep, use it as an excuse for lack of shared chores around the house and would tell Ron that he was not sensitive or aware of her needs. Ron thinks of all her persistent complaints and nags. He starts to question the last time she said anything positive. He watches the gentle rise and fall of each breath and begins to detest them all. He detests her sleep. He detests her constant complaints, her selfishness, her dreams! He looks at his arm that clings to the bedside and starts to feel stupid for doing so. He shakes his head both at himself, her, and the ridiculous bed in which they shared. He lets go spiralling, colliding into her in the middle. Ron decides come what may. Awake the beast! Love is pain! Love is suffering! Love is a collision and then picking up the pieces of an ugly mess only to tenderly try to put them back together again finding the pieces too intermixed. He will give his all to her and love her despite her quirks, her defects, her verbal knives and belittling blows. He is a romantic and will therefore bleed for the cause.
