Sometimes we are stuck. Can we even envision the place where we would rather be? There is a yawning chasm between there and here. What we need is a Bridge but nothing is visible. Looks like we might have to build one, but what tools and materials do we have?
Are there any similarities between where we are now and where we want to be? We want to approach from the closest possible point. Maybe the distance is illusory, maybe the place we plan to get to doesn’t exist at all. The Bridge, on the other hand is ours. We built it and we can own it. The Bridge itself may become the place where we want to be.
Discipline is our resource. Discipline means doing something we’re committed to do even when we don’t want to do it. We’re forming new skin to become the person we want, need to be. It’s sore and tender at first. We’re charting a new path to finding our soulmate, but we lose confidence fast.
The psychic rebellion starts early; right when we open one wakeful eye. Do I really have to get up? No one cares but me. I could make a new rule, a new plan…But we know the truth – this is just our devil messing with us. Trying to see how much it can get away with.
The saving grace here is to fall in love with discipline. With path making as an art. Discipline is order. It’s building, like music. It’s the Beautiful Thing That Comes Next. If everything’s chaos then life is purposeless and nothing matters. Naturally we can change our plan – any time. Our real self always has the chance to make and change informed decisions. But is our Real Self, this niggling, seductive saboteur? No.
We are on a journey to our real self, the self embodied by the Other (which is tantra) and the self we create together (Tantric Attachment.) We’re committed. And we’re excited! We’ll never get there if we sit by the side of the road in a bundle of sobbing bones and blubber. Here’s the kicker – it feels better the more you do it. You will come to the understanding that it’s all inside you. And you love it!
LOVEWINGS
My aunt’s a dancer She said “Feel my thighs Ain’t they hard They’re my love-wings Hard as heartwood I’m flying on ‘em half the time. Practice making perfect I’m Tightening up my style in case a valve On this here pressure cooker blows And splatters darkness like a Damsel in a murder case we might Solve someday.” She laughed and did an arabesque. My aunt is thirty-five. I said What beautiful thighs you’ve got
Youth is hungry long before dinner is ready. We recall youth as a rollercoaster of highs and lows, a mix of aspiration, beauty and joy keen as a knife’s edge. Let us never forget that sense of Spring when all things were possible and we were the linchpins holding up the universe.
Youth’s sense of power is so disproportionate to reality it almost seems as if wisdom prohibits action rather than informing it. Like the smarter you are, the less you can accomplish! Youth rushes in places Wisdom fears to even think about. Yet the sense of possibility and the delight in discovery are so heady nothing balks Youth for long. It’s all over far too fast.
We have discussed the fact that if you want a soulmate, you will have to kill dragons – both yours and theirs. There is trauma potential, to say the least. Every one of us have experienced trauma, many of us have forgotten it, most of us deny it. How we represent the scars of life to ourselves has everything to do with how we represent ourselves to others.
Today’s meditation is about “snapping back,” not just “recovery” but Plan B. We may need a Plan C, D, and E. The fact that the dragon got the best of us on one or two occasions is no surprise. Remember learning to drive?
We are really about learning to learn, learning what to fear and not to fear, learning how to react to constantly new sets of circumstances. We are resilient, we are flexible. We are cagey, we are wily.
By the time we meet our soulmate we will have our own dragons under control, and we will have many stories to share about The Ways of Dragons.
A BRUISE A CUT A FEVER
Dragons exist. From my tree perch I watched them Uncaring of rules and bored by Their games, I wrote down Statistics In gold crested diaries. Fairy-tale beginnings Augur sour endings. Pole-axed by Europe. “This stuff matters frightfully” And I was affrighted.
Culture-mad-Mother Forced us to look Then forced us to blink; Her timing was off. Dad sought his oceans In history, in pictures, in The madness of Nature; Encapsulates daughters in Unsinkable Fiberglas; That captain lied when he said We were all going home.
Loathed masculine privilege I disliked you on sight Teased your editorials Insulted your proctoring Reviled, you prevailed. Kindling a clove-scented ecstasy; Inflaming my fevers at the same time as Quenching them.
Sweeping West you Pulled the Atlantic behind you, smothering Both of us; I fought back with Monogrammed luggage.
Swimming nude in your rapture we Posed for Swedish love manuals Under the falls. I thought I knew everything till I met your parents; Your father’s impressionist: Your mother convinced me That monsters can flourish.
I dust you with my glitter as you peel my shock-pants; Our children wait impatiently To get their lives started. “Ask him to marry you Mommy! Ask him! Ask him!”
Mourning = DETACHMENT “Hide & Seek in the Museum of Modern Art”
“Perfect is Enemy of Good”
After a loss, Mourning is required. Don’t recoil. Mourning is a growth process which, because it hurts so much, feels like retrenchment. But in the Garden, pruning IS growth.
Artists try to convince us that spaces – which may seem blank or even empty to us, are part of the design. But what is the design? It makes us hurt – it makes hearts and brains hurt – even to attempt understanding of all this emptiness. All this change.
Physicists remind us matter transforms; it doesn’t “vanish.” As we contemplate the empty spaces with a sore heart and a buzzing brain, we will need peace and compassion to appreciate the majesty of the whole design.
We expect sore muscles after exercise, but, oddly, we don’t expect a “sore heart” or “sore mind” as we struggle along our Soulmate path. Sometimes it’s a “sore spirit.” We’re not doing anything “wrong”; life is a rhythm. The “perfection” in our imagination is actually STASIS – the opposite of “life”. The nature of the Other is to break our immature expectations of Perfection with the Wildness of their Mystery.
If we are to create a New World together, the old world has to go! For a long time – possibly our whole life – we will be honoring our Loss. We may search for ways to reframe it (sometimes it is a blessed release) sometimes it was the shedding of a constricted skin.
Mourning means this is not an effortless adjustment. Even joining lives triggers a loss. It is scary and new, the loss of our proud loneliness. It can feel like sadness and there is sadness that our privacy will be invaded. There is terror: we will be exposed.
Mourning is Detachment – you can see the Lost Past drifting away from you like a child’s balloon. It is not just “OK” to mourn, it is necessary and there is no substitute. The fact that you had a worthy self, a worthy past, a dignified life and were “fine on your own” is part of what makes you Beloved.
Your Soulmate is feeling this too. This is another thing you can share, and there are all sorts of ways to honor it. Some Soulmates need at the beginning of a relationship to keep to their own schedule. You will always need your own room, or private and alone times for retreat. It is necessary to establish boundaries such as private journals, private phones, private work. We are developing trust, as well as changing at the same time.
Honor those sore muscles of honest effort. Just as sore muscles will slowly improve, so will this sore heart/mind/spirit. We must rub it with the liniment of love, trust, sharing, hope and self-regard. We are brave, and no mistake! Remember the promise “those who mourn will be comforted.”
HIDE & SEEK IN THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
Life class; It’s my game but you started it. Here we are, lost This place resembles me, a Swollen storehouse where Nothing can be explained, Everything’s left Open to interpretation.
Outside a single tree flowers in Smug delusion; all this whiteness Weights the soul. Mastery bites Like teeth on lip; my Throbbing inner elbow Where the blood lies gathered. Lies gathered. Let’s admit it. Take Responsibility
For once, leave no work Unfinished. Anonymous Entries win no prize. Pan-flash –
Loss = SUFFERING “Two Lovers Contemplate the Seawrack”
“Hostage to fortune”
Something vital you have relied upon is simply gone. This Loss creates in us an almost hallucinatory state of core wrongness. The world must be rotten if such vibrancy can be destroyed. Einstein says matter cannot be erased, only transformed, so where has our Precious gone?
Possibly it never had a physical manifestation; perhaps it was an illusion. Or do we identify the Beloved with it its physical presence so totally that even change or sickness or age will turn it into something different? We must think about the unseen world as well as our more familiar evolving world to understand Loss.
Loss changes us; clearly, we will never be the same again. Loss is an opportunity to confront Reality; the Reality within our heads as well as in our hearts.
The one thing that scares people so much about Soulmating is the prospect of loss. This is so frightening some of us would rather opt out of emotion altogether rather than even imagine experiencing the pain when Precious is lost.
What is really happening here is that we are re-viewing memories of terrible past traumas and our Soul is thinking, “I can’t go through that again.” These are unresolved terrors; we need to resolve them. Our Soulmate – just the knowledge that Soulmating is possible – is one of the ways we can do this. You need the belief that the two of you can create an eternity where you will always be together.
Yes, the prospect of loss deepens when you love, as does Love itself. It will give us a new heart, fresh eyes, stronger hands. Love teaches us that the Universe is our Soulmate – we were born for it as it is born for us. Love can never be erased – it can only enlarge us.
TWO LOVERS CONTEMPLATE THE SEAWRACK
He lost her Spoke too soon As men are wont Affinity flew overhead Danced with gulls A jazz-mad snowflake. His words Freighted by their inner logic Fell to earth and lay Prey to busy bristle-footed worms Who tidily dismantle Subject, verb & predicate; Sucked out the sense and left The elegiac bones to rot Amid kelp-wigged rock & glass-rope sponge Cheek by jowl with Long dead fishermen’s wives Punished now for ill-set dough and Worse-set hair Mouths agape in imitation of The badly sutured wounds of childbirth. Secrets told; corpses left to nourish Nature’s counting-house One season only; sharing space With shattered petrels Feathers spewed like pillow-stuffing Frenzied passade of love-struck boys – Strewn among the shavings of these once great ships Built by hearts & backs of men Who loved their daughters far too well Losing them to sailors Crueler than the great sea-god himself; He who stirs our sleep these nights With grief-crazed cries of loons Casting on the waters for their Far-flung children Lost forever now As we are lost as He lost her.
The Chrysalis looks dead; that is its disguise. A simple, broken leaf, soon to be swept away by wind or rain. But in fact, it’s a puzzle box that holds the whole universe inside itself; an unbroken chain of DNA, an augury of “becoming” dating from the dawn of Life itself. So is each of us a Chrysalis…of what? For what?
We are powerhouses seeking ignition. We can feel the slow-gathering strength within, but we are still mysteries to ourselves. We need the Other to become a Full Being. Plato posited that man/woman are separated angels endlessly seeking their other half. Your duty is to protect the chrysalis so that it can unfold in its own good time. Be patient, your day of flight and connection comes ever closer.
HOT PROWL
Don’t wake up. Surveilled by night Your chiseled torso Slackened with exhaustion. Touching things that once You touched, Listening to your apnea; I turn away before you turn. Making peace with all my choices. It’s been worth everything – Winning in divorce a Hard-won superpower: Invisibility
Life is always a collaborative venture. Cooperation makes the world go round; you are not going to find a SoulMate without carefully orchestrating your dance steps together. Working together on constructive plans that will pass from one generation to another has created multiple marvels of engineering and design.
But among human beings, at least, the chain breaks down when some of our less attractive tendencies toward competition, paranoia and greed rear their ugly heads. And there is little that can be accomplished on the human plane at least without seemingly endless slatherings of goodwill. In the animal world, cooperation goes much more smoothly, with social insects routinely building cities that rival the Eight Wonders of the World.
Human marriage is a two-way support system; that is the reason for its longevity. Divorce and dissolution come when someone feels they’re getting too little. Cooperation always offers chance for communion, that vital sense we have of being a necessary part of something bigger, more long-lasting and more important.
Division of Labor – We’ll never be able to do everything to achieve our goals. We are going to need help. How do we get other people on board? How delegate effort? We need to brace ourselves for “pushback” as in, “Why should I help you?”
We may have to help other people with THEIR goals! When we made our list of resources, other people figured prominently. Now we decide how to “sell” our ideas as well as ourselves! Why are we worthy of help and assistance in a world that is begging for it? As so often happens, the best advice is to “start small”. Offer a friendship transaction: “I’ll pick up this item for you if you pick up that item for me.”
“Cooperation” is reciprocity. We are looking for an equal relationship that respects our essential differences. We not only need support on our life path, we are eager to support the Beloved.
“Cooperation” protects us from one-way relationships. Above all, we don’t want to get sucked into another’s cycle of destruction. This pathology currently goes by the name “narcissism”.
“Narcissists create a shared fantasy of victimhood.” Narcissists LIVE in fantasy. They create not only a fantasy version of themselves but also a fantasy version of YOU!! This is critical for comprehending the anguish caused by abuse. They are excellent manipulators; they create an idealized version of the victim, and narcissists somehow convince the victim that they should play along to receive the benefits that they seek.
The narcissist secures the “power” of shattering this fantasy whenever they choose (known as the devaluation and discarding phase.) They threaten to deprive you of your perfect self-image! That is why we experience so much pain. We are not grieving the loss of narcissists. We are not grieving the time we spent with narcissists. We are grieving our idealized lives and selves!! Narcissists are filled with a senseless, secret hate (usually based on envy) that requires them to degrade and disappoint you – probably some “magical” re-enactment of a catastrophic disappointing degradation THEY experienced once upon a time. You can’t be their therapist.
As soon as it becomes apparent that cooperation is not only impossible but that your suffering is required, you need to GET OUT NOW. Willingness to give is the necessary foundation of SoulMating.
Solitude is required for reflection, and reflection is required for growth. Growth is required for choosing a soulmate, because the choice cannot be haphazard but the result of self-knowledge.
Solitude is not loneliness; it is the Art of Being Alone. Wise Ones have told us that ultimately each of us is only alone; we are born alone and we die alone. Plainly, this cannot be true. We are as social a species as the ants and termites. But just as one could argue that every worthwhile achievement has been a collaboration, one could also argue that every worthwhile idea was conceived in solitude.
I prefer to think of our “mental, emotional and spiritual pores” having both an “on” and “off” position. There is outflow, there is in-flow and there is no flow. All are necessary to the health of the human being and all are necessary to the maximization of human potential. Depth psychology merely systematizes the layers of human consciousness and sub-consciousness whose existence dreams have always demonstrated.
Meditation and mindfulness seek to capture the exact moment when the soul experiences itself. This is not possible without regular periods of scheduled and enforced solitude. In-breath must equal outbreath until suddenly the lips of the psyche part and, as in a “magic eye” painting; the familiar world dramatically shifts to reveal under-worlds and over-worlds of multiple meanings and intense possibilities.
Self-Sufficiency: How panicked are we by the idea of being “alone”? Even those of us who are introverts are sustained by a complex net of relationships, any adjustment to which could drive us back to infancy. Are we alone even within our relationships? Are we alone on our planet? In the universe? It is surprising how much this fear can be seen lurking behind our consciously assumed states of mental “good cheer”.
Most of us work in collaborative ventures; nothing we do would be worthwhile without, at the very least, someone to assess or appreciate. It is time to take stock of our internal personal resources; those that owe nothing to the support of others.
Opportunity; Much of what we think during the day is in fact a dialogue. It is salutary to ask ourselves: who are we talking to? Is this person imaginary, dead, alive? Are they helpful – or cruel? It’s common knowledge that we speak more insultingly to ourselves than we might to anyone we know! Time for a “voices” upgrade. These are part of ourselves talking to each other; possibly parts of ourselves we could do without.
And is that the best way to accomplish our set goals? Now’s the time to understand that, given education and culture, we can never be “alone” in the sense of bereft of help. We have countless models we’ve been choosing from childhood up. Who are they? Do we need upgrade them, or just name them and learn to deploy them more effectively? Some of us are surrounded by a mix of celebrities (Humphrey Bogart in “Play it Again, Sam”) some of us by the loving dead (Granma and Grandpa) others by cultural icons (for me Shelley, Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson) some of us by imaginary friends or even angels.
What’s working for us and what isn’t? After all, we furnish our own brains. Let’s decorate by design.
Danger! An important component of the confidence we desire to cultivate is freedom and self-determination. We all know how unsettling a date’s visible desperation can be. We instinctively back away as from a sinking ship whose whirlpool threatens to suck us in. In other words, the best way to gain a soulmate is to be able – visibly! -to live without one. This sounds nonsensical; but look at it this way, you ARE living without one. Is your desire to change your life based on the indisputable fact that your life is a mess? If so, we have to turn our attention to THAT first thing, otherwise we are the sinking ship no one wants to get near, much less, on.
Challenge! To increase our chances of finding the best person who is right for us right now AND in our future, we have to GIVE ourselves a future. No other person can be our “future.” We need to have a vision of a future we are working towards. That is what we want to hear about our date, and that is what they will want to hear about us. It’s time to become your own best friend, the one who really cares about you and gives such good advice
HEDGEHOG CROSSING ROAD
Spines erect as swords She waits To tilt the windmills rushing by Machined from hell to trap Her tiny weight of soul and fur.
She fears not. He who protects the sparrows Comforts her. The air is sharp With winter not With false regret –
She lifts her head to gauge The moment ripe for flight Unaltered in her captaincy of self. She’ll reach eternity or the pond
The Moon = SUBTLE INFLUENCE : “Botticelli’s Simonetta”
“Secret crushing”
The Moon and the Sun have nothing in common. The Moon is a planet, the Sun is a star. The Moon doesn’t give light; it reflects light; it must be tired of being compared to the Sun. What an unfair fight!
The Moon is our hostage, circling us slowly. Balefully. Oh, it has its worshippers. I mean, which would you rather be, Moonstruck or Sun-struck? You can recover from The Moon. The Moon seems manageable; Earth has visited it many times. The Moon is symbolic; vital for poets; unavoidable for lovers. The Moon is the Planet for people who like to sneak around. The Moon manages our tides, but subtly. Cruelly. She is the Queen of passive aggression.
There are two ways to accomplish anything: full-frontal or “sneak attack.” This knowledge, so dear to military strategists, is one of the first things we discovered as children. You rarely get what you want simply by asking for it. Instead, you must study “the target” and determine likely responses. As children, we usually realized it helped if “target” was in a good mood! Bad mood targets say “no” to everything!
But this simple reality has important ramifications for us adult planners: there is also “weather” in the world of human desire and accomplishment. It’s much more difficult to “take off” in a storm. The Moon is visible entirely by borrowed light, but that’s the least important thing about her. Her power may be invisible, but we can feel it in our blood, in our bodies!
There could be no more useful introduction to the potency of Subtle Power. Sometimes in order to achieve our desire we must prepare our target to even hear us. Jesus illustrated this brilliantly in a series of parables anyone would understand. When he was asked a question, he’d tell a story whose moral was obvious. He allowed seekers to answer their own questions by first determining what “paradigm” matched their circumstance.
Plotting the “weather” and analyzing the “players” tells us much of what we need to know when planning to move forward. It can be admirable to lay all our cards on the table, or it can be foolhardy; as men discover who propose on the first date. We’ve been given complex brains. Let’s use them to think strategically.
Do you have a secret crush? Do you know why — or is not knowing an important part of its power over you? What’s influencing you? Where is this pull coming from?
The moon exemplifies subtle power; entrancing its quarry like a sidewinder. That means it’s time to “think outside the box” and take a deep dive into the “hard” wiring of your motives and desires. Just how “hard” is that wiring? Just because it’s “factory-installed” doesn’t mean it can‘t be improved upon.
“Customization” according to your unique requirements is far superior to accepting whatever your biology throws at you. Let’s study our own blueprints with a view to a possible re-design if we don’t like what we see. We all have nonsensical fears, triggers and prejudices; keeping them in darkness allows them to proliferate, even assume command. The Moon is one of the Imposture archetypes (Fireflies is the other) but the moon is more about you posing to fool yourself.
We who seek our Perfect Other Half wish to be free of all that. We want to know what we actually want, what benefits and what harms us and all we want is the ability to speak it honestly. Let’s compare your real self, your desired self and your social self to your desirable self – and learn.
Can you change? This is the most important question, because you’ll have to change to blend smoothly with your other. Resistance to change – to experimentation, to re-design – is the biggest red flag there is. It’s a deal-breaker.
SIMONETTA: Botticelli’s Muse
Ah Simonetta! You were always All the faces; how we
Pity the griffon backed toad Who dreams of you And you alone;
Excepting your fatality – Eyes flint deep, pebble shallow, Thunder lines coiled on Lips pursed tight
A tantrummy child Punishing parents by Refusing to breathe.
As this world is not Perfection you can’t be; Yet somehow you embody
Everything we yearn for; your Pear-hard belly Anticipating ravages;
Unto that scar that splits you twice Equator-wise, spilling out the thistle-tailed phoenix
Who perpetuates your face, spinning Ropes of rubied veins and Clouds of gilded hair –
Arching you back to Burst you, husk and all Against the sun.
Dormancy casts us into contemplation, and contemplation heightens our uncertainty. Duality reminds us that meditating on the opposites in our natures must become part of our standard meditation practice. When we desire to bring a soulmate into existence we ask ourselves: what does it mean to be “opposite”?
Consider all sides of this equation; consider, also, that we ourselves create and trigger our own “opposites” so we must observe the infinite potential conceived by the opposite of intention, designed by the opposite of desire, spawning the opposite of Being itself.
It is human to want two conflicting and contradictory things at once. When we “choose” any one thing, we give its shadow power. We still “want” the neglected thing: perhaps more than ever now that we can no longer “have” it. This can’t “hurt” us so long as we’re aware of it.
We must expect the path not taken to rear up in our dreams and stake its claim to our life. When we see it, we dismiss it again: “Begone, I don’t want you. I have not chosen you.” Every time we make this statement we diminish its force a tiny bit. The worst thing we can do is become its advocate: “Maybe that’s not so bad. Why can’t I have both?” If we make that mistake we are setting up a vicious circle of longing for the way not chosen; we may decide we are more about the bad choices than the good ones: “I just can’t help myself.” Speak the words “Begone. You have no power over me. I have not chosen you.”
Every time we say them they become a little bit more true. We have the right to become good souls by design, not monsters controlled by appetite alone.
Approach/Avoidance. Fear/Attraction. Love/Hate. We feel all these emotions at the same time, swirling together to form a new emotion, ambivalence, which some of us try to negotiate using experimentation, “safe words”, role play. It’s possible; but rigidity is always to be distrusted. If we are manipulating a series of masks to hide behind our purpose is automatically defeated.
What is that purpose? Self-knowledge. Self-revelation. Authenticity, followed by the bliss of Other-knowledge; other-revelation. And the fact that, together, soulmates become a multiplied force of never-yet-seen-in-the-history-of-the-world power and personhood. To achieve this goal, we learn to accept and know, tolerate, negotiate, master and revel in the wilderness within each of us and the wilderness we create together.
This course can be fearful, even shaming. We will decide several times a day: “This is too much for me”, “I can’t do this,” “I’m not good at this.” How dare I release you when I can’t release me? How can I create you when I can’t create me?” We dare. We can. With the ultimate result that we release and create, Us.
The Sideways Smile
I heard you singing and remembered All the things that you’d forgotten Seeing you clearly – like A fish in a hailstone.
Seeing your hands Long for a man I always thought Your upper lip too short Like a lion’s – in fact You have an animal presence –
Placing no trust in words Placing no trust in love Pretending you’d never met me Creating islands undiscovered Worlds unreachable;
You were the joke I didn’t get; I recall your sideways smile Blowing smoke between us Refusing to forgive the essential fragility that Marks us humans;
Fated as you were Always surrendering To the scornful cries of your Invisible hecklers.
The shadow=DISSONANCE “Considering the Chill Factor
“Confronting your shadow self”
We were very young when first we became aware of The Shadow. No happy moment, no celebration of joy is unaffected by its subtle miasma. But what is it exactly?
Much of childhood – history itself, in fact – is absorbed by the effort to put a name to this lurking angst.
Demonic forces, bad dreams, animals, reptiles, insects, The Invisible – entire populations of seemingly foreign persons have been stigmatized by this label. Which is not to say that somebody, somewhere, didn’t experience trouble from the reality of these forces.
Philosophers tell us that all we’re feeling is an inherent fear of death, but we can see that fear itself is hardwired into species who are otherwise unselfconscious of the limitations of existence. Perhaps all we have to fear is Fear itself, as the President put it. But who would willingly wish to walk fearless through this dangerous world? Isn’t it better to be prepared and take care?
A great man once advised us to be as wily as serpents and as gentle as doves. Good advice for gardeners! The knowledge that joy is fragile heightens its ecstatic power. Without this triple vision of past, possibility and future courage itself would be impossible.
Suspicion – There is something behind us. We can feel its unsettling presence. It seems to follow us everywhere, teasing a fine line between doubt and paranoia. In medieval times this “shadow” was represented by The Grim Reaper, complete with cape and scythe, reminding us the party would soon be over. We are warned to “Take care” by friends and loved ones; but against what exactly?
Doctors tell us to be vigilant about our health while at the same time they mock hypochondriacs. There are people who never “take care” and who insist that suspicion itself creates the monster, but on the whole, these people are not enviable. They appear to have rejected a “sixth sense” we’re all born with. Who would willfully blind themselves?
For those of us committed to exploring all our senses suspicion shadows joy as doubt shadows faith. Visually, shadows show us where things are. Like taste testers cultivating knowledge of the edge between sweet and sour we “feel” for the “turn” of the tide. The better to avoid it? Possibly to control it? At least to get an image – however brief – of the Thing that has been following, following?
Ascetics need particularly to arm themselves with some sense of when “just enough” turns into “too much.” Many authorities try to convince us that being a little “hungry” is a good thing. Certainly being “sated” triggers a drowsy, relaxed, state in which our “guard” is down. We do lose consciousness of that quiet little “frenemy” following. Following. The Shadow symbolizes a problematic development just coming into perceptive range.
Jung says we all seek our opposite, our “shadow self.” Feminists want house-husbands, wall street traders want supermodels. We yearn to recover our disavowed selves, blindly, subconsciously. Online profiles request specific “looks”, weights, backgrounds, experiences as if “soulmate” was a job. Yet we remain dissatisfied; feel shortchanged. Perhaps the shadow is fear of change. The thoughtful among us blame ourselves: “I’m not right”; the shallow blame the world: “I can never get what I want.”
The truth is we are judging plants by seeds when what we want are gardeners. We want to become gardeners, we wish to BE the garden. But how on earth can we do THAT?
Absence of understanding OR language renders our circumstances hopeless. We need another singer who will help construct a duet that doesn’t yet exist, a fellow artist of the sexual, the subconscious, the unconscious, who paints us as we photograph them. We need to be prepared to change places in a moment, to sing and redesign the other’s part. We must be willing dreamers with a huge repository of fantasy, fearless poets accessing a universal vocabulary. We will fall in love, then out of it, fall deeper, soar. It will feel uncomfortable and unfamiliar at every point as we blend swiftly changing roles of tutor and pupil. Prepare yourself to plunge into another and become them, as they remodel you.
CONSIDERING THE CHILL FACTOR
Considering the chill factor As I always try to do – That day was hot Too hot for love or war.
We sit in restaurants. I pick The blue-veined shrimp He picks the black-veined news.
Outside drunkards Carom off the plexiglass like entertaining fish. “They envy us” I say and Andrew says “How nice.”
I see a couple coming in; she holds him up As I so often upheld you. I know that touch – like surgeons who manipulate the dying.
She wears my dress the one I wore the day you Shamed me Stuck me sizzling to the sidewalk – Shamed us both with red red stains.
“Andrew I don’t think I have quite forgiven you.” Andrew says “How nice” and Lays his coffee spoon upon the cloth – I hate the brown stain – it spreads like murder Like the bad smell of death Breeding fumes as we do Corpses in the sun.
I rise to speak Shrimp spewing from my mouth like Parasites. “We have always been So happy, you and I-“
