
Hummingbird – The Soul
Sleep discarnates –
Tiny species dream big; fly
Through
Time on
Cancelled Ego

Hummingbird – The Soul
Sleep discarnates –
Tiny species dream big; fly
Through
Time on
Cancelled Ego

#Haiku: Marriage
Alone we perish
Jointly we’re immortal.
Heaven’s joy
Maximized

#Haiku: Inspiration
Without composing we
Decompose;
Broken fountain –
Ruined garden

#Haiku: The Lovers
Falling upwards
Into you
My other wing, my second
Clapping hand

Party Castle – 11 PM 22 Aug 79
Glad to go to Maine and thrilled to leave it. Mary & Debby dancing. Today’s been eventful – T got my letters and was enormously moved. He says the worst mistake he ever made was burning my teenage letters. We should try to exist without this phoning but can’t help ourselves. Diet going well: I feel good. Struggling with a pile of thank – you letters from our engagement tour.
Castle – 7 PM Fri 25 Aug 79
T. and I separated 11 days already – feels like
eternity. Avril announces she wants her own apt so I should put house on the market. Maybe it’s easier. Flooding small publishers with Blood Memory – feel pessimistic however. 3 poems accepted – 2 by Colorado Woman, 1 by Friends Journal. Doesn’t feel as good as I’d hoped.
Struggling with new novel where I try to tell the truth
about Devon. But why should anyone want THAT God knows.
Moving costs $400. I still think I should sell my Fiat.
Rotten crowd tonight. I am bored and jerking like a marionette.
Dancing with crazy Robin and Anne who never stops talking. She says
June’s in the hospital in a full body cast – will never dance again. Car accident. 2 more sets only – praise God.
Trying to read about Lewis Carroll. Avril says Zach is
threatening to show up. Don’t show up, Zach. I have a headache.
2:30 AM Sun 27 Aug 79 –
There is a God and she likes me. Zach didn’t show.
Long phone call with Toss then walk dogs to think about it.
He is such a powerful person it’s a little disturbing. Said he read my poem (The Duel) to his most erudite friend who was very impressed.
We wound up in another argument about my dancing. I can’t bear his slurs so I referenced his past drug use – WE’VE BOTH EXPERIMENTED, ALL RIGHT? He wants me to live without money then complains about selling capital. I told him it’s a “schizophrenic bind.” Didn’t mention how I have to PRY my own stock (it’s in my name!) out of Mom and Dad.
Reading an idiotic romance – its very idiocy is refreshing. I see why people get addicted to these. Like looking at maps when you’re lost.
Ok they’re only two dimensional but it’s SOMETHING! Clutch it like a talisman.
Crystal Tues 28 Aug 79
Last night dancing. EVER! Celebrate with expensive liqueur chocolates but I’m too enervated to appreciate them. Finished I’m Radcliffe, Fly Me. Ultimately a failure. Fails to explore the inherent corruption of institutional structures.
Horrible night. $5 in tips – they are sick of the sight of me and I refuse to buy new costumes. Word of my approaching marriage leaking out everywhere.
I am scared to death of being dependent on T. I think he could
reassure me but doesn’t know how because if I really showed need for him would I be undesirable? Is a puzzlement.
I feel like I’m unfastening my suckers from Avril and grabbing onto T! Up here without a net! Then I get mad at myself for being so infantile.
Can’t I just write and feel powerful? We’ll see! Doubts creeping in! This time next week I’ll be in Kentucky! Well, I’ve written some good poems lately.
Self-confidence atrocity attack. Feel & look rotten. Realizing the extent to which I was fertile soil for my parents’ anxieties.
3:30 Thurs 30 Aug 79
Everything done, ready to leave. I’m in shock. Crawled into the bath with a vodka tonic and now I’m feeling better. Trying to figure out how to approach parents for money. Maybe they could give me my own stock as engagement present? Feel I won’t be able to disguise my contempt.
This “I’m All Right Jack” no matter WHAT – is mighty convenient for them.
I realize any sense of my own helplessness triggers all this Rage: NOT a good sign for T’s and my relationship. He can’t “make” me independent! I must not succumb, or Plath-ize. (She sacrificed herself to the gods of rage.) I’m doing this guy no favors handing him a woman on the edge of breakdown.
4:25PM – My darling just called! Relief! He borrowed a truck from
somebody so although we’ll have to drive separately we won’t have movers or returns to cope with. He’s driving it out here so I can sleep as late as I like which I really need. Impossibly intense happiness. Peace & joy. Feel we have been standing in a dinghy trying to balance. Equilibrium is everything.
The irrevocableness of marriage. My children mutely applaud my choice. Suffering under the hopelessness of explaining myself to any of T’s friends. Rain. Any excuse not to take a walk (T lives in bad neighborhood.) Feel like a girl in a gothic novel except for the constant sex which makes it a different kind of novel. Break with the past.
Reading Robert Ludlum’s perfectly ludicrous Matarese Circle. In 100 yrs people will wonder how we stomached this stuff. A. and I going to Olney theatre to see The Bat tonight.
Newport KY – Tues 4 Sept. 79
Reading old high school love-letters for anything I can use. Blood Memory now renamed Speechless.
T. ebbs in and out of stranger-hood. He told his friends I used to be an exotic dancer – because he won’t “lie” but I think it was a bad idea.
One obscene phone call so far.
Don’t like the way they stare at me. Last night we made love twice. I especially like to watch him sleeping – the perfection of his profile is heart-rending. But his angers are so weirdly arbitrary. Not with me so far but I am divided on what to do – if I ignore it will it just get worse?
Are we programming that I’ll be reasonable and he’ll be outrageous until there’s no going back? But if I don’t “let it slide” it’s non-stop arguments.
Went to a famous restaurant to drink mint juleps last night and ended up in an argument about whether he has any misogynistic ideas or not. I proved he did (he thinks women “act stupid”) but that didn’t make him happy!
He’s given me the entire third floor of his house with glorious views over the city – I spend most of my time up here. Total furniture: a desk and a lounge chair. It somewhat makes up for the fact that he presented me with a new vacuum cleaner – obviously thinking I’m going to clean for him.
Uh oh! Misogynistic idea #763. Mostly I am incredibly happy. At about 8 I’ll start the casserole & set the table.
Newport, KY: 10:15 AM Wed 5 Sept 79
The electricians wiring my study have been here for 2 hrs driving me insane. T ordered impossibly ugly furniture from Horchow catalog – luckily agreed to send it back. Enjoying A Certain Slant of Light. Point of view not a problem for this writer. Next Drabble’s The Ice Age. Mental project: The Contemporary Novel.
6 Sept 79 – 2 PM
Toss suffering recurring nightmares that I will leave him to go back to DC Can’t reassure him as much as I’d like. Moves upset me to a terrifying degree. Let’s hope the next is last till kids are born. I recall when I moved to Maine to write Devlyn it took me a full month to get my neuroses under control.
4 good pages on book but I still don’t know the plot. So far it’s everyone has no idea what they’re doing which is probably not enough. Molly Lefebrve’s book on Coleridge fascinating.
T & I rose at 8 to go shopping together. Argued over each item; his ideas very rigid. Ultimately we laid in a glorious supply food & drink – I gave him check for my ½. He is slightly alarmed I won’t open a checking acct here. But he did offer me allowance which now he says he can’t afford. Too proud to complain. Must make money writing. Should take a walk right now – wake myself up. But light a little scorching – longing for fall.
12:50 PM Fri Sept 8 – 79
Long letter from Devon full of love and caring – his girlfriend sounds so wrong for him – prudish fundamentalist: what is he thinking? Must we marry our nightmares?
Perilously close to a bad argument last night – somehow we got over it. Trying to treat his ideas with respect. Our family has a ban on displays of anger – his doesn’t! In Sheffield World the angriest person wins because they “care” the most. Or are just willing to behave badly, I suggest.
It makes me angry when he postpones our wedding AGAIN because he needs a big production and he thinks I can’t raise the money. It’s my second wedding: not asking folks to pay. House will sell eventually.
Sometimes he argues against the whole concept of a wedding: says, “a piece of paper doesn’t marry us” BUT IT DOES. I ask, why does a “piece of paper” make him a lawyer? He says, “That’s different – a wedding is for other people.”
“Maybe next summer” does not sound good. Not Thanksgiving (which I think would be the easiest thing) so I suggest spring vacation – he says Sept a year from now! Wants to have a job first. I don’t like this in-between world. I think it is better to get wedding stuff out of the way. Now he’s trying to talk me into living near his mother in the city but I hate cities. Impasse. Seems I don’t need to cut very deeply to stir up ancient pus.
Can’t speed up the intimacy process as much as I want to. Keep having to detangle Mom & Dad’s puritanical creepers out of my own mind!! They give me a headache. At least T is making dinner tonight. If it weren’t for alcohol I don’t know if we’d pull through. Loving Christina Stead’s Miss Herbert.
6:40 PM Long letters to Devon and Merrill, then when T came home I wept for an hour. Apologize. This is heavy work. T shocked me by suggesting we “spend the summer here”- my shocked response showed how much I think I am “camping out.”
Mon. 10 Sept 79 – Finished mad disturbing Miss Herbert then walk in dark with dogs. People’s complex rationalizations for the arcs, crests & troughs of their lives bear no actual relationship to them says Stead, I think I agree. Order & purpose come in a dream – then flash away again. Liked it even better than Dark Places of the Heart. Weird publishers’ blurb says they themselves don’t understand this novel! Poor Stead!
War with my own novel struggles out a snails’ pace of 3 pages a day. Lacking focus. Keep longing to write here like I’m on the verge of some great discovery. Want to read my old diaries – make notes – but that would be a massive undertaking. With NO effect on novel.
In the meantime poor T and I continue our struggling course. On Fri. his friend poor Mary Ellen was raped. I told Toss this was a bad neighborhood! I think I’d be scared if I didn’t have dogs. At least no sodomy or blowjobs. Told T she should come stay here when she & husband get back from hospital – she should not have to live in that house again.
Last night we lay naked face to face kissing and talking about the amazingness of our love. It is amazing. We’re riding a tiger and trying to tame it.
Saw Marquise of O – came home to delicious steak dinner – took a tour of restored houses. Poor T trying to “sell” me on staying in Kentucky, but I pine for our own Pennsylvania house. So, what is the answer? How does one give true weight to ideas & inchoate aspirations?
To the Conservatory to see plants – then home for fabulous lovemaking. Good weekend.
Tues. 11 Sept 79 –
Every day its catalogue.
Jan & Mary Ellen to dinner – she has black eye but otherwise seems no different. Does not disparage her new (and obviously dangerous) house.
Mom sends separate letters to me & T. I feel she is on “his side” not mine. Obviously “living together” is at the heart of all our problems (secretly, she probably thinks it’s my exhibitionism. Me!)
Reading Self-Starvation about how children make enemies of their own bodies in reaction to growing up. Tremble with recognition. Feel so much hostility from Mom – she doesn’t know what we’re doing but surely I’m corrupting T with my awfulness. Mom said things in her letter she could only know from what I wrote to Genevieve. That outlet stopped. Feeling a rush of mature personal power – I’ve moved beyond them.
Speechless is a horrible, bloody struggle. Writing about things too close to me. Wrote my first seriously bad scene – when they are adults all together.
3:50 PM – Too upset after letter from Genevieve to write. She has been robbed of her honest feelings – she is just pumping up and down on the merry go round. The family decision seems to be that T will get sick of me soon but they can’t decide if that is good or bad. My insistence on having a “real relationship” means I’ll never have one! Silly me. Need to do housework – or something – till I feel better. Shouldn’t try to write when feeling despondent.
Midnight – Bath & Facial. T beautifully aroused – we made love TWICE. He repeated I am only girl he ever wanted to marry. Feel even our most terrible problems being slowly overcome. Routine & diet coming under control. Dream of the Rood horribly unsuccessful.
12 Sept 79 – Magnificent day only half over. Charting novel – seems “completeable.” Starting research for Demon. No bad mail – no guilt about housecleaning – send off Walt Whitman entry. Sylvia Plath poetic incentive – I can’t put her down.
Dawn walk
Thunder crusts a gelid sky
Is it light or is it rain
Feathering
My nest with longing
Stippling out a soul flushed
With new growth; bursting from
The steepled trees.
This is my world and I release it
Readied for flying
Stelliform –
Tough as spidersilk
Unrecognizable
Even to myself who birthed it
Spent my life creating it.
Released and
Blown away.

Party Castle 12:05 am 2 July 79
Wrote D an angry farewell poem.
“HOW DID YOU MEET?”
You saw me naked
I saw you too close- up.
Between the green glimpses
You cut mountains down to size;
I’d no idea that one could take such charge of space.
You hovered, teaching –
Drinking vodka,
I drank wormwood –
Everything’s my fault.
Now I’m a toad-dweller,
Nostrils pierced by thorns
Falling face-first through every hole;
You were the king the ghost pines saluted.
How you dove and danced!
Speeding through your love-drunk universe, you
Infected me with your own whiteness
Dizziness, till all my blood drained out.
You challenged God;
I was just the echo following after.
Yet here I am after all this time
And nothing promised remains of you.
Or, “Good luck with Sleeping Beauty’s castle!” That’s what he gets for messing with my heart. Can’t show anyone – most certainly not him –
– and it isn’t really finished – and I don’t think it ever will be. But thank God for diaries. Diaries can be told anything.
Reading Secrets in the Family – it is so superb
I am going to buy copies for all my sisters. Looking forward to discussing it with Toss. I’m beginning to miss him now – he’s so deep and interesting to be around – so alive on many more levels than anyone else – challenging all my levels. Falling in love – happy, crazy.
Thurs 11:05 – Plush Palace – 5 July 79
Back at The Plush – it’s catch as catch can in my
present situation. I am alienating managers left and right. But I am happy crazy and who cares?
Because on the third of July Toss asked me to
marry him and I said yes! Here’s how it happened. On Monday night we ate white clam linguini and Crenshaw melon while listening to Keith Jarrett’s Koln Concert – then – came together in delicious, soul-freeing sex; two perfectly matched combatants recognizing each other not just from childhood and youth but school and dreams. He was eager to learn how I could best be pleased – so I surrendered to the inevitable. Fireworks!
He left me sleeping there in the AM – I heard thumping downstairs but I know he has roommates so didn’t think anything of it –
– when he came back for lunch he discovered the door broken in and my purse missing. Keys, wallet, everything. I had to call into work – had to call a locksmith to give me keys to my car.
Toss doesn’t know what else they stole because he doesn’t know what else is supposed to be in this house – called his roommates. They came, police came. So we spent a day of intense babbling and the worst kinds of petty annoyances – but none of it mattered because he was there. In fact, I welcomed it; it was an extra opportunity to be together.
At one point I said, you know, you’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a man. He said, if I believed that, I’d ask you to marry me. I said, if you did I’d say yes.
So he said, “Do you want to get married?”
I said, “I think so,” and there it was! He said I’m the only woman he has ever wanted to marry much less asked. We even chose the children’s names – there are going to be two of them – a boy and a girl of course; a combination of our old addresses! Had to call Aunt Frederica to give her the good news because
she’s the one who had to give the hospital permission to stitch me up ten years ago after our first unfortunate night together! (She was drunk of course. Both times)
Toss asked me to come back to Kentucky for his
last year of law school. I “shouldn’t miss this part of his life.” Dogs too, natch – we are a package deal.
He has a house he’s rehabbing that has so many
rooms it is known as the Hilton. When I said I would come that was more important to him than our engagement even. He says I can file for
divorce in Kentucky’s understanding Commonwealth. He ordered a case of Moet Chandon, saying now we have to drive up the coast and
tell everybody. I am a little scared to tell my parents – this suddenness might only seem another strike against me. We told Avril and Maureen – they just stared – obviously thinking we both have lost our minds – it will take them awhile to believe in it. I told Avril about Kentucky –
she says she can handle the house; she can always rent out my
room to a college student if she feels pinched. I want to leave some money with her – at least $1000 – had the brilliant idea to sell my car.
Wouldn’t want to be impoverished in Kentucky and I don’t want to be on “retainer” from T.
Last night I read Toss The Duel and his eyes
filled with tears! He said the only flaw he sees in this arrangement is that one of us must surely predecease the other! Could it really happen? Could we grow old together? Could it be that I will never make love to another person? Wrote a short note to Bruce,
telling him I will definitely be needing a divorce, sooner, rather
than later. Now I am trying to write a letter to D; but honestly,
what is there to say? Summing up our relationship seems only
to dismiss it. He has already fallen far, far back into the past. Toss is my future.
The Duel
Europe without you
Was a funeral feast.
I recall the procession of your letters
Far better than
The stream of luckless suitors
Trying to distract me.
Virgins aren’t distractible.
Your seductive missives stalked me.
A fatal ploy was that nude photo
Adam lonely in his garden.
I came right home.
I well recall the ceremonies
Of that night!
Your shyness
My perfume
Our ignorance
Wild and hard
A riderless horse.
I did cry out as the candles burned.
I swear there were some moments when
We actually saw each other.
But if this magic sword cuts both ways
Why was I the only bleeder?
They peeled me off
And dropped me down a mile
Of antiseptic hallway –
A princess in a bucket.
It could have ended there
But at your school I haunted you
A chilly-breasted demon.
My daytime incarnation seemed mature:
I fooled everyone;
We chatted as you prepared the skin.
I bit down hard and
Tasted only
Suture wire.
You wrote and broke off
Our association.
Years groaned by
Like convicts chained
We served our terms with no time off
For bad behavior.
Lust had luster,
Excrement was ecstasy.
The castaways the whirlwind
Flung upon the sand
Were calm, polite
We knew our way around. But
That look you gave me!
Our unborn children shivered
In their sausage skins
Fully aware
Their time had come.
The tale was done
The frog-mask
Shivered off
We saw:
The you of you
The me of me –
Masks
Unmirrored
Scars
Unscored
Virgins not but
Innocents Restored.

THE DEMON LOVER
I. ABRAZO – THE EMBRACE
EVAN
I like women willful, late
For appointments,
fond of showy clothes and society, vague, drifting, dreamy,
yet of course all of that is tiresome.
Love mingles with irritation.
But I don’t like competence, intellectual honesty, intelligent sensuality.
Women who turn on me saying,
“You don’t love me.”
What good is it to have been so happy
when it ends so painfully?
I am a “crook”, a “torturer of women”,
“Murderer.” She makes me feel a monster.
Below the surface of the will
I feel deep animal distress, as if I had wives
Hidden away somewhere; perhaps
That is why I had to marry
My present wife.
EVA
If you start “trying to be good”
that will really come between us.
It’s too unattractive. What are you up to?
I dream of a small house in Burgundy but
You must help me pay the rent.
Having a home is a form of egotism.
My beautiful one, you could make me so happy.
Selfishly I want you here
So I don’t have to hallucinate your nearness.
What’s that wife of yours –
What do you call her –
Elayna –
Thinking in her frozen chamber?
I’m feeling sorrow at our growing separation.
Can’t we pull out of the world’s battle and live in retreat?
Grant me one last happiness
Before the sufferings of
Pain and old age.
EVAN
I can’t keep up with life’s ambiguous futility.
Is happiness just “freedom from pain”?
Life is unendurable without you.
People here are flirtatious but not sexy.
it’s so boring here
I’m hardening my heart to give up my home.
EVA
I find your misery gratifying.
This power of enjoyment comes from being an artist,
It is the secret of my strength.
When I was younger I used to
Accommodate everyone –
Now I’m recalcitrant.
It hurts because the sword runs through both of us.
You’re never out of my thoughts, but
Sadness dulls one.
Honestly, I always risk failing you,
Failing you in outstandingness.
You are extraordinary, I am extraordinary,
we have been extraordinary together.
Specimens under glass.
The agonizing force of missing you
Is sweeping over me.
We have eternity connecting us,
Backward & forward but I just
Can’t get anyone to believe it.
EVAN
Would my death simplify things?
My wife struggles with carrying the conversation
While I stare glumly at the rain.
We go to an expensive little restaurant
And pretend we are on a date to really talk.
My double life begins the moment
I say “Are you in love with me”?
And really mean “Am I in love with you?”
EVA
That woman’s killing you.
Imagine if you were dead and your wife
Wrote a book explaining you
To everyone! That’s true suffering –
Fodder for the mealy-mouthed.
EVAN
My wife won’t be writing any books
About me or about anything. You’re the one
To write the book. And
I feel safe in your witch-like hands.
EVA
Except I’ve told you over and over
You’ll outlive me. Because
You’re a killer.
Or your wife is.
You look younger than I’ve ever seen you.
Have you gone queer? I fear
I’ll die of my addiction –
We always do.
We prefer it.
Will you write about me?

Night – Balance
If This Archetype Chooses You – Something in you is out of whack. Balance is a key law of nature to help us avoid the dreaded stagnancy that we experience as a kind of living death. Once our conscious is in harmony with our subconscious, our dreams begin to balance our waking life. Even the worst nightmare can be looked at objectively in the light of day, as a warning story with curative potency and significance.
Creatives Seek Balance – Unfortunately our contemporary life has become a competitive pursuit of “highs”. A good life well-lived provides natural highs – learning a skill, reveling in physical and sensual gifts, falling in love, listening to music, sharing with children, enjoying the grandeurs of nature. Our intellect teaches us that every “high” is dramatically enriched by thinking about it! That’s why we are called “homo sapiens.”
Balance is a Law of Nature – The pursuit of competitive highs without the thinking and enshrining stages always leads to excess and grief. Highs for their own sake inevitably disappoint, leading to a pursuit of more and more dangerous highs, which, if we are not thinking about them, sharing them with others and incorporating them into our personal history and philosophy, damages our ability to experience joy. Understanding and managing our “emotional highs” is the key to future joys.
Creatives Live on All Levels At Once – Creatives learn to give thanks for and pay tribute to the Past, to enjoy and understand the Present, to anticipate and strategize for the Future and to revel in and be comforted by the promise of Eternity.
Balancing the Levels – Joy that is held in the mind is joy endlessly re-experienced. It will be yours forever, and you will be able to share it with all the people you love for the rest of your life. Each of us briefly experiences heaven during our lifetimes; prolonged, immortalized and enriched by experiencing and re-experiencing with each other.
Creative Challenge – We need to personally set up our brain’s “reward system” to handle pleasure and suffering or we will be prescribed drugs in an attempt to achieve the same effect chemically. Drugs can be useful as training wheels; ideally we want to teach our systems to achieve the same effect naturally. Calm is the first step to balance, so we must learn to calm ourselves. Meditation, sleep and yoga offer the best methods for reliable self-soothing. First, we assert calm over our breath, then our bodies, lastly our thoughts. It’s not that difficult! Reminder: this occurred naturally every night of our lives before we started stressing about it!
Night Is the Leveler – Our species needs sleep to connect to the Universal Mind, and to the minds of all Dreamers, human and animal. Conscious dreaming (often called lucid dreaming) provides a trusted avenue to filter daily discoveries down to your subconscious level. Always have a joy to think about just as you are going to sleep, and another for when you are waking up. This will sharpen your connection with emotional ecstasy and deepen your life. Once our conscious is in harmony with our subconscious, our dreams will balance our waking life. Even the worst nightmare can be looked at objectively, as a story with potential significance.
Models & Mentors – “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities” – Stephen Covey
“Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life” – Dolly Parton
1.“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. 2 A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. 3 A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up. 4 A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance. 5 A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away. 6 A time to search and a time to quit searching. A time to keep and a time to throw away. 7 A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak. 8 A time to love and a time to hate. 9.A time for war and a time for peace. – Ecclesiastes 3
“Moderation in All Things” – Hesiod
Assert balance;
Employ wealth of eternity
Universal mind

Sex – Soulmates
If This Archetype Chooses You – You are searching for your “other”. Do you look in the mirror and see another face? Do you dream of a lost twin? Do you imagine “the other” across a crowded room, and think when you touch their hand, you will feel a strange galvanic charge? Do you think soulmates are even possible? Is there only one or are many soulmates potentially developed over a lifetime? Are you disenchanted with sex? Does it seem like more trouble than it is worth? Do you have sex dreams that feel more like night terrors? Does sex make you feel increasingly worthless and untouchable?
Soulmates Are Real and You Have One – It’s never too late. You are never so “lost” you can’t find your soulmate. The problem is, your soulmate feels just the way you do and both of you are frightened of those feelings, isolating you further in an invisible, impenetrable membrane. You want your soulmate to rescue you, but creatives rescue each other. This takes a lot of bravery, a lot of humility, much insight and a little magic.
Desire Can Be Slaked – Temporarily. Creative must stay alert. We don’t pursue numbness – or even satiety. It’s good to get acquainted with hunger. Pro tip – hunger keeps you young. Hunger is a condition of youth.
When Creatives Bond There is No Going Back. – The potential magic of sexual connection ignites the search for a SoulMate. Creatives believe that once found, a Soul Pair becomes capable of Time Travel, TransSubstantiation, and Immortality. Genders merge; either one can be feminine, masculine or androgyne at will. One wing searches for another to form a bird and fly. The question we must ask ourselves is: are we willing to undergo the pain of having the boundaries of our borders breached to fully merge with another?
Creatives Lift Each Other’s Souls – The power of a doubled pair is raised to the nth power by their knowledge, commitment and shared purpose.
Creatives Release Each Other – There are so many permissions, forgivenesses, and skills we cannot give ourselves. Love literally gives you eyes in the back of your head. There is no hiding from your soulmate.
Doubled Creatives Power the Universe – The constant clash of mating, sharing, satisfying and negotiating is the music of the spheres. It keeps us all spinning in an ecstasy of selfless selfhood.
Creative Challenge – There are plenty of frogs out there and some vipers, and you will kiss each. Possibly more than once. It’s also possible that we have “rewired” our system – through porn, games, and casual sex – so that it actually prevents us from recognizing a soulmate and forging a life bond. This is why starting as friends is so critical. It gets your defenses down to the point where you can talk about fears, desires and problematic reactions. Go slowly, welcome mistakes and be prepared to learn.
Creative Danger – Sometimes – let’s face it – most times, you and your soulmate are “sick.” You have “caught” infection from a society that says “fuck you” to eternal, mystical, mutual sexual union. That makes things hard. You don’t recover overnight. You must commit to good mental, emotional, physical, spiritual and sexual hygiene and you will both have to figure out what it is. You need to make a plan – yes, a map – out of each other’s minds and bodies. If the other person refuses to accept health you will have to detach for your own sanity and safety. Vampires make other vampires, and bliss will elude them. The most important part of soulmating is the mutual pledge for health and growth – for both of you.
Creative Opportunity – My book, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead – is about the supernatural powers of soulmates. It’s about what to do when you dislike and distrust your soulmate at first. It’s about what to do when you and your soulmate both have horrific pasts and are pursued by actual demons. I can’t say it clearer than that. Don’t be frightened. Your bond is eternal, across time, geography and multiverses. Take it slow. You have all the time in the multiverse.
Bereavement Is Never the End – As life itself is not the end, bereavement cannot be. The glory of bliss still awaits, and detached Soulmates have been known to find each other and form new spiritual and physical connections.
Models & Mentors – “A soulmate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life and then introduce you to your spiritual master” – Elizabeth Gilbert
“A soulmate is the one person whose love is powerful enough to motivate you to meet your soul to do the emotional work of self-discovery and awakening”
– Kenny Loggins
“They fought all the time and challenged each other every day. They were crazy about each other” – Nicholas Sparks
“I know what love is, because of you.” – Herman Hesse
Only soulmates can
Slay each other’s dragons
Says Tibetan Master

Marriage – Partnership
Time to consider your ideal partnership contract. What would it be like? Have you been dreaming lately about weddings? Love, proposals, marriage? About The One that got Away? About partnership enterprises in general – video gaming, tennis – where an Ideal Partner/Helper’s got your back?
Creatives can’t make it through life without a partner. We’ve got friends who come and go, sometimes special ones, but they’ve got obligations of their own. What if we had a Perfect Friend who made our Best Life their priority? What if we were not only willing to do the same for them but to promise this in public?
Everybody Deserves Somebody – We come into adulthood with strong memories of familial dependence. We are all attracted to caretaking behaviors and easily seduced by promises to read our minds and give us what we really want, even if we haven’t figured that out for ourselves. Then hormones click in and we discover Desire. Not only for bodies, but for Persons, Lives, Individualities. Other people are a spice, other people are a medicine, other people are a distraction – everything our lives appear to be lacking. What if we could combine all these needs together in one appetizing human package?
Creative Challenge – We rarely ask our friends to change their lives for us. They are VERY rarely willing to do so. But a partner is someone to actively plan a life with. You get to talk through all the Wants, the Possibilities, the Fears. Heady stuff! The challenge is to know Yourself well enough to make any sort of honest statements about who you are, who you CAN be and who you want to be.
Sometimes Allies Need a Long-Term Contract – Lives are uprooted. Possessions are shared. Long term strategy results in map-merging to create a new – but more exciting – map. If you’re a giver, learn your limits. Because takers don’t have any.
Someone Needs to Take Your Back – As the great mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg pointed out, each one of us is only half an angel. You need someone to cover the things you can’t cover. And if you were planning to start a creative family, you need more than a partner, you need a spouse.
Spouses Teach Honesty – The person who knows you best doesn’t put up with a false front. You literally force each other to get to the root of emotions and behaviors that will open up your psyches not just to each other, but to the world and to yourselves. The spouse who falls in love with you and forgives you finally allows you to fall in love with and forgive yourself.
Staging, Experimental Life Lab and Boot Camp – we get to try out our ideas on each other. The Beloved Other is a Mirror and a Coach. The purpose of existence, the purpose of YOUR existence – suddenly becomes clear.
Creative Danger – A substantial number of partnership contracts fail. We all know this but we keep trying. Then there are the partnerships that evolve into Something Else, a Financial, Real Estate or Caregiving unit that is very necessary but also pretty far from what we had in mind originally. Our challenge remains the same. Is it possible to both know and be known? Can we find our Soulmate? Does such a creature exist? Is it possible to evolve with another soul to a higher plane of SuperSoul? Disappointment and betrayal are all too often the apparent outcomes.
Creative Opportunity – Soulmates DO exist! They DO evolve. We WILL change our life for another and they will change, blend, merge with us. Any interaction with another requires communication, boundaries, honesty, planning and “rules”. I put rules in quotes because a good partner keeps “transforming” the game and we keep transforming ourselves to meet it. The best way ever to honestly know yourself is to keep conscious, subconscious and unconscious in alignment. Purposeful dreaming, journaling and planning is the best way to achieve that goal! Get out your Training Journal and start with absolute honesty, realizing that tomorrow you may see things differently. Accept it!
Models & Mentors – “It’s not lack of love but lack of friendship that makes for unhappy marriages” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“What counts in making a happy marriage is not compatibility but how you deal with incompatibility” – Leo Tolstoy
“A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short”
– Andre Maurois
“The secret of a happy marriage is finding the right person. You know they’re the right person if you want to be with them all the time” – Julia Child
Merged.
Eyes when
I can’t see –
Two extra hands;
Relay race –
Inspiration.