Love

Hello blog readers :))

I was about to write "Today is Saturday, which is good", but then I found my fingers typing  "Today is good", and I would like to leave it at that. I just want to stop thinking for a moment about the future, and what is to come, and realize that now, this moment, this time, is as perfect as things get. Life is perfect, now, on this cushion in the same old spot I've sat so many times trying to write stuff down, in this room that desperately needs cleaning, with my hair a mess and things and people in my life in perpetual disarray. This spot is charged with my own energy, my heart is calm. I am complete.

I want to talk about love in today's post. So often we read about it, watch movies about it, and imagine what it's going to be like when the ultimate One walks into our lives (I stated it that way on purpose, so that finding the One rings of sacrilege - it does). You know, I think this post isn't going to talk about love, but the word "love" and its uses and implications in a human life.

I think the concept of love is one of the most over-used and over-emphasized ideas floating out there in the multiverse. And we put way too many unrealistic expectations on love; we charge that word with so much meaning - it's gotten so bad that the meanings of many lives I've encountered depend on the presence of some sort of love in there, usually of the romanticized, non-lasting variant. It's crazy - I mean, you can't open Youtube - fucking Youtube, for the love of God - without having to read through some comment that ends with "ily babe <3 xox". That's what "love" has been reduced to - even less than a word. A bunch of automated characters that some people may have to look up the meaning for, if they don't know or don't use chat lingo. "I love this song." "I love that color." "I love pasta." That's what love has come to, because people don't necessarily think before spilling words out into the atmosphere, words that have no meaning and no heart, that are so fucking heartless it makes me sick to live on this planet (it wouldn't be so bad, actually, to space-travel sometime soon. And my long-cherished desire for a time-machine, I wish that to happen soon.)

If someone doesn't love you, and makes it clear to you plainly that they do not, thank your lucky stars. Even better if they say it in words, or in whichever style of communication is the dominant thread between you people. The most productive gift you can give to anyone is honesty, at least in my opinion. At least then you'd know that if you're disillusioned as a result of a love venture of sorts, that disillusionment would be fuelled by YOU, and not them. They have not led you to the acceptance of false notions. You have only deceived yourself. People who are "cruel to be kind" are to be appreciated. That sort of kindness can be a mark of character strength (surely, if the context of a situation supports such a claim). If you tell me the truth, I might be hurt, but not nearly as offended and aloof as I would be when I figure out someone has lied to me. It's a point of view worth looking at.

Back to love. For a lot of us, when the word "love" comes into mind, it springs up images of some sort. A visual image of lovers rushing towards one another. A mother holding the hand of her child. A soldier kissing his friend goodbye on a battlefield. A cat and a little boy sitting at the seashore. But these are fabrications, they are images. You can try to label these things as "real", and you might succeed, but if that is reality, it is certainly a highly ephemeral facet of it, one that can't survive for too long. It's like a flame that eventually has to be put out, until another time, when it can be rekindled again. What I mean to say is, in more practical words, there are moments of everything. There are moments of friendship. There are moments of realization. There are moments of temporary insanity. There are moments of love. And love is real in the moment. But you can't expect it to be the meaning of your life. That's too unfair to the concept of love, the beloved in question, and to you. Love, and the search for it, are not things you can build a goal upon. Love is a part of life, but it isn't life. Or else the two words would be synonymous. Love is everything around you. It's energy. Exactly that. You couldn't confine energy even if you tried. You're not conscious of having something, when you have it all the time. That's the way with love. It is everything, and consequently nothing. So don't worry about it. Taste it, feel it, philosophize it in the moment. But the One is a concrete concept. Love, on the other hand, isn't. You might not find it in the arms of the one. Don't search for it, or it keeps running away. Your mind will scare it away. Why search, when it's always there?

When I was eleven years old, I visited an orphanage. This was not the first, and I am sure it shall not be the last, tangle with an Institution of some sort in my life. I came out scared. I was frightened for maybe a year and a half after that. Then came the daemonic possession phase that kept me frightened a good long deal into the nights, especially with Shantee gone. But after that orphanage visit, I couldn't stop calling my mother to ask where she was. If she was even a few minutes late, I would panic. Where are you? When are you coming back? I was afraid something'd happened to you. I love you. I kept saying those three words to her, over and over again, every night and every day. I would make sure those words were the last from my mouth that I would speak to her at night. The idea of love had become a hysteria that I would use to prevent myself from dwelling on my fear of death. That's the root thing that plagues me the most. Even as a child, I was very intimately aware of mortality, and how astonishingly real it is. It's hard to stomach, that things and people and passions are going to die. But that is what we shall be reduced to. Or expanded to. Both, I'm sure of it. The point is, I "loved" so hard that it no longer had a meaning. I put too much fear, too many feelings of rejection, too much sadness, into the wake of love. One of those reading experiences that's always stayed with me was reading about the experience of a girl in Florida. She had been listening to the radio, specifically, a program in which a psychologist was being interviewed about the effects of divorce on children. And I remember the authoress wrote down what the psychologist had said, that the biggest fear of children whose parents have gotten a divorce is that if one parent left, then maybe the other would, too. And the authoress described pulling her car over, and feeling the hot pain well up in her throat, and crying. That is a feeling, she says, that has haunted her throughout her life. I feel the same way. Now you know where it hurts most. And you might try to hurt me, if I'm a part of your existence. Try.

Someone remarked to me recently that I use the word "love" too much. I attribute it to many people, and many things, too many for it to be charged with true meaning. Now, this guy, like me, has a passion for words and verbal communication. He's good at stringing phrases together, and he has a verbal love style. I've noticed that about him. He needs words of love. Some people are like that. And to hear that coming from him made me think about my usages of the word "love". Thing is, I'm sorta like him when it comes to words, a regular nitpicker and dissector of possible hidden meanings. In the moment, I feel I love someone, or something, and I'll say, "I love you." But, yes, it does take away the profundity of those three words to hear them said about everything, and to everyone. But I don't belong to anyone. I have no specific One to say those things to. So a verbal stream of love always comes out. I don't belong to anyone, and yet I love everyone, and am everybody's lifeblood. I feel connected, yet aloof. I rather like it that way, sometimes. But it's a double-edged sword, especially when you take your own humanity into consideration.

What I believe with my heart is that I've had two great loves for real, tangible human beings, loves that have lasted, and have had the power to reform - not necessarily to reform me, not to reform them, but just having some sort of regenerative potential. In my lifetime I have loved my mother, and I have loved H. There have been other loves, that have sprung up usually from a humanitarian concern of a kind, a "Christian sympathy" (or condescension?) for the other, a notion of temporary familiarity and maybe even brotherhood. But these loves have been personal. Tangible. Mine. H holds a mirror up to me. In her eyes, I see myself. She is all my self. My mother is another Universe altogether. We are a union of opposites, she and I. Both equally nourishing aspects of "love". These are the people to whom I rarely verbalize my love. They probably hear the words "I love you" once a year from me. It doesn't need to be verbalized. It's there, all the time. It is known unto all of us. And these are the two most challenging relationships of my life. Coincidences? I think not. I fell in love with a woman. I fell in love with a spirit. This is a side note, for those who are going to jump up and say, "Lesbians. I knew it. It figures." I'm attracted to women sometimes. Just as I'm attracted to men other times. But this "love" that people talk about is of its own class. It rotates in a different sphere than what we can hope to understand. "The heart knows its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing." "Love is not a part of sex, but sex is a part of love." Think and feel about these things. Develop your intimate relationship with Consciousness.

Look, I'm rather tired, so I'm going to go. There must be things I've left out that I would have liked to say. There are always such things, because there's so much to say. But not all of it is meaningful. Remember that, in your hearts. Sometimes silence can be the most impressive word of all. In the words of Saint Charbel, "If you do not understand my silence, you do not understand my words." Love is silent. Above all things, of that I am sure. One final thing, before I forget. If I shall ever be conventionally married, an occurence of which, at the moment, I am doubtful, it shall be to the one who is my friend, in the sense of the word that is most meaningful and necessary to me.

Have a peaceful day.

Signed, your friendly Water Bearer.

Oh, yeah, and my e-mail: bemgcasrbaquarian@gmail.com