Fricking Breakdowns

Here I am goddamned crying again. Should be in Olympia visiting friends but oh no I have to wait until it's late in the day then edit myself out of the situation because I could only be there for 2 and a half hours before leaping onto the bus going back. 2 and a half hours with five hours of bus-riding sandwhiched around it. Truth be told, I dread going there. Iremember moments with Rachael on sidewalks, in restaurants, the way she worried about how we held hands, the moments I wished she'd have just verbalized what she wanted. Fuck, it's years later and I'm still a wreck.

I hate the bullshit insecurities around half-assed romance. The one time I was fully in love the girl has to go and shit on my dream of being a writer--- the one thing I would never give up. Whatever life philosophy I build around myself I still choose to remain detached. I'd rather risk my sanity by daring some internal metamorphosis than hand too much of my heart over to friends because I've seen my greatest trust turn into poison.

Aaron, I barely keep in touch with the man, and he's my soul brother! Ahniwa, love the guy. He has devilish grins, many thoughts, and he's always considerate about personal matters. Theo. Who's more honest? The man wears his heart on his sleave and it's a big sleave. Rebecca? Fuck, I was honest when I said I wanted to keep in touch with that girl for the rest of my life and I just let it slip away because of fear. Matt, Onyx, Daniel. Nope, nope, nope.

No more Catholic fear of pleasure as a source of guilt, of pleasure being sin. I shed that skin a ways back. No, this is pure fear of betrayal. Betrayal of the other. Instead I betray myself everyday with my reluctance to engage even as I often do it mightily, I still revert back to my shells. http://www.arlindo-correia.com/200305.html#DESPISALS Why can't I break through my despisals!?

Why!?!? This life is so full of talents. I can see myself harnessing so many of them, that I could be a formiddable healing presence indeed. Yet, within that knowledge is the seed of a doubt. I felt it at my grandfather's funeral, an unworthy boy. Unworthy of pouring the holy water on his grave because I couldn't cry. All of these people, faces with lines and textures and stories, experiences that reach into the very depths of what we can all be about--- I fear that they are incapable of love. Jack Gilbert says in an interview, "The best thing I've ever known is to be with somebody, someone who is capable of love--- second to that is to be alone." Yes, solititude is a prime ingredient to a healthy life but all those people out there they can say the word love all they want to. But can they live it? Will they just play it casual, play it cool, be dismissive, generalize under the surface in that place beyone words where the soul is weighed, where feeling in all its complexity counts?

I'm just not over her. If I had let myself pursue Rebecca I would be, I would've stood a chance. If that girl called me up tomorrow and said I've found an old abandoned church in Mississippi that I want us to live in and turn into a home, I'd be smiling every hour of overtime to see that dream into fruition.

Heraclitus says, "The known way is an impasse." Enough of these prescient visions. Since the tsunami I've had only the vaguest trails, and dreams too dissembled to interpret. I don't want the cultural catastrophes, what I want is those little personal triumphs. With whatever will I can muster I will burn them into being with the heat of my desire. If intenstion sets reality into motion I am getting ready to flare with the magical heat of creation.

The Three Brides http://www.oilpaintingshop.com/ma151.jpg is a painting I look at from time to time. Rachael used to say she saw nothing spiritual about marriage, and sometimes I wondered if she said that to me just to hurt me. Then we had stupid conversations about her hair when she wanted to cut it near the end. I'd tell her she could do what she wanted with it but if she cut it short she would look younger (in my tone there was a starker sense of disapproval). Did I want control? Did I want power? I don't know. Deep down I wanted balance. She disarmed me of my power by not wanting to hear my poetry, by not wanting to be spontaneous (walk? but it's raining outside!), by riding me into the ground when I was hurting, by constantly being drawn to other men, by not wanting to kiss. I was devastated for months before we broke up even tho I was too proud to show it by that point.

That painting has all the trappings of symbols for my associative agony. The woman in the middle is radiant, she's naked beyond her skin there's something in her presnce that says she is what she is. I can't pin my finger on it, nor would I necessarily want to. It's not the pallor or the raiment it's the harmony that resides in abundance despite the strain around her. She is the true bride whom nymph & sylph alike bow to. On the right is a cruel one, with a haughty kiss coming from a nymph. On the left is a cold one, with the most distant restrained of kisses forthcoming. Hair oozes out of bells, looks like waves, like garland, like greenery, like a ceiling to the earth. Beneath all these women worms or maggots crawl. Depending on your perspective these make you want to wretch or you see their regenerative quality. Le Chateux des Femmes is one of my favorite motifs wherein the hero must stay true to adventure and identify what is needed if anything. If he is with a lover he honors her by not giving into temptation. If he is without he strives to identify who has real human qualities. Really, it's just a boiled down version of the mating pool. The kind of convergence we all encounter, when we are pursued or pursuing on all sides. This painting, as a man, has me gazing right at the women alone. It represents a spectrum and a harsh reality. Purity is nothing without extremes and there is no purity without extremes inside it. My friend Becky has told many times she needs a man who's a bad boy. I myself seem to fall in with kinky girls. I can't help it they're more alive. Yet, I still return to the way Rebecca walked the way she could be in glasses and a less glamorous outfit, away from her skirts and sexy boots, and just breathe in what was around her. Some people just reach you like that and you're sympatico.

I'm too confused about my mantle of responsibility to wear it at all times but it hangs like an albatross nevertheless. The gravity of the situation pulls me down and up and in. Out into the world. The toothless bastard gets my time when the high class broads won't even look over. Why? Because somebody has to be human. Someone has to make existence redemptive. Who are we if we don't care that even one man is out there suffering? One girl is crying rape and if we don't wrestle her oppressor off of her she's more likely to give in to the futility and the hatred. Corporate sponsored consilience is raping our connection to everyone else out in the "primitive" world but very few seem to give a shit. Who stands up for the heartbroken, the war torn, the abandoned friend, the homeless, the beaten, the orphaned, the exiled? Us, if we have the guts, the gusto, and the grinding joy of work that makes communication not only possible but fulfilling. The real isn't only what knocks you out in a rear-end collision, it's what flies through your head when you are buzzing with twitterpation. To identify the bliss, the real that you want to cultivate, the garden of earthly delights that doesn't hold back the devastating violence or the appalling indifference as necessary counterpoints as part of the joyful participation is each person's duty. Without such dedication each person becomes a parasite, an elusive part of the problem. To quote Elliott Smith:

So I guess you'll be leaving me
You're heading off with the enemy
A little less than a human being
A little less that a happy high
A little less than a suicide

Well, I've wound down. Stopped crying awhile ago. I'll make it to Olympia next week. Maybe I'll even make plans ahead of time. I psych myself out as if I don't have to face my fears on a daily basis. There's no end to the mixing. Markale's take on Druidic monism has been in my thoughts a lot lately as well. We must seek out the masterplan believing in responsibility and justice while not putting too much weight on things being sacred or profane. The truth is things are both. The sooner we realize this and still choose more joy, the sooner we achieve higher being as a species.