Amy in Context

Romance is never easy... except when it is. From the first time I met Amy Ann Krog I loved her & trusted her implicitly. Her energetic bounce, honest face, & blue eyes with blue top. I'm not an adept psychologist-version of Foucalt, I can't trace the intricate sociological threads that piecemeal together my personal maturation (if there is such a thing in the flux) that provided my new & improved feelings of love. The Seattle streets I walked to cafes far away, the interiors of rooms or birch or cedar groves, the effect ceilings of warped natural wood or starry firmamnet have had on me. The friends with witty banter or seemingly indiscriminate abundance of detail. The quest for perspective is often waylaid by the chaos of its never ending. How often have I avoided putting in context what this relationship meant to me here, in this blog, because it seemed an impropriety. Well, for honesty's sake I'll pull back a bit of the veil.

Chemistry in love is even more evasive than me. The seeming components can gather but the whole won't even add up to the sum of its parts the vast majority of the time. People spend so much time with their demons they don't know how to wash their angel's feet. I love Amy. Her parents, grandparents, extended family, friends, & her own willpower did well in raising her to be a fine, multi-layered woman. I love her quirkiness. I'm a sucker for quirkiness but even so I've been especially fond of her particular quirkiness. How do we compare someone's specialness to someone else's? How do frame a context in which so many complexes flare to light? Is the past so irreparably different from the ever-changing present? Where is the constancy? How do we still ourselves & see the lips & hands, hear the voice, & remember the smells mixed in with all the levels of content? That we didn't fit is a disappointment that has been crushingly hard to reconcile. As Jack Gilbert wrote:

Love lasts by not lasting.

It's no secret that I'm hardest on those I love the most. With hours of dedication I've eeked out a few extra lengths of humanity which are still somehow shells of what they should be. What that matters is impossible to weigh. Rachael told me I shouldn't take things so personally. I have worked on taking things transpersonally & this has only served to deepen my conviction that what we do & think matters. Negations, what we don't do & what we don't say, matter as well. I'll admit that I'm an escape artist of sorts, the memory of girls rejected & people circumspect haunts me. I remember so much, even if the details get subsumed here and there into impressions. Those I love I expect more out of. Do unto others as you'd have done unto you. I'd have others be aware of what they do to themselves, to others, & the world. Everyone has their shadows. I'd have them plum those shadows for the gifts of knowledge. I'd have them thrust the unnecessary from the light back into the shadows. Situational choices are such a joy & so often a brutal expose of lessons unintegrated. The vision of betterness lies in wait for the earnest.

So because of one unrevealing sentence in a fragmented context in a blog that maybe half a dozen people read I quote-unquote "Can no longer be trusted." Is this all? Is that the full explanation? Is there ever a full explanation? Part of why Amy & I don't fit is her go-getter action, she is energetic that one. I try to make my actions considered. Sometimes that contemplation bleeds into excess, past the boundary-line of socially accepted timeliness. In the process of trying to think my shit through I err on the Taoist side of not disturbing nature's processes. Everyone else can do whatever they want of course. Judge not lest ye be judged. What a misinterpreted statement! Of course we judge! We must discriminate to make the sacrifice of life headed towards death fuller & more meaningful--- holy. What is spirit but that which underlies our behaviours. If we claim to not be spiritual do we claim not to care? What greater indictment is there? That we care doesn't mean we should flounder & of course we all do to some extent. So many choices.

I have an opinion dammit. If you're my friend you're entitled to that opinion. IfI had my way I'd have things be known in common benefit all like Heraclitus would have but I respect the social pressures of relationships enough to keep much hidden. The exception being to some extent Rachael because her callous, cold behaviour made that option forfeit if I was to survive the damage. I'm not running around detailing my sex-life or Amy's various opines of Jack, Rob, the Marine, her parents, or any other such personage. I simply relayed one incidental scrap of a sentence which I duly noted as paraphrased and followed with qualification. Call-and-response. So many choices.

As ever, I choose to love Amy regardless. To love everyone I've loved regardless. To expect a lot out of them. To be disappointed but okay with that. The human soul has to lift itself up somehow otherwise life on this planet will disappear or surivive by inhumane means. I choose quiet Sunday mornings with coffee staring at the trees & summer dresses, little quests wherein my thoughts dance planting blessings like world-tree seeds in the seams of fabric tangled through the vast weave especially close to the people I love most. I choose little bouts of volunteering that I don't detail to anyone so as to avoid unnecessarily feeding my ego. I choose an increasingly green approach to day-to-day life, rounding my rough edges so that I emulate nature's curves instead of industry's straight lines. Frank Herbert writes that the summons to cooperate identifies the healer. I choose healing. Amy, if you read this, I hope we all heal.