Chapter 2

Aftershocks – ringing percussions – reminders of the lovemaking. Tiny bell-like percussions fanning then subsiding – calming my doubts and conflicts. I was desired in the moments of coitus. Can I hope for love and to make something real and conjure something out of nothing? Dreaming myself into a new reality better suited to me – unadulterated alchemy. With or without the guiles of female trappings – a human appeal – a solemn request for connection pared to the bone to mend my stone-cold heart. A confluence of events formed a rivulet which carried me along to a new place – a new mind. The bells – a harbinger of the future opening to love.

The quest seems quixotic and romantic, but the rawness of the course reveals a different picture. Self-sacrifice and a willingness to lose everything is painted clearly and transparently on the ticket for admission. The pain of lost love is profoundly revealed by Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, Romeo, and Juliet. Though young – they felt the body’s remission of lost love – a physical pain leading each to end their own life. The physical revulsion – raw, abraded nerves like unsheathed skin – the flip side of the sunny side of love. The alter ego of loves face has been proven scientifically – revealing that love acts as an evolutionary mechanism for propagation of the species by enhancing coupling – an evolutionary backstop to prop up loves advantage – sex. The pain of its withdrawal acts as a negative force field feedback loop making it the most serious of endeavors, because in the world of adult love – all is on the line. The most serious of endeavors with pain being hardwired in – part and parcel of romantic love.

A strange circuitous route – meanderings to get back to the same place. At the heart of it is an agenda to resolve the tattering’s of frayed experiences; to be stronger and to have more knowledge and to fortify the spine for the journey and to see a way through. Can I grab the reality of each situation and shake it for all its worth to see what falls away from the chaff. Truth telling and cutting away to find a way – an alternate course that is possible because of the brain’s plasticity. We can be who we want to be, but we must dream it first!

I will try to keep my sights on giving but not at the expense of my core self because personal boundaries are rules creating respect for myself. I am willing to have pain at love’s expense and even bow down and worship at its feet if it opens my heart enough to hold love. This is an existential calling and requisite which is counterintuitive because while love can sound so boundless and a happy happenstance it is actually more grueling and course and unshorn in its expression. Being alone with self-knowledge is a lonely journey and finding someone to share it with would be a gift.

The reverse engineering of how I came to this crossroads at loves door I cannot determine if the synchronicity was applied by a silent hand to seem like synchronicity and to lead me down primrose lane or was it some deeper meshing’s of wheels unseen? The synchronicity felt real – the happenstance, the coincidences, and the numinous reverberations. All that glitters is not gold and I must put on special glasses to look beyond the usual and spy on the specter which haunts the scene. Quite real to my mind and consistent with the chain of events and fortified by all my conclusions was the bad actor who invaded my space and became a confidant inadvertently. A usurper and interloper par excellence – handsome with a changeable face. More than two faced more like ten faced and even twenty or thirty faced. Duplicity and multiplicity were the working model and they pulled me into a world within a world of mind over matter. I was pulled on a tug string – a game of childhood to see what is on the other side. Face to face and place to place we met and parled and battled royal. I was wounded and retreated to my corner to hide but the blood was in the water, and they would not relent. I prayed and stayed and played along – then I reached out to someone to not be alone one night of upheaval which led to a coming together in an unconventional way. He felt like a savior, and I still depend on him, but he is wounded too so now I must save him. This is the way we use each other to gain or refrain from gain and I am okay with it. I need to hone my skills to save this life which fell into my lap. Like a childless mother my lap is bare and craving use. We use each other and fool each other in the mist of our foggy lives and sometimes a clearing makes a way. I am the actor who gives and gives and paves the way and he is the leveling and spice who gives meaning. The steep price of entry is a toll which must be paid, and I must start finding the right words to iron out the creases of this silken, rumpled, relationship.