Facebook writing

One of the things I enjoy about Facebook is that it still allows a platform for written pieces a little longer than short, but not too long. The boundaries of the format remind me to be concise, but the instant audience factor also adds energy to the writing. It's too bad Facebook is trying to move to "stories" more, an incredibly non-interactive and more performative format that is largely nonverbal. 

Anyway, I wanted to archive a few things here, since finding them again on FB is nearly impossible. This first thing I wrote in the shadowland between Xmas and New Year's, a few days ago:

"I had a humbling and funny experience last night. I went to Blaze Pizza and just as I was getting out of my car I saw a family with couple, four children and mother in law headed into the place. Oh man you do not want to know the black and bitter thoughts on my mind. Then they had the audacity to let all the little children order their own ingredients, good lord. I finally got to the front of the line and got the process of building my own pizza started. I was still fuming like Scrooge about that damn cute happy holiday family and their happy holiday family pizza-blocking terrible timing, and their cute as a button little smart blond children, and the burly happy pizza making guy who told the happy family he had a great Christmas because he got to hold his newborn daughter for the first time, awwwwww, ::growl:: and how much of a pain in the ass they were, everything was, the whole world just a giant pain in the posterior at all times and always without exception trying to make life difficult for me.

And as I'm going down the line selecting ingredients, the happy dad who I hated on sight approached me and handed me a card. "This expires tomorrow and I had eight but we only needed seven." It was a gift card for a free pizza. Oh yeah? Trying to belittle me with your goddamned charity? I screamed at the top of my lungs. Just kidding. I felt like an ass. "Wow, thanks, I really appreciate it. Cute kids you got there." "Thanks, ha, they are a handful let me tell you."

You know it's wild, life is difficult enough on its own. It's always a wake up call to realize how much more difficult I can make it, just being me."

This next one came out of a bitter and curmudgeonly place for me, before Christmas:

"Words of wisdom from a fool who persists in his folly:
1. Never take advice on happiness from a miserable person
2. Never take relationship advice from someone whose relationship wreckage is epic and who is bitter and cynical and who thinks their wisdom comes from a failure of courage
3. Never take a moral scolding from any motherfucker ever
4. Never privilege someone's words over their behavior
5. Never doubt when a person warns you not to get involved with them
6. Never settle for someone else's bad decisions and wrong-headed beliefs-- those belong to them, not you-- let them suffer for them, not you
7. Never confuse stubbornness, performance of a look good and fundamental lies for integrity or noble sacrifice
8. Never believe that pursuing your happiness (within non pathological bounds of course) will harm those you love-- they'll come along for the ride and be better for it-- in fact you being a martyr is harming them more
9. Never show your art or yourself to idiots who have no clue what you are doing, yet will tell you their opinion of it. A shit audience is worse than no audience at all
10. Never believe what people said to you about you or about life when you were between the ages of 4 and 21 or so. Never believe what people say about you period.
11. Never forget to demand that people show the fuck up
12. Never forget that this too shall pass, the good, the bad, the ugly, all of it, and you'll be dead a fuck of a lot sooner than you believe
13. Never forget that the true measure of happiness is being able to be alone at perfect peace and ease, not regretting the past nor wishing to shut the door on it, but also not fucking yourself up with 'what-if' thinking about the future
14. Never forget that sanity unfolds strongest in a context of not taking things personally-- not taking the bad personally, but also not the good. None of it is personal. The universe doesn't give a flying fuck about you, so you might as well enjoy yourself.
15. Never take advice from a fool."

And this next one from several years ago. I was startled to see it reposted yesterday by a woman who I don't know very well, and I was reading it and kind of scoffing, until I got to the end and saw that she attributed it to me. Then I recalled that I was the author. A very weird moment. I am nowhere near this level of sanguinity and confidence these days, so it was a really weird experience re-reading this and recalling the context from which it came. 

“You cannot become a better person. Give it up. Fire Mr. or Mrs. Fix It. A radical notion in this twisted culture built on scarcity, insecurity, lack, in the midst of the greatest abundance the world has ever known. The secret is that there's no way to fix it, because nothing is broken, there's nothing to fix. There is nothing wrong with you. All you can do is get up every day and do the next right thing and be open minded, willing and honest, one day at a time. Develop a sense of perspective and your true place in the world and look for openings where you can be useful. Then you *might* get some side benefits where people actually want you around, trust you and the world provides something like firm footing, community, a support network, a family of choice, the experience of love and belonging and purpose we're all longing for. Might, mind you, as there's no guarantees. But you will definitely find ways to be useful and to have a shred of purpose, even if only in flickers. And *this* is the source of happiness: being of service in a world that desperately needs your gifts, one way or another. Your happiness will be derived from sources you yourself would never have even imagined. You will begin to experience and be truly present for a life you could not have worked hard for, managed, planned, manipulated or forced into existence in a thousand years."

The strange dynamic on Facebook that I am highly sensitive to these days is twofold: people being deliberately mean, choosing a moment of my own revealed vulnerability to deliver a sharp jab (especially other men, who more and more infuriate me by seeming to be emotional failures and enduring narcissists); or, people just not getting it, projecting so fiercely that their responses are kind of obliquely hilarious and clueless. But that's the price of having a sometimes shit audience. It becomes more apparent how the loml and I GET each other, often in instant flashing ways, the more separate we become. Is there any finer feeling in the interactive human world than this telepathic understanding? 

Also, Monteverdi was born on this date in 1573. 

A torch song from 400 years ago:

Phoebus had not yet brought
The day to the world,
When a maiden so angry
Came out of her house.
On her pale face
Her pain could be read,
And every so often
A heavy sigh came from her
heart.
Stepping on flowers,
She wandered from here to there,
Bewailing her lost love
With these words.

Love
(She said)
Love
(gazing at the sky,
Standing still)
Love
Where is the troth
that the traitor vowed?
(Unhappy one)
Make him return to my
Love, as he once was,
Or else kill me, so I
Can no longer torment myself.
(The poor girl, ah no more, no,
can she suffer so much cold.)I no longer want him to breathe,
unless far from me
so that he can no longer say the
things that torture me
(Ah, the poor girl, ah no more, no,
no)Because I destroy myself for him,
so full of pride as he is;
but if I flee from him,
again he entreats me.
(The poor girl, ah no more, no, can
she suffer so much ice)A more serene eyebrow
has she than mine,
but love has not planted in his
breast so fair a faith.
(The poor girl, ah no more, no, can
she suffer so much ice)
Not ever such sweet kisses
will he have from that mouth,
not softer, a quiet,
quiet, he knows it only too well.
(The poor girl)

Thus with indignant complaints,
the voice rose up to the sky; thus,
in loving hearts, love mingles
flame and ice.

Present in the body

Some of you who are a lot more self aware than Percy or who have known yourselves more consciously for a longer period of time may find it amusing to learn that I only today realized what has been one of the most difficult aspects of losing a lover, my whole life. I had always assumed it was being reminded of her-- that is, re-minded. In the mind. Or that it was re-feeling, like resentment (from the Old French resentir, which simply meant to feel again), how difficult it can be to simultaneously feel tender and angry or jealous toward the same person, for example. 

An 82 year old man lost his wedding ring but found it a few years later while digging up carrots in his garden. This is the way things go sometimes. 

But no, to use the funny meme phrase, I was today years old when I finally got it: the most difficult part is in the body. It is, for me, sense memory that is the most searing, that leads to the greatest sense of loss, pain, isolation, nostalgia. The map of the interactions on the body is the real guide to this particular kind of loss, for me. Being mind-oriented, as well as being trained in poetry and the language of the heart which, in spite of its pretense, is still art and is still removed from immediacy, I realize finally that it is the language of the body, fierce, primal, irrational, immediate, uncontrollable and unmanageable, that cuts the most. 

This is fine.

The memory appears in the imagination and goes along with a sort of movie of a remembered time, and the emotions cascade the way they do in response, but it all begins first in my body, most of the time. I have not realized this before. And sometimes for whatever reason a person meets us in ways that are indelible. Traced, dug, cut, held, immersed, burned and branded into the skin, along the wild ramified pathways of nerves, in the muscle, to the bone, through the marrow. What may have been tender and gentle in the moment becomes more jagged, cutting, searing and gripping in memory. 

And I think the body's memory is both for me-- the most powerful and the slowest to forget. I still have sense memories of experiences with beloveds of mine, for example, from when I was 16. Weirdly and in keeping with the irrational and unpredictable nature of the body, sense memory is not dependent on time, for me. More recent experiences are entirely gone, for example. It reminds me that the core of my way of experiencing the world is sensual, tangible, tactile, olfactory, gustatory, and yet unpredictable and out of my control in many ways. Blind, made of mud and stone and blood. 

In this way Mary Oliver's Wild Geese gets to it:

WILD GEESE BY MARY OLIVER

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

So it feels. The soft animal of my body goes on loving what it loves for a very long time, sometimes. Longer than my easily distracted mind recalls, my mind so well trained in denial and whistling in the dark; even longer than my heart aches, which in this case I gather will be quite a while. The body is where the affair still exists, no matter what I do. This must be why people are drawn to fuck someone else soon after a terrible break up, just to try to rewire all of that sense memory, in a usually futile attempt to shut the body up by occupying it with someone else. The rebound impulse in me has not been to erase the mind or salve the heart. It has been mostly to shut the body the fuck up, to try to stop the sudden flash of the beloved's fingers in chest hair or breath on the neck, or all of the other indelible moments best left undescribed. 

This also speaks to a huge variety of numbing and body-killing activities we humans engage in, probably usually in an effort to kill the body's memory, whether it's of traumatic sense memory or beautiful but no longer present. I know drugs and alcohol were for that purpose, definitely. Sex and food. The oblvion I talked about a couple days ago makes even more sense in relation to body memory, which refuses to be silenced. 

Becoming more aware of the imperative of the body after the loss of a lover (resisting using the indefinite article, wanting to speak the truth of The Beloved in this case, afraid to look at it) gives me hope, however. It's not the end of the world when the stab of the simple memory of the way we used to kiss flashes across everything in the world, last night powerfully enough that I had to touch my lips to be sure they were still there, and the idea filled my mind that it would "never happen again" and I was infinitely disconsolate. It's the end of a part of the indelible world, where the breath and lips are. That's where the memory lives. It's somehow easier to let go when it is properly located. The lips, after all, are only one part of the body, and their memory is only one part of memory. And the fiercest part of the memory was actually the breath, and the peculiar way we used to kiss without even touching very much, where the space between our close drawn mouths held everything there is. 

So yeah no big deal when that is properly located right.  

But the most out of control part of all of this is how the body ironically has a mind of its own. Unbidden, even fiercely resisted. Sometimes to no avail. The memory of the body is there as plain as as a table or any other physical object. It refuses to be tamed. It refuses to play by the rules. It refuses to color within the lines. 

And my mind projects a lot, as you might imagine. I have already thought, for example, every woman from now on will just remind me of her. I'll be unable to be present with anyone else because my body will be remembering her. Not helpful, mind. Not helpful. 

All of this goes along with the other realization I had last night, which is that, ultimately, a decision and choice made by another person is entirely out of my control. The offense to my ego is grave enough that I subsequently try to tell some kind of story wherein I at least am deluded that I have regained some kind of control. But the plain truth is that, no matter how important someone is to us, they are free agents entirely separate from us, and they are bound to make choices that hurt us, and there is absolutely nothing we can do about their choice. As people often say in recovery, the only thing we can change is how we respond to the choices of others. 

I have been responding in an okay way, for the most part. The plain fact is that the way I have been indelibly loved, physically, which in this case also happens to be the best way for me personally of my life, that is what I am going to have to find a way to deal with. She and I will be mind-friends always, as we meet very well there. I don't mind having her "take up room in my heart," since I have had a lot of practice in holding space there. But the burn of the disconnected body, that is a painfully present challenge and I feel like it's healing cannot be rushed or faked. 

A major life lesson for me there. I think I have been trying to kill my body's memory for many years. I wonder what it would be like to let the soft animal of my body love what it loves. 

The year's music memorial

Every year around December 31, I go back and try to find all of the musicians I admire who passed away during the previous year. I like to honor their effect on my life and remember that they have died. I do birthday posts and other historical items every day on Facebook and it's important in that context to keep track of the history. 

The list from the past year has some very big losses for me: Cecil Taylor, especially. But also Aretha Franklin, Hamiet Bluiett, Sonny Fortune, Randy Weston, Hugh Masakela, Nancy Wilson, Glenn Branca. Lesser lights relative to my own experience include Perry Robinson, Victor Hayden (The Mascara Snake), Imrat Kahn, Roy Hargrove, Otis Rush, Ndugu Chancler, Jabo Starks, Buell Neidlinger, Dolores O'Riordan. 






In remembrance, as the year makes its exit. 

Rusty Phurba, iron scented blood, cri de coeur

I feel like I'm stabbed through the chest several times by a jagged rusty three bladed phurba, and I'm bleeding out, and, oddly, it's kind of nice. Okay so you'll maybe think that's a little too dramatic. But it holds. I am tired of being in pain, and there's a weird way that grief relieves pain into liberation, if you bleed into it enough. 

Oh yeah? You want to get into a phurba measuring contest buddy?

Vajrakilaya, the keeper of the phurba

This blog has been the place where I can be 100% honest to the best of my ability, and yet I realized this morning I was holding back, in order to keep a certain level of look good for the loml, who reads these posts. I hate alarming her, for one thing, and have done so in the past. I also hate being as torn to bits and aggrieved, in love and disconsolate, and being seen as such-- there's a part of me that feels if I just get tough enough and let her know I don't give a shit, she'll admire me more. That is some weird, old inherited shit. It's also been the case that, when I have expressed darkness and pain and distress to her, she has asked "when do you see your psychiatrist again?" Well-meaning, but beside the point. She's surrounded by needy people and suffering all the time, however, so my suffering is a problem to be solved, and I get that. I don't ask her to take care of my emotional life at all, I just tello her what it is. But she's kind of butch with regard to that, in the way that she goes to strategy right away, the way a man might. 

     But I decided today to get through that reticence and let fly. I am all of these things. When thoughts of suicide return as a *consolation*, that's something to take note of. Just the romancing of it, mind you, I feel the need to say. I have no pills, gun, rope, bridge or cliff, or any plan for that matter, so save your alarmed response for someday when I communicate that I do, if that day ever comes, which I doubt it ever will. The pain that I am in and have been in for a long time now (in general, not specific to the affair only) just naturally turns to oblivion as a solution, and I lost my right to chemical oblivion, and sex and food don't provide oblivion, so the Great Consolation of death is a normal distraction. And our sole power, and our only decision according to Camus, is whether or not to suffer the slings and arrows, right? 

The awful demons have had a lot of podium time lately. "You never really mattered to her. You were only an adventure. She was the central fact of your life for months, you idiot." This is how it feels. There are a lot of other ways it feels. I am experiencing a tremendous amount of anger. At first it presented as a flailing blame toward her, but I am realizing more and more that it is at myself and at the universe. At myself for agreeing to a lot of things that have fucked me over for months. At the universe for seeming to provide a thread of hope but, like Lucy with Charlie Brown, repeatedly pulling the football away. 

It's fascinating to be involved with people and to become more aware of the way self protection, past wounds, fears and prejudices color so many interactions, both my own and theirs. I am sure my own control strategies and those of other people are usually just simple ways to try to prevent suffering. To keep myself safe. It's interesting for me to note that keeping myself safe has never been a priority with the loml. In fact, obviously, quite the contrary. In light of the breakup with A almost two years ago and how torn to pieces I was, it's remarkable to me that I have always just hacksawed my ribs open and exposed my bloody beating heart to the loml. (For example, she reads this blog, so this is the best poker face of which I am capable?). Is that also a form of control in some weird way? It's a decision that makes itself, and that I don't have to revisit. I decided to be completely emotionally vulnerable and  open, available and honest to the best of my ability. That was a commitment I made as far back as late July 2017. Maybe just choosing one course such as that and sticking to it is another form of trying to have solid ground on which to stand. Abdicating responsibility and sidelining judgment. When I have tried to reconfigure and get some solid ground, I have never been able to, however. 

whoa nice shutterstock image lads

Anyway, I recall a conversation back in maybe August 2017 where the loml said something like "you have a lot of power over me, I hope you realize. Be careful." I was as reassuring as possible, and I have endeavored to be reassuring all along the way. It's funny too because I have been jealous a lot and have expressed it occasionally, and I haven't felt reassured, which I guess sounds desperate and insecure, but is the truth. Men are drawn to her regularly and sometimes I felt that the way men showed up on her Facebook timeline was just flat out Creepsville, ironically, some of my older male Facebook friends who sent her friend requests in that gross, thirsty way that older men have of harvesting the female friends of male friends of theirs. A picture of the loml with her beloved sister, an appropriate comment from another woman about fitting in between (out of love and genuine affection), but followed by a really weird, creepy comment by an older male acquaintance of mine about not being invited to fit in or whatever. So many times I just wanted to flat out say to men on her timeline, "okay creepy weirdo bad boundary innuendo indulging fuck boy old man, enough." In spite of how pathetic so many of these interactions were, I still got very jealous from time to time. Unlike me, for sure. 

     A former lover of hers showed up on her Facebook and I mentioned my jealousy and she said, "He's a beautiful human being!" and "Oh, he's involved, and we're not romantically compatible." And if he weren't involved and you were romantically compatible? In my opinion, the approach to reassuring a jealous partner is truly very simple: "You have nothing to be jealous of. I am devoted to you and you are the one I want. These other women are friends only and mean nothing to me romantically or sexually." That's it. That's all it usually takes. That's what I think I have said to her on the occasion when she has been jealous of women. But hedging and being vague and trying to "explain" who people are or whatever is not reassuring, and it keeps the ball in her court, in my opinion. There's power when someone else is jealous of us. When they let us know, they are tearing their shirt open and there's a bullseye on their chest over their heart. The rusty dagger goes deep, in a lot of ways. If the "reassurance" is pale, the power lingers, the questions linger. I feel she was never able to just flat out say "I am yours and you have nothing to be jealous of." Maybe it was a point of pride for her? Maybe my jealousy seemed like a criticism of her somehow?  

Oh hello there, Othello, you crazy fellow

Anyway, ultimately, for the past 18 months or so, control and power have just not been very important to me, obviously. She's called all the shots, made all the crucial decisions, and I feel she has not changed anything significant about her life in order to meet mine, contributed approximately 1/15th of the expense of our visits (with no complaint from me, even still, just an observation), held tight reins over communication, been unable or unwilling to meet any of my requests for increased communication or more intimacy therein. The entire structure and landscape of our relationship has been almost 100% under her control, I feel. Because of where I have been the past while, and the delight I have always taken in contact with her, I've been tolerant of the arrangement, mostly. I guess truly because it was made clear to me I had no choice. The ground rules have long been pretty much take it or leave it. On the other hand, her risking everything in her stable life in order to spend any time with me, virtually or in the flesh, is a huge thing. I tried to keep that in mind. I never had to lie to make time with her possible, for example. She put her integrity on the chopping block regularly in order to be with me. So, I get that. I have endeavored always to be respectful of that and supportive, not always successfully. 

     I am also fully aware that all of this is my side of the story. But when a relationship feels one-sided and there is little exchange, one has to rely on at least some kind of story from somewhere in order to find ground to stand on. It's interesting for me to note also that my chronic and growing feeling of having been at or near the bottom of her list is really more about control issues than anything. My perception is that she was not capable or desirous of simply sending a message maybe once a day or even once a week or perhaps even once that said "I think about you all the time. I love you. I'm sorry we can't be in more communication. But never think I write you off or take you for granted." She has never said anything like that to me, that I recall right now anyway. I am of course an unreliable narrator. Having a bloody shredded heart in a black barrel of broken ribs fucks with one's memory. 

     When I was last in St. Paul, we were scheduled to spend time together the evening after her nursing shift, an effort I deeply appreciated considering the demands of her job. But the next nurse did not show up on time and in fact, she had to remain on duty for an extra several hours, until 11 pm. I looked back over her texts around this unfortunate reality and she did not say anything at all like "I am heartbroken that I can't see you, I was looking forward to it and I'm sorry, I'll make it up to you, thank you for being patient. Please stay in town and I'll make time." Of course, two nights previously, she had ended the affair. But wanted to see me the next evening, and we were back on, it seemed to me. So the context was very fraught, tenuous, on again off again, and I feel guilty now of not just flat out taking her no and simply respecting it. So, in that context, I guess I was asking too much for that kind of clear and intentional, reassuring communication? Whether I asked too much or not, the seeming lack of concern and apparent oblivion to my situation led to me deciding to book a flight out three days early. If she had been able to balance the reality of her busy life with something heartfelt and tender, I would have stayed. 

     I also frightened myself that night, because I fell asleep at about 8 and woke at 11 and decided to drive to her house and say goodbye as she arrived home from her shift. I did in fact drive there, and waited. But when she pulled up at 11:30 I realized I was being creepy-stalkery and probably would scare her if I had stepped out of the car and announced myself. So I watched her scurry into her house, and that was the last time I saw her. I was starting to become unhinged, fantasizing about hacking her Facebook or messenger account, finally finding out for real what was going on with other men. Crazy thoughts like that. Not anything I am used to at all. So far out of character for me as to be astonishing. 

     The dynamic could be crazy-making for me in many ways. Every visit of mine to the Twin Cities or Santa Fe involved long, tedious stretches of waiting. Often with no choice, since there was a promised time involved. But then due to some exigency or other, often, and it feels to me like more and more often more recently, the promised time would fall through, and I would have just been waiting in vain. She would always have a legitimate reason, like her son falling down the stairs, or her daughter being in a rough mood, but the legitimacy of those reasons also served to reinforce for me how truly marginal I was in her very full life. I would improvise and try to make the best of it when it wouldn't work out, going out on the town or whatever, but the feeling I have now is that I had again and again set myself up for being taken for granted. And it is the plain truth that every minute of time we ever had together was leashed to the underlying knowledge that she would have to go, sooner rather than later most often, back to her real life, and I would have to find some way to occupy myself until the next brief window. Those were the pressuresome and sad contexts in which we were able to be together. And, often, with her worried about her kids or her husband, or feeling guilty for having lied, or feeling like every minute was stolen time. Again, given these realities, how remarkable we two endured nearly a year and a half of sort of desperate attempts to be with each other.  

     So it's not that I wanted extensive interaction or intimacy on a regular basis-- if I had wanted that, it seems I would have bailed a long time ago. The first blaze of our intense connection when we fell in love was over by September, a couple of months in. I only wanted her to relinquish control long enough to offer legitimate reassurance, to offer what I could hear as a disappointment at least equal to my own. The bottom of the list feeling comes from not just my perception of being taken for granted, but, in my opinion, well, actually being taken for granted. Duh. When I have called her on it in the past, my memory is that she has only said "I am truly sorry you feel that way." And has been defensive and brittle. Or broken up with me. I feel I've let myself be a luxury item on a very long shopping list of absolute necessities. 

the impulse buy Snickers bar on the way out the door

But these are the things to which Percy agreed: to be an affair outside of a very busy life, to not be chosen, to be fit in whenever possible yet also when it was most convenient, to carry the weight of arranging visits, to revel in whatever windows of time were available and not make too many waves when disappointed, to be second at all times, second on the list, where first was many people long. She made it clear to me as long ago as probably November 2017 that she was not going to leave her husband any time soon, and I stayed in the affair. I agreed to wait and wait and wait, when I wasn't even told to wait, in fact, was flat out told not to wait several times. To want to be an ally and a support but to be felt as a source of guilt and shame and remorse, to be a problem, a burden, an inconvenience, and a drag, eventually. I only wanted to make her life better, as unrealistic as that may seem in retrospect, but I ended up making her life a kind of awful nightmare of sleepless nights and guilt. From best love and lover to fucking pain in the ass and a source of darkness and wounding and troubled sleep, buffeted by unsustainable remorse. I selfishly hung on even after it became increasingly clear to me that ourt affair was making her truly, deeply unhappy. Sweet.

    I agreed to all of it. My work now is to understand more clearly what was in it for me. I know right off the bat that a lot of what was in it for me was the untellably beautiful encounter with a human being I feel is my goddamned soul mate, and I don't even believe in that shit. I genuinely just fucking love this person like mad, and I always will, in whatever capacity is possible, in whatever way I am able. It's so fearlessly unconditional that it was extremely difficult to get my bearings. 

     I think the sorry state of my life here as I finish the PhD also played a role. So much isolation, even when I am with people. Loneliness, grey stretches of enforced solitude, enormous energy poured into writing the dissertation in the face of almost 100% constant discouragement. She's funny, smart, passionate, sexy, has not once, not ever bored me. Being anywhere near her was like sitting next to a blazing fire. But I see now how my own depauperate emotional life and social life put too much pressure on her, on we two. I feel now that, perhaps, I allowed myself to be taken for granted because the intermittent positive reinforcement was always so glorious. When she turned her love my way, it always felt exactly right and immeasurably fine. Even on our new friendly basis, wen I see she has texted a funny meme or whatever, my heart leaps in my throat and there's a thrill, a distinct frisson of gladness unique to hearing from her. 

Weird. Not something I have ever tolerated for even one minute from any other living soul. I am usually permanently gone in the most convincing and final of ways when I feel taken for granted, and there have rarely if ever been second chances. I want to be someone's number one. Well, in truth, I must admit, I want to be HER number one. I still want to be her number one. I think I would be wickedly great at it. I do not do well being anything less. It's probably that Venus in Leo thing. But everything was always different with her, sometimes maddeningly so. Often maddeningly so. Stepping back and getting a look at it, I feel angry about it at this time, a necessary stage of grief. It's anger with myself, for the most part. Lots of self-castigation and name calling. Feeling like a total clown, fool for love, dumbass doormat, sucker and a half. I imagine she sees me as pathetic and foolish, weak and tiresome and is quite relieved to be shut of me and our mess. 

     On top of all of this, and believe me, dear reader, if you have made it this far in yet another installment of 300 love songs about the loml, I thank you, and many of you might also be saying "well, duh, man, we've seen this like the clearest writing on the wall for months," it is only now clear to me how I had insisted on holding out hope that we could create a life together. I always convinced myself I was not hoping for that. To her credit, she rarely offered any hope of it, except for early on when we spoke explicitly about a future together ("if to when magic"), but when it became clear to her she could not, would not, did not want to leave her husband, that talk stopped. In fact, for quite a while now, everything erotic or even affectionate beyond just nice friendly friendship stopped, from her direction, and any and all of my expressions of eros or love were met with silence. In spite of all of this, now that the affair is over, it is finally apparent to me how much I did hold on to hope. I think the hopelessness of my reality now is as real as the leg of a table on which one stubs one's toe in the dark. It took ending the affair for me to even start to get perspective on the hopes that had remained. The fantasies of travel, of camping, of domestic life, of shared experience, of helping her raise her kids, of truly creating a life. Creating it with intention. Creating it soulfully, mindfully, tenderly and like artists, collaborating and co-creating, weaving a wild tale of love conquering all. I feel bereft in light of how I had strung myself along, and now see the futility and fantasy of all of that, which will never be. 
     
    Now it's up to me to unpack all of this as thoroughly and honestly as possible, with as much self-compassion as I can cultivate, get real about my own motives in remaining available for what feels to me now like an almost completely one sided affair, and learn as much as I can. The only way out is through, since the seductive call of oblivion is hollow and I've tied myself to the mast anyway. The consolation of having the option like a loyal but hungry dog at one's elbow, ready to obediently go for the throat and bleed one out for good, is consolation enough, and requires no action. The work is not so much to "want to live" but to let go of all of it. 

Dickensian Opportunities

The culture in general privileges people who have family connections and obligations, who have children, who are living the conventional life as seen from the outside in. This is greatly heightened around "the holidays," when everyone's biologically determined network of obligation is in one's face, and when people post things to social media like "Don't forget that this can be a challenging time for those who are alone. Keep those lonely alone loner hermit alone people in your smug superior socially networked prayers on this festive day when it is the worst thing of all to be alone."

I was paralyzed by grief, loneliness, anger at myself and disconsolate memories yesterday, to the degree that I just resigned myself to the day, climbed back into bed at about noon, and slept for hours, in between waking up teary-eyed and full of memories or idly checking my phone and being disheartened and made even more lonely by social media. But I excavated my sad ass finally in a state of mild panic that I would never emerge at all and started cooking, in spite of not being hungry, and sometimes the simple tasks of prepping food lift me up. 

Roasted roots, before and after. Very grounding. 

     At the same time, the One True LOMFLF texted me some funnies, and the laughs, as dark as some of them were, offered a welcome lightening of my mood. (Why is the general theme of choking coming up so much in both jokes and seriousness, regarding sex, lately? Is choking a millenial thing, like ass? One of the memes was a joke about "how to wear turtlenecks and deal with the constant turn on of the sensation of light choking." The idea of me, a man, choking her, a woman, during sex is okay by me if she, a woman, consented and would teach me exactly how and how much pressure and when and so on-- but any of these themes that echo degradation, of violence, of male domination of women also trigger my sensitivities around violence against women, especially sexual violence. The recent results of a quiz at bdsm test dot org confirm that I am 86% vanilla. I was surprised it was not a little higher. It's weird too how the thought of the One True LOMFLF having nsa kinky sex with a guy makes me jealous, in spite of the fact or because of the fact that I am incapable of nsa sex largely (in spite of wishing I were capable of it, of that blithe attitude, 'it's just sex, it's just to get "my needs met," it doesn't mean anything,'-- I've tried and no, it just does not work like that for me) and have no desire to be kinky really unless it would be hotly demanded, but I digress, (parenthetically)). 

As the evening unfolded, I began to get more comfortable with being solitary. I took myself on a walk in the chilly dark to look at Christmas lights, with my one good eye. I built a fire, I made hot chocolate. I had enjoyed my dinner of a roasted chicken, canned cranberry sauce, stuffing, and roasted roots, cherry pie and ice cream. I sat outside by the consoling fire and reflected on holidays past. 

how it feels to lie with one's true love, I thought to myself, when I took this picture. Man, I am a goner. 

For years, I could not make it through Christmas without heavy drinking. I've done some inventory around that and a large part of it stemmed from all the lies I was living every year. I recall the Christmas after I got married the first time, for example, and I had tried incredibly hard to be normal and happy-- I bought a train set for the 8 year old daughter of my wife, I bought a shit ton of presents, I bought the 8 year old daughter a spiny hedgehog which she had desperately wanted. It was Christmas Eve and I went grocery shopping and sort of without thinking about it I bought 5 six packs of various expensive beers. I spent the bulk of that night and the holiday week shitfaced. Sad and realizing that I was merely acting, and that all the gifting and decorating and all of it was no bulwark against the core of true despair that was inside me. This is the way alcoholism worked for me- it always played out this way. 

I was thinking about how excited I used to get around Christmas when I was a boy. I believed the myths and tales of Christianity for a long time, and even had a rebirth of Christian belief in my late teens and early 20s, and recalled how Christmas had a way of summoning a sense of pagan mystery in the midst of my religious sentiment. Dark snowy nights in Pennsylvania sledding down the hill two streets over from our house. The wrapped packages under the tree. The more cheery mood of my family, generally. I remembered one year when I was four and had diligently disassembled the locomotive from our train set, but panicked and was grief stricken when I couldn't reassemble it, and although furious at first, my father softened, and went out on a freezing Christmas Eve and managed to find a locomotive for sale somewhere, and saved the Christmas train. 

Many memories tumbling. But an overarching theme from my adult years was the position of pushing my loneliness, despair, constant feeling of misfit, honest sadness and grief to the background and trying in whatever way to celebrate, to forget about all of the loss, to be cheerful, social and to step completely into my roles. And how searingly painful that dance always was, and how disappointed I always was, and how much alcohol it started to take to make it even possible at all. 

After I got sober, I did not celebrate the holidays in any outward way for years. I got drawn into some celebrations of others, but I always had to keep my distance. The poetess and I went to Mexico every year and camped in the middle of nowhere or stayed in San Ignacio and let others celebrate Noche Buena. It served me best to forego all of it and treat the holidays as just another series of days. It wasn't until A and her son that I started to get back into it, and then I ended up being pulled all the way back in. It was great fun shopping for him. My little boy got very enthused about the toy section at Target. 

A Super Wubble helium filled balloon! Honestly, most of the things I bought for A's son were just as much for me

But instead of offering a sympathetic nod toward those who are "alone during the holidays," I feel more inclined today to offer "thoughts and prayers" for those who are *not* alone, but who are forced to perform. The roles we wear somewhat lightly most of the year- son, father, stepfather, whatever- that the holidays weld to our skin inescapably, so that we get pushed into identifying with our roles and lose ourselves. The performance of all is well. When all is definitely not well. The performance of giving and receiving, when it all skates over a dark ice pond of old resentment and disappointment. May all those who must perform, must show up, must lie and smile, must be diminished by an incomprehensible and unconscious ancient family history, may all those who are trying to make it right, trying to please their children, trying to make memories that will last a lifetime, trying to get to the requisite feeling of holiday cheer and love, may they all be well. 

My hermit's holiday is a simple and spacious relief by comparison. Yes, the shades of Christmas past are everywhere. Yes, I meet loneliness head on and feel defeated by the end of the affair combined with my unrelenting ardent affection, and by my bum eye and by my dissertation and by the total uncertainty of my future and the general bloody mess of heartbreak. But I am reminded that some of the saddest, most inescapably lonely times in my life, I was with other people. It's a great opportunity to get real about that. 

And the entire cherry pie is mine. 

One side of my side of the one sided side, disc one, side one, track one

I am doing something different regarding the end of the affair with the loml, which is keeping one of the channels of communication open, namely texting. Maybe a little bit of phone as well. By default, this blog, which she sometimes reads. My usual MO after a break up is to completely cut off all channels, at least for a time. In the past I think this approach has been a combination of anger, petulance, an attempt at self protection and a desperate play for simplicity and clarity. Of course, I reserve the right to ask for breaks or to close the channels if I need it, and I may still decide I need that. But it feels good to not be so absolutist and dramatic about things, at least for the time being. 

I really ought to have a fainting couch. I tease myself, but the fact remains that I feel things intensely. It's a legit part of who I am. I let other people make fun of it at the risk of my self esteem. Especially people who take as a point of pride being as cold as ice. 

However, the vague sense of something that has long bothered me finally came into real focus in the context of ending the romance but remaining in contact. The loml was nearly 100% in control of communications, at all times. She determined what type of communication, how often, when and for how long, every time we were in contact. I haven't ever been friends with anyone who maintained such strict control over their communication life. I would guess it is a side effect of being a nurse full time, being married, mothering small children. But it's interesting to note. I think there are other issues related to this total control over every aspect of communication. It seems to me her tightening of control would increase in direct proportion to her fear and/or guilt and shame. There's an inherent deep inequity in it that I guess at some point in the past I just resigned myself to. 

Control panel

It's partly a reflection of how available I am at all times, while I work on the PhD-- connected to phone, computer, etc. So that when she messaged, I was almost always right there. But it's not just these practical things. It's also a dynamic of control that extends beyond the practical. It's also my own feeling that when I have outright asked for communication or tried to initiate it, a lot of the time, it is taken as a burden or imposition, or ignored for long stretches of time. She mentioned in an email that she was thinking about the two of us being together in the Twin Cities in the future, and I replied with an email expressing my willingness to try that, without asking her to change anything about her situation, and she never replied. As was more and more the case recently, my communication seemed to fall into a bottomless void of silence. 

     The trigger for her ending the affair on the 20th was after I had "given her space" (an exercise in futility where I was actually just acknowledging reality) and then expressed my unhappiness with her total disappearance (space does not equal many light years?)-- but in connection with one of the truly rattling and crazy-making dynamics of our long distance affair, where she would be totally ignoring me but active on Facebook. It was often the case that the fucking green dot was a source of queasy vertigo for me. Talk about modern day problems, right? Anyway, I expressed my unhappiness about it and she ended the affair. End of story. That's my perception anyway. I didn't clearly realize until this morning how much resentment I feel around the nearly total inequity of our communication with each other, whether in the affair or in friendship. It's funny too, because people have accused me of the exact same behavior over the years. Controlling the timing, type, extent and frequency of communication. I've lost friends and lovers over it. 

Anyway, back into dissertation writing for me. The best Xmas prezzie I could give myself would be to be fucking done with this draft, finally. The goal is to have it in the can by New Year's, a month "late." My committee chair is in no hurry to read and offer feedback anyway. I sent him the draft of the first chapter two months ago and it's been crickets since then. He and I are going to have to have a talk, because he seems to be operating under some strange assumptions. I didn't get a swanky post doc I had applied for, and I didn't get the completion fellowships from (worthless fucking) ASU that I had applied for, so I'll be teaching anatomy again. Fine by me, as I love teaching anatomy and having that commitment will put some spine into my week, haha, get it. But it adds a little more pressure to the dissertation process. So be it. I'm done, and every molecule is directed to being done, pretty much with every motherfucking thing that does not serve me, no matter how ardently cherished and deeply desired. I have a big fork I am sticking into everything. It's time. 

Refuge in the blazing present

Winter solstice is definitely one of my favorite turning points of the year. I lean pagan/warlockian more than anything, and the idea of a moment at which we mark the return of the light, especially when it is at its very lowest, definitely appeals to me. Yesterday, I slept through the actual time of the solstice, at 3:23 pm Mountain Time, napping peacefully. But at night, I blazed up a huge fire in my fire kettle outside and then I burned things. 

I was only going to burn a few symbolic things. The loml ended our affair on the 20th, so I figured it would behoove me to break ties as symbolically as possible. I can be a sentimental person to the extreme, and over the nearly 18 months that she and I pursued our romance I had saved a great many cards, notes, souvenirs, items of clothing. I started by burning just a few cards. But as I proceeded, suddenly, I knew I wanted to burn it all. I wanted to burn everything. She had requested I write in a notebook to her, and I had chosen a composition book with the word LUCKY on the front, written in glitter glue. She never had time to read it nor even actively requested to, as far as I recall. It was cathartic watching all of those pages burn. She had gifted me with items of clothing. I was surprised by how well they burned and how quickly. I had bought a special button down shirt for the very first visit with her in Santa Fe back in August 2017, and I was amazed to watch that burn. I hadn't ever burned clothing before. Old ID photos, cards, notes, love letters, a gift of lingerie I had idiotically bought her prior to my last visit in November, virgin and highly flammable, goodbye to that $100. Ticket stubs from the production of Romeo and Juliet we attended at the Guthrie in October 2017, on my first visit to Minneapolis. Burn it, burn it all. Burn it all. If anything will be, it will be anew. What was is no more and never will be again. Nothing sends that message like fire. 

So now the entire affair as far as it was represented materially is a heap of ash in the fire kettle. Except for gifts just received, the day after she ended the affair, since they do not count, and I like them too much to get rid of them or burn them-- A hardcover book of Charles Freger's Wilder Mann photos, a realistic lamp in the shape of the moon. These were gifts clearly given more out of friendship than romantic love anyway, as she had written only her last name on the return address and her inscription in the Freger book is nice and friendly but, characteristic of her stance lately, distant and not romantic at all. So, I'm glad I get to keep those. Freger's photographs have long been among my favorites. 

who you gettin crazy with ese? don't you know I'm loco?

As it all burned, I knew on a gut level the truth of impermanence. None of this is happening now nor will it ever happen again. Nobody's funeral, because there's no one to bury. The idea of mementos is harmless enough, but do I honestly need reminders of a series of experiences I will never, ever forget anyway? Well, no, I do not. 

Crazy how dramatically the expensive Hugo Boss button down shirt took flame

I 100% understand her situation and her reasons for ending our affair. I support and respect all of it. It's been teetering on the brink of collapse for months anyway. That it even lasted as long as it did is a testament to how much we love each other. Everyone has a right to pursue happiness and to the extent that my presence in her life brought happiness, great, and to the extent that it brought misery, good riddance to bad rubbish. In my opinion, she's making a mistake choosing her husband instead of her own happiness (not instead of me, that is a separate issue), but that is Kermit sipping a cup of tea levels of none of my business. I just honestly believe she will be happier when she is not living that lie anymore. It's a false choice, to think staying in a failed partnership has more integrity than leaving. The real integrity is to honor one's own heart and one's own truth. But that's just my opinion, and it is worth exactly nothing. Less than nothing. Less than that even. 

In all ways, I wish her and her people the absolute best of everything. I have no idea how I am going to manage, since every goddamned thing at all times reminds me of her. We had been in the habit of messaging several times a day, sharing funny things. I think we communicated more on a mundane level than I ever did with A or any of my exes. I "feel married" to her, heiros-gamos-wise as well as mundanely. So the total separation is going to be a rough go of complete reconditioning. Take refuge in the present, says my Buddhist recovery community. Okay. 

The full cold moon, full and cold last night at the nadir of the year

I will have to focus on the positive also. I am no longer tied to an unavailable woman. Even when she was somewhat present, she often was not available. Unable to be supportive of me very much because she was understandably depleted from 12 hour home health care shifts and raising a 3 year old and a 6 year old with, evidently, less than optimal support from her well-meaning husband (again, in my worthless opinion). She tried valiantly. She also had the misfortune of knowing me during 18 of the most painful months of my life. A lot of uncharacteristically clingy and needy behavior on my part. I have gotten in the habit of waiting, waiting, waiting to hear from her and I can work to put that aside now, for good. I can stop wondering what will happen. I can stop looking forward to visits with her that more and more ended up being an exercise in futility, with glorious moments that are indelible, but mostly just with me causing her inconvenience as she tried to navigate her incredibly busy life and make time to see me also. I am amazed that we two thought it would work for me to be in her home town and mine last week, while she was there visiting family, and yet while she was there, she couldn't find head or heartspace to even DM me a few times day. That visit was canceled for reasons outlined below, and it would have been a catastrophe anyway. I can stop "begging for scraps" as she put it, always an image that builds self esteem. It stabs to think of her seeing me that way, begging for scraps. How humiliating. 

In the way that these things have gone for me the past couple of years, all of this coincides with ridiculously awful life events. 

My latest medical adventure: a detached and torn retina, with two procedures last week to repair that situation. I had been having vision problems in my left eye for a while and it seemed to be posterior vitreous detachment only, for a few weeks. Suddenly a curtain descended over part of my field of vision, so: to the eye doctor. Retinal detachment. The first procedure was a stop gap measure to keep things from getting worse, involving paracentesis and then a gas bubble injection between the vitreous and the retina to hold it in place. The second procedure a couple days later was a vitrectomy, laser weld, membrane tape, scleral buckle, gas injection into my now hollow eye. That will be $1200, even though you have insurance, thank you very much. Supposedly within a few weeks my vision will be back to pre-vitreous detachment levels. Nice. The recovery has been uncomfortable, however, involving being face down 24/7 for six days, no easy feat. Fortunately the special positioning is over . All I can see out of my left eye is the gas bubble wiggling around in there. It absorbs over time and, voila, good as new. 

The day of surgery

A swanky patch a friend of mine got me

Anyway, as I wind up the draft of the second chapter of the dissertation, and head into my final semester of the PhD, I do so with an immeasurably heavy thoroughly broken heart, indolent cancer of the prostate, blind in one eye, bereft of the love of my life, with no clue as to future employment and no idea when I will defend and be officially done. But I am here and I am not going any goddamned place. I am taking refuge in the present. 

Motherfuckers.