Incapacity or Courage?

 Granadilla

I cut myself upon the thought of you

And yet I come back to it again and again,

A kind of fury makes me want to draw you out

From the dimness of the present

And set you sharply above me in a wheel of roses.

Then, going obviously to inhale their fragrance,

I touch the blade of you and cling upon it,

And only when the blood runs out across my fingers

Am I at all satisfied.

--Amy Lowell

"Courage is often confused with stoicism, the stiff upper lip, bravado that masks fear. There is another kind of courage. It is the courage to live with a broken heart, to face fear and allow vulnerability, and it is the courage to keep loving what you love “even though the world is gone.”"- Catherine Ingram

You ever listen to what other people suggest for a long time and get twisted because what other people are suggesting is just not working for you? Then you give up trying and go with your own intuition and values and your own sense of yourself and, finally, everything clears up significantly. Comparison is fatal in these moments, "Why can't I forget and be tough and let go and not care," for example, "like so and so." We usually are wrong about so and so anyway, but even if we're right, sometimes, for me, the answer is because it's not ME to do that. I don't do that. I am not tough, I don't forget, and I do care. 

What's going to happen is probably going to square with my intuition and my values. The rest is noise, frustration, distraction and false comparison. Blake said the enjoyments of genius look like torment and insanity to the angels, and it's sort of like this. Another person may observe how we live and think we are "suffering needlessly." They may, even in a well-intentioned way, try to tell us some other way. Thanks, but you thinking I have a problem is the problem, because there is no problem. Or, worse, you trying to solve my problem that I don't even have. 

And to think that we can have the most extraordinary experiences of our lives without suffering? Where does that idea come from? This reminds me of what is sometimes said to newcomers in AA- if you are going to stick around, buy a black suit, you're going to need it. Love is not possible without grief. And exactly how quickly are we supposed to be done with grief? And along exactly what linear and measured path? 

Forgetting and moving on is cheap and tawdry. Everything is forgetting, Forgetting is the most common thing there is. Forgetting and moving on abandons what was real, throws our experience and our heart under the bus, and for what? Ease and comfort. Cheap bullshit. The thin stuff of trying to stay in control of our story at all times. It's all just swept under the rug, or even deeper, swept under the floorboards anyway. You'll hear that telltale heart beating soon enough. I could run my whole life, trying to forget. What bullshit. And yet, the most common kind of advice one gets from people when something doesn't go one's way or when someone doesn't do what we want or what we hoped they would do is: "forget it." 

Miles Davis said that the key to happiness was having a bad memory. But he was fucking miserable. He was lying too, because you can hear what he can't forget in a lot of his playing. He liked to provoke. He wanted to seem tough. You can hear the searing tenderness and ache though. Sometimes Davis plays a few notes and all of his losses and all of his grief are in there. 

Remember the amazing things you've had in as much detail as you can bear, be grateful, and stay close to grief and love. Stay alive. You'll be dead soon enough, what's the goddamned hurry? I feel like I was 30, I blinked my eyes, and now 60 is one year and 19 days off. What's the rush? Humans are so fickle and unreliable by nature, guaranteed we'll forget without even trying. What's our hurry? 

If this all hits you the wrong way, just forget it.