Jealousy

So this is the way that these things work: ask and you shall receive. I was thinking about jealousy and how it seems not as much a problem as a natural by-product of love and lovers. But beyond the little box of feelings that is the trap jealousy is usually understood to be, is there another hidden question posed by the feeling? Then I see the possibility as the deeper inquiry: What is it that love dares the self to do? And armed this way, another level is approached. All is to be dared. There is the way that it was imagined to be before, and then there is the way the easy answer does not shine light onto. If I want to be the center of my beloved's attention, I am only halfway there, for the lover is an earthly representation of what a greater love can be like. Inhabiting the human frame limits the expression and palate of feelings to only what has been experienced before, where opening to a range of possibility that the feeling of jealousy suggests beyond the usual heartbeat of living brings the colors of the archetypical experience of all human emotions, including those that have not specifically been imagined by me, up to a quasi-shadow knowing. So this odd little nagging that can easily be felt as uncomfortable is also a beckoning to develop beyond what is known. It is a dare to become, through the knowing of smallness and pettiness and heartbreak, what could not have been understood without them. To strive after what can seemingly not be captured can be seen either as a fruitless endeavor (when understood as an end itself; we could also say "banging your head against a wall"), or it can be seen as a dare to our larger self to expand without comfort of achievement. Possibility grows the more levels you invoke. Satisfaction can only be fleeting if you are aware that there is such potential, and even in the mundane world of commerce and relationship, the signs of desire aim us in the upper directions. This is not to say there can be no satisfaction at all, for that lies in resting in who you are at this moment while at the same time feeling the tug and draw of whatever you believe is in store for you. It is just that so many times as these matrix feelings weave and unwind, we grow weary and long for the rest of ultimate knowing, if only for a moment, we think, that would be so dear. Loss and the inability to come to terms with that loss are as important to try to understand as how your dimension dovetails with those you are family with. Your growth enhances the growth of us all and what I can understand about my jealousy, while not immediately accessible to every person who feels it, adds one more iota toward the greater understanding of all of us. Every one of us who feels the tearing up of the hearts roots must try to look beyond the intensity of this specific emotion and, not reason with it, for it has no basis in the intellect, but search through the heart itself and try to discover what parts are not only unharmed, but actually glowing more brightly. This becomes the dare from some part unexplored to reach beyond what our communal presence can suggest. We move from simple to complex, and, though we do not understand why we keep feeling the jealousy return, each time we go into it, we go into it further and therefore we enter deeper into our essential being. We find a gradual readjustment of the way we have always thought everything should be. No longer satisfied that now love is lost to another, we expand ourselves to include the other as ourselves and love from that perspective as well, loving the experience as invaluable and necessary to our ultimate evolution.

Hands

I am returned from a trip out west and I have had maybe three hours of sleep in four days. I just had my heart handed to me still beating. Just a few days ago...and I win and lose big. That thing about Superman and Kryptonite is a good metaphor. A guy can feel so strong and positive, so in touch with the world and so happy, so impervious to the whims of so many others, but there is always one person who owns him, brings out the worst in him, makes him dance and gyrate and spin on some sort of moody hope, only to toss him to the side with mumbled insincere apologia. So what makes us go back? Kids. Family. Hope. My only model is the family that battles through it all together. This is about as relevant as the Model T in today's world. Everyone wants and thinks they deserve an upgrade. There is no growth together anymore. See my old hat there on my head? This is the only home I have ever really had. The day lasts only as long as the night will allow. The clouds pass overhead and it rains. Some of us never will allow the old models to die. That's why there are still trains. I am slow, reliable and loyal. I am the old oak tree that gets torn down for the flashy new development. I look at this in my life. From here it seems so harsh and so cruel. Fortunately, I am from an intrepid people. I can be torn down to the roots, and I only grow stronger. Just from here it feels as if nothing in my life has meaning but my fatherhood. We all know there is not much respect for that.

All Blue and Wavey

I don't normally feel the rain so intensely. It was so hard to rouse myself out of cover and into business mode. Just standing up was not enough to do it. But because I am on this day not living in rain, merely an adjunct, I conceeded to coming down heavier early if what fell was going to wait until long after lunch. Barbeque store-stacked patties washed down with what else, water. But it was going to come down anyway. Like fish we darted in under the eaves, and those among us who regularly pitched a grumble were well chorused. I was silent about high-desert living for once. It thought it had me and I wasn't going to intimate otherwise. I would never be deliberately obscure without hiding something in the back. Not my style now. Got into it hard over that and almost missed the last minute boarding call. They dragged me on board that day. So I waited and could not see how what shines was going to penetrate me and gave in to the drowning for now. That's where I am. See me all blue and wavey? If you look really close, you can see that I have never held my breath so long before. I'm a little surprised.

Deliciousnecity

So. All the time now it is like this. I feel frisky and alive. I am insatiably, unreasonably happy. It makes me sick how delighted I am with the world.All the time I'm smiling and even my little tantrums make me laugh. I go under a wave of impossible situations and while I am rolling around and the sense of panic locks me in it's steely gaze, I always give up and go limp. I just go under the wonder and it becomes me. And here I am again. Happy. I keep cutting things out as I find them. "Don't need this. Don't need that!" And as I give up it seems I get more. Such an old and worn platitude. Who doesn't know this? Haven't I always known this? But only as a periferal, a goal, someplace I thought would be cool to get to. There is a definite plus side, but all things gain this moment. Think about this: as I sit here writing, I am pretty fuckin' happy to be doing it. And you just read this while I am in the midst of feeling excellent. Does it make you smile? I hope not. Did you know I was going to say that? I write these words as a post mark in case I get lost, because I haven't spent a lot of my life in this kind of bliss. There is no reasoning with it, no separation between it and me. When the waves come, I roll under, happy to bob up where ever, or become the water. There is no difference between one and the other. And the mind that has been so diligent about remembering so many details about loss and failure, and has so much to opine about hour upon hour, long into the night; this friend of so steady and assured companionship just keeps repeating to me: "Look at this place!" And this, alas, is love. What abides in the wonder can never be lost. No one, no god, above. No life below. It just is in here as I am. What I see "out there"--the green of vibrant leaving along every hill and slope, the seething water through the fallen bank, the hum of people walking on sidewalks in front of shops of every nature but the one that would do me any good--these are me. From here, I see no difference between you and me. And I love that so.

Ode to a Bear

Fur-faced, dog-eared slope-shouldered rising
up O Earth your face is shining! With your claw-
fisted open mouth and your breath of honey coming
on in heat-forced desire, you take your solitude
where it will have you best. Rising up you mount
the hidden valleys in spackled damp hollows with
your voice pouring with the slightest push
of your muscled bellows. Father of trees.
Silent as you hunt invisible prey.