My heart hurts for a variety of reasons. I could tell you about how I told the therapist that I am more of agnostic than an atheist and how I said I tell him most of the story.
He asked if it was possible to tell the full story and I said the ending of it is unwritten but that a smart man would act otherwise. A smart man would say we don’t always get to choose how things end and sometimes you just accept that which you prefer not to.
I have seen, done and experienced things that make it clear to me there is more than just science in this world. I don’t care if anyone else agrees because I need no validation.
Some things simply are or aren’t and that is enough for me.
When a past post like You’re Just A Memory…Now comes across as it did tonight I know there is something else going on, even if I ache alone and apart while dancing in the fire.
I wrote that post after the suicide of a friend and in the midst of my father’s battle with pancreatic cancer.
Got news today that made me angry and a little sad about something profoundly stupid related to someone who for a short while was a good friend. If they are guilty of what they’re accused of they deserve severe consequences.
In the midst of this I feel like I am living out part of Wichita Lineman, unsure if I really hear you singing in the wires or if it is just my imagination.
Open Your Heart To Chance
I wrote those words years ago alongside of:
But I didn’t know what it meant to ache until I lost you.
I ached and ached and ached, lived alone and apart trying to figure out what happened.
We stole fire from the gods and I danced and dodged the lightning bolts without fear or reservation because I had complete trust in you and in us.
I knew if I fell you would be there but I never really worried about falling because every time I ever had I jumped right up and resumed the dance.
Until it happened.
You left.
And then I who had won every battle I had ever been in, climbed every mountain and figured out the answer to every challenge sat against the wall in the dark trying to figure out what the fuck had just happened and how I could have been so damn dumb.
Took me a while to sort through it all and figure out what had happened.
Days turned into months and I wondered when I would shake the images of you from my head. Told myself I had been through heartbreak and that it would pass.
Then I woke up one day and felt better than I had in forever. Felt like a weight had lifted and I smiled because I figured I was back.
It’s part of a piece called Water Won’t Extinguish This Fire. Got a few ideas for how to extend it that I am playing with.
“You said you’d never forgive me for not finding you sooner. Now I wonder if I’ll ever forgive you for not giving us another chance to take a chance when the opportunity presented itself.
Now I wonder if you refused to have the conversation because it was too hard, too painful and or too complex. Or was it because you didn’t care and I was left to pick up the pieces of a heart that I had allowed to be torn out a third time.
It was one thing to do in the thirties and forties but who ever expected it to happen again the in the fifties. I looked in the mirror and asked my reflection if I was fucking stupid, lacked common sense and self respect.
And then I hardened my heart and started walking away into a new future certain that I could and would leave the old one in the past.
Occasionally the whispers of what was would catch up and tell me it was possible they could become what could be but I shushed them.
Waved my arms at fairies dressed like cupid and whispers that some love never dies. Told them I tortured myself long enough and this was my penance for having stolen fire from the gods.
They smiled and embraced me and said what was lost, found and lost again wasn’t the end. I tried to outrun them by setting sail for far away shores, let my beard grow long and turned a soft body into something hard again.
When I reached the shore I was certain something new would come and then I heard that voice in the wires, smelled a familiar scent and felt arms I once knew beckon me.
Shook my head and said it is impossible, they are wrapped around another today.
A soft whisper said today is not forever but I refused to listen and set off. But in the back of my head I heard something about a meeting at the Crossroads and tried not to think about it. That was somewhere down the road and who could say when, where or what things might look like then.
I don’t know if I’ll use that or dump it. Won’t make any decisions tonight, maybe none tomorrow or the next day.
Revenge Of The Tipping Point
Several years back I signed up for Audible so I could listen to books on tape. Don’t get twisted about my saying on tape, I know this is more like MP3 but some habits die hard.
I signed up because I spend lots of time in the car and in places where it is hard to hold a hard copy of a book.
I signed up because I believe in growth, education and stimulating my mind. So the 200 or so books are a mix of fiction, biography, science and stuff that just caught my eye.
Gladwell is an author I have spent a lot of time with or his books I should say. I find all sorts of interesting nuggets in there to think about.
Revenge of The Tipping Point is sort of a sequel to a book he wrote 25 years ago. It has been interesting and I am enjoying it.
I think the quote above is from Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. It is one that has always resonated with me because even though I say I make decisions based upon a gut feeling there is more to it.
It is not all impulse, those feelings come from somewhere and have something behind them sometimes.
I’ll end this post with a quote a couple of excerpts from the memory post.
Life has been a mixed bag and some of it has been as they say, really fucking hard.
But I can also say it has been really fucking good.
If you are lucky to have shared some of it with me you know all those things to be true. You know that intensity isn’t optional–it is me.
Maybe it works for you and maybe it doesn’t. If you can’t hang, if you get burnt out well that is not my problem.
and
That is not snarky or sarcastic, just an observation sometimes you don’t gain the gift without dancing in the fire.
And the funny thing about said gift is it never looks exactly as you expect or anticipate. Hell, if you don’t learn to open your eyes and your heart simultaneously you won’t even recognize it.
But if you do so without expectation or promise you find magic lives and it doesn’t matter whether you are just a memory or something more.
If you’re interested in the prior posts you can click here or simply stay tuned to this bat channel.
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