The Etiology of Love

Once I thought, I think, that opening myself up and sharing my heart and soul was the most difficult expression of love I could make to another. Now I know, I am sure, that closing it silently is a greater act.

The Necessity of Sex

The Necessity of Sex

I can imagine
a thousand and one nights
illuminated by a soft crescent moon
cascading a perfect silhouette
over you as you sleep
I can imagine
tracing this journey
down the length of your body
my fingertip sliding slowly
over every curve, every nuance
of your silky ochre skin
I can imagine
laying there balanced on one elbow
leaning over you
marveling at your beauty, your grace
watching you rise and fall
with every breath
And I can imagine
quietly contemplating
The necessity of sex

Beauty

I was talking to a very lovely young friend the other day, and she mentioned that she was often uncomfortable when men complimented her, as she was never sure whether or not they did so with "tricky motives."  That started me thinking about beautiful women, and how men react to them.  We talked for awhile on the subject, and I came to some interesting (if not personal) conclusions. It occurred to me that men react to the beauty in a woman in at least three different ways, and that I had probably experienced all three. The first is a possessive reaction - he wants to have her beauty, to keep it, to control it, to take it away from the rest of the world.  Her beauty is an acquisition to be put away on a shelf, like a purloined piece of art, providing him the perverse pleasure of taking it out of the sun, letting it fade and decay, all  his. Even though he may display her beauty on his arm now and again, it is just another gesture of his dominant suppression. If he manages to convince her, she will surrender her beauty to this emotional erosion, giving him the satisfaction of watching it slowly die.

The second doesn't want to possess her beauty, but he does want to be near it.  He wants to admire it, to warm himself in its luster. He may have fleeting fantasies about having her, keeping her beauty for himself, but he knows this is impossible, he wouldn't begin to know what to do with it. The pleasure he knows admiring her eventually is corrupted by the pain of wanting her.  And on a random day, a random issue, a random comment will derail him, and the man she thought of as a close friend will strike out at her briefly and incomprehensibly, then flee in humiliation.

Finally, there is a man who sees her beauty, and wants to bring it in close and  tangle it up elegantly with the good and pure things he feels in his heart. He doesn't want to steal her beauty, or to own it exclusively, only to embrace it, let it connect the disparate constituents of  his soul.  Her beauty will fill the empty parts of his chest, will create the vessel he is meant to be - his soul, her beauty will manifest themselves in the exponential capacity of love. His love, her beauty will be conjoined, and his chest will rise and fall with the softness of a winter's sigh each moment he looks at her.  And if she takes her embrace back from him, he will find he has no internal systems of his own, no network of emotion or grounding rod for his pain - he will once again be hollow, but with the bitter sweet memory of  the consonant corporeal entity he once thought was his heart.

I have been these three men, and I have possessed, admired, and enmeshed the beauty of a woman.  When I finished my thoughts with my young friend, she asked me "which number are you now?"  I thought about it for a bit, then replied........................

Ramadan Night 23 - The Third Entry

And they feed, for the love
Of Allah, the indigent,
The orphan, and the captive,
(Saying), We feed you
For the sake of Allah alone:
No reward do we desire
From you, nor thanks.
S.76 A.8-9

Despite my sins and weaknesses, I thank God that He put this verse in my heart at birth.  I have always felt the need to help others, and I have always felt the reward deep in my heart.  That has been my eternal connection to God, that sliver of His grace he granted me.  With so much to work on, I am thankful for this gift, for I do not know how one  learns to love the anonymous gesture, the unrequited courtesy, the extension of one's humanity with no thought or concern for recompense. I love God for this thing I can love in myself. 

The Lure of Beauty, the Pursuit of Truth

Was reading Santayana this morning and came across this term, the lure of beauty, the pursuit of truth.  The symmetry and  disjuncture in this juxtaposition struck me immediately. The difference between being lured and to pursue caused me to think about both processes, and the influence of the destination.  We behave much differently when we are attracted to something than when we seek it out.  I wondered if we are drawn to beauty naturally, and have to work at getting to the truth, maybe even to want to get to the truth. What happens when we fall versus when we chase or climb.  Beauty is clearly not a choice, truth clearly should not be.

Beauty

A beautiful thing draws us to it.  We may not think about why it is beautiful, not need to know what attracts us, we simply feel the need to go to it, be with it, possibly possess it.  We don't get to choose what is beautiful to us, we can't make something so even if we feel we should. We seem unable to share beauty with each other - I don't know how many times I have shared a beautiful song, poem, even a movie with a friend and find myself baffled when that friend "doesn't get it."  I believe we do try to adopt a sense of beauty from others at times, but it is synthetic in that the beauty shared is really the extension of the common friendship and love that motivates us to enhance our connections, to magnify them.  We can connect deeply with another who has independently recognized the beauty of something, but often find that it is our only connection and it is so impalpable that we find little else to share, little else to connect us.

So beauty becomes a very personal thing, a very pure, singular siren that beckons us, and we rarely resist. 

Its call, so clear and compelling, creates an attraction that reconciles the irreconcilable - nothing can keep us from it, and we are abjured from any sin employed to get to it.  Nothing is so concrete yet so abstract; concrete in that we see it, feel it, know it; abstract in that we cannot share it, cannot communicate the attraction we feel, the attraction we are doomed to indulge. Beauty pulls us in, and we no more question the inevitability of our desire to follow,or our  path to get there than does a rock, dropped from a distance, questions gravity.

Truth

Truth needs to be sought, as if it is hidden, obtuse, or elusive.  We know at once that we should chase it even though we may not care for what we discover, and that it might not serve our needs and desires.  Truth is not beautiful, it could not be given its obscurity - beautiful things are drawn to the open, drawn to be admired. We rarely seek it altruistically, more often to support or rationalize a goal or ideology we have already created.  Truth, or the discovery of truth, becomes a task.  A pilgrim, setting out on the path to truth, prepares to humble himself and to be radically changed by the quest, let alone the final acquisition. He knows it will be difficult, and has to steel himself in preparation.  What does that say about truth?  What does it say about us?

Many of us will "seek truth" once we think we have figured out what it is, and by then uncovering it, can utilize it for our own advantage.  Few truly open their minds and hearts and prepare for anything in this quest.  Truth is necessarily relative when mankind relates to it with motive or malice.  It is not a tool to be wielded, but a blueprint to be followed. It is not beauty, cares little how you court it, truth dictates the path with the discipline of logic. One not only needs to come to it, one needs to come to it in the right way - there is no serendipitous passage.  Truth is a severe and meticulous mistress, quickly alienating many a sojourner who unwisely romanticizes her. 

Desire Then

We desire to consummate our attraction to beauty, not to slake it, but to yield to it faithfully.  Desire becomes the pursuit and subsequent communion with beauty, an unending intercourse where pleasure in process and pleasure in culmination coalesce effortlessly and beginning usurps end.  Desire for beauty is to be unleashed.

Desire for truth is less honest, less naive.  We desire truth to explain the world around us, often in a way that grants us advantage, puts us ahead of lesser thinkers.   There is a sublime power in the ability to point out a fact or a truth so cogently that it defies refutation, particularly when it reflects back on you, elevating you above the coarse and limited dialect of the unenlightened. This manipulation has been man's boon and his calamity since first he rested the construction of truth from mythology and its selfish gods.

Love - The Intersection 

We let love pretend to offer us the embrace of beauty and the asylum of truth.  Nothing could be further from the truth - there is no enduring beauty in love, and truth rises and falls in concert with the relative contentment of the relationship. Love is not a warranty, activated by vow or purchase. Desire for beauty and truth does not hasten love, it does not enable it.  Instead, love is the eventual evolution of beauty and truth to the state where two people find beauty in new venues imperceptible to the individual, and truth forged in the mutual sacrifice of two people determined to learn how to acquiesce ego and insecurity. Beauty transcends its adolescent fixations on physique and pulchritude, emerging vividly in the simple unsolicited gestures that hydrate a day. Truth, a devastating weapon in the hands of individual in a competition or rivalry, changes in the equity of love. Truth then, becomes the stubborn essence that survives the relationship, the loophole never engaged, the escape clause never initiated, the technicality never exploited. 

Love does not provide beauty and truth, it is the meridian of both, the reconciliation and purification of two human frailties tempered by the patience of a benevolent God.

A New Day

Ramadan is around the corner, and I have noted that my past several posts have been less than positive. True, I am struggling with some exceptional loads right now, and I have found a dangerous rut lately. The pain I am feeling, physical and mental is overwhelming at times. Despite all this, I do have points of refuge - several wonderful friends, and my faith. My good friends distract me for a bit, and prayer clears my mind for a time. And although I quickly drift back to the blackness, I am drawn out more easily,and I have found I need to leave a few things there. As Faulkner noted, we cling to those things that rob us.
So I am letting go, and moving forward. I will refocus my energies on those who have supported me, and returning to the disciplines demanded by my God. I know it will be difficult, but in many ways, I have no choice left. I will not be a casualty of my own poor choices, my misguided sense of love and friendship. I need to go out and buy some buttermilk and dates................:)

My Corrupted Heart - A Letter Written a Lifetime Ago

It took me a long time to sort things out in here. And just before I emerged from my thoughts, I passed through the darkest places I have been. Dark in that I pushed past the extent of my own insecurities, my own pettiness, the last vestiges of my selfish sense of love for you. I am not sure how I persevered, as the pain was so engrossing, so self-pitying, I was tempted to languish there, to lay in wait for you, to hurt you in proportion to the distorted image of my suffering. Instead, I resolved to break the pattern of my love logic and look at my heart and my feeling for you from a different perspective. Immediately, I was struck by the constricted thing I had called my heart.
From the moment I had met you, I felt what I knew to be love for you. Your face, your gestures, you kindness all called to me. When I eventually reached out to you and you returned my affection, I knew I was in love and that nothing before had felt warmer or so engrossing. And when you asked for all my heart, I thought I had given it to you openely and faithfully. But it wasn't my heart that I had given you - it was the sense of the love I felt from you wrapped haphazardly in the barbed-wire of my shallow, selfish needs. I am sure that you must have felt the love buried there at times, not even my worst insecurites could completely stifle it. This thing I buried in the cavity of my chest, and thought of as my heart.
As we travelled, as we embraced, as we laughed and cried, I pulled you closer ripping you open with the promise of the love beneath that you deserved. And as you bled, I believed it was you that had wounded me. I compounded that delusion by making you believe it was your fault, your lack of commitment that separated our hearts. I am so, so sorry.
I can blame my history, I guess, for this pathetic concept of love. If there had ever been a functioning heart there, it was most likely beaten out of me before my first failed attempts at intimacy and love. But that is no excuse, as I always knew that my relationships were not doomed by my tragic choice of partners. I knew it was me and my selfish, stunted desires. I probably had no business touching your belly, kissing your forehead all those years ago. Despite my issues, you gave your love to me. A testament to the beautiful soul I tried to embrace so awkwardly.
I should have loved your need for privacy, your concern for the real obstacles the world confronted us with. Instead of respecting you, I let that weed-like wire wrap itself tighter around my love, the barbs biting both ways, piercing me, tearing you apart, all in the name of my martyrdom. I did the impossible, I took your unconditional love and impaled it on my own pity and insecurity. I see that now.
But I have done that which I could never do, I have cut that wire and released my love for you. It is no longer tangled with my needs, my desperate desire to keep you, my vain attempts to possess you. I must confess it hurt, pulling those prongs from my heart, but it also feels good in a way I never expected. I am no longer worried about my heart, just warming myself with a true love for you that is not confined by my ego or my expectations for your return. The thought of another man cupping your breast, even being held closely in there by you no longer rips me apart. The pain has been replaced by a genuine hope that you are loved as you deserve to be.
I hope you feel that now, that you understand that no matter what happens to you, you are deeply and truly loved, no matter how far we move apart, no matter how many years between a conversation. I hope you close your eyes at night and know that my love is with you, tenderly watching over you as if I was there, perched on an elbow marvelling in your beauty. I pray that you feel this, no matter what difficulties you face, regardless how alone you might feel. At any moment, know that my thoughts are with you, and that my new heart is warmed by the thought of you smiling. This love is yours, always.
I won't blame you if you doubt the sincerity of this note, or my intentions. Until you do, I can only content myself with this new feeling. My memories of you no longer haunt me as losses or squandered love. I smile and appreciate the experiences, knowing how lucky I was then and that you must have a few nice thoughts too. My self-induced trauma is gone, I am happy.
Yours,
Michael

Love

"Oh love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure."
Hermann Hesse

The last thing I ever connected to my upbringing was my own capacity to love. My anger when I drank, my distance from most people, my need to confront things and issues, and my urge to keep moving from place to place, job to job all made sense to me in this context. I never examined my ability to love others, either women, my family, or my daughters. It never dawned on me to suspect that love wasn't an intrinsic gift independent of my environment or the conditions I was raised in. I guess I thought it was something so pure, so natural that anyone could summon it and make it work.
My mother was loving in her way. She hugged us, tried to protect us from my step-father, and she professed her love often. But the emotional blackmail that followed negated those overtures. When things didn't go well, she would retreat into her "illnesses" or into a deep depression. And the lesson I learned most about love from my mother was that she loved my step-father, and it was her job to repair whatever damage he would do to us. It was also her job to let us know he loved us, for he never told us, other than a few times when he was in a drunken stupor. No, I don't think I ever had a chance to experience or understand love in a healthy way.
By the time I left the house I thought I was ready to love others, to engage in intimate relationships. But I was wrong. I never, ever let anyone too far in. I didn't share my feelings, other than anger and occasional playfulness. I never allowed anyone to understand me, to share my life. I didn't know how.
I believed that working hard and providing for my family was my job. I did so, and continued to keep those people I loved at arm's distance. Subsequently, I am now 50 years old and realizing that no one knows me. Yes, people love me, God knows why, but no one knows me very well. And despite the fact that I have realized this, I still have no idea how to reach out and let those around me in. There is a peculiar kind of loneliness that follows this revelation, but not a terrible kind. You can hurt people by letting them in, and maybe I just don't like what is buried deep inside me. So my form of love has been protecting those around me from myself I guess, and I never understood that (though I listened to thousands of complaints over the years about my remoteness) until I saw the film Affliction. The movie was familiar, the story much like my own. But it was the film's final narration that really that made things clear for me. Men like me, who are raised in violence, retreat from those we love, knowing instinctively that the violence is deep inside us well. Our job is to protect them from our inheritance, subsequently hurting them in a completely different fashion.
The job at hand for me now is to take a hard look at the inside, try to separate it from the ugliness it was formed in, and find me. When I do, I have to make peace with whatever is there before I can truly love anyone the way they deserve. It is a frightful journey, as I suspect I have my doubts that I am any better than my step-father. I just know I cannot live the rest of my life this disconnected from the people who love me.