For as prolific and almost buoyant as I felt two days ago, I didn’t write at all yesterday. I’m not even sure I jotted down a single note. Instead, I suppose, it was a day of intake (books, articles, videos, experiences, sunshine).
I spent my morning taking care of some bills. I lost my main credit card the other day – I think I left it in the restaurant in Oxford. I put a freeze on it right away and two calls and two unreturned voice messages later, I canceled the card and switched over all the payments to a different card. I then spent the bulk of the morning trying to sort through getting healthcare. My previous employer had threatened to cancel my coverage effective immediately – which I suspect is illegal. Of course, there is no clear guidance on what an employer can or can’t do, because every state is different, and it depends on the number of employees, etc. etc. How hard would it be to have clear, national guidance that follows some basic rules of human decency (perhaps there is and it’s buried in some omnibus somewhere)? After a few phone calls, I learned that they had not submitted a cancellation request (I think they knew they couldn’t, but were using the threat as a scare tactic). I then spent some time on the healthcare exchange marketplace. I forgot how crappy the options were. For just under $400 a month I can have coverage that doesn’t cover much of anything. For $1,000 a month I can lower my deductible, and have a plan that still doesn’t cover much of anything. This is the gamble and math millions of Americans make – it’s a shitty system, especially when you think that one of its main outcomes (intended or not) is that it forces people to take a job (any job) just to avoid the headache and complications. Why my employer can have a good plan with more options for five people and yet millions of people can’t buy in to something similar is mind-boggling. Don’t get me wrong, I think Obamacare is better the system we used to have – but it seems like we could do so much better. So much for safety in numbers.
I read a few articles – one in the Atlantic on how the “dating market” is getting worse – I plan to write about it (I have some experience). I read another article on Brain Pickings on how to construct meaning in a universe that, taken in its entirety, dictates that nothing we do has any meaning (humans are an amazing, and brief, blip in the cosmos). I watched a few videos on love and relationships. Hearing from B’s ex boyfriend, and then from her, and the passing of her birthday has put me back in that familiar place of…. I’m not quite sure what to call it…. “perplexed longing.” Knowing that she wants pretty much the same thing I want. Knowing that we had months together building towards that shared dream, it just doesn’t make sense to me that we can’t find our way back to that place again. I suppose it comes down to choice, willingness, and capacity. We may both want the same thing, but she doesn’t see me the way she used to, and I can’t stop seeing her as the person I fell in love with. She and the dog could show up tomorrow and I think (while things wouldn’t be the way they were), I’d be really happy to see them and that vision would start to take shape again.
It turns out there are places in the brain that fire up when a person is in love. There are also places in the brain that fire up when a person is rejected – they’re pretty much the same place. This is why it is difficult to move on, it is why people take risks on love, it is why a song or a smell triggers a memory which makes us pull over the car just to breath (it was one of the videos I watched):
I also watched a good TED talk (in French with subtitles) on how we’re doing love wrong. The basic premise is that love is “the desire of being desired.” We can love a book, but it cannot love us back. He considers our freedom to value or disvalue things and others, but of course, this brings rise to the ability of others to value or disvalue us. To an extent, he argues that we need to embrace or uselessness. His solution is tenderness. This notion of intrinsic value vs. value based on the perception of others is one of the paradoxes that spirituality (especially Buddhism) tries to deal with. We are social beings. We need to develop inner strength and worth – which is specifically what makes us attractive to other people. The talk is light and funny, and well, who doesn’t enjoy a french accent.
I’ve listed these videos in reverse order…. the video that sent me down this path was a short one from Esther Perel. She talks about desire and love, especially the necessary and natural tension between love and space and desire. I write a lot, and read a lot, about the spaces in between. The other day I referred to myself as being a poet of reflective ambiguity – by which I meant being able to acknowledge and be comfortable with competing desires. In the Perel video she says she asks couples to finish the statement “I am most drawn to my partner when_____” The first answer she provides is the word radiates. If I had to choose one word to associate with B, that would be it – radiant. Perel continues by tying in the concept of curiosity – how we are both familiar with and curious about our partners. I sometimes think B felt my curiosity was overwhelming, as though she was under a microscope. She had been under a microscope in her past – it was usually to find flaws and level criticism. I know I had critical moments – we all do, but my curiosity was because I wanted to know who this person was, how she ticked. I read her poems because I was fascinated by her mind. I watched her touch the fabric in stores as she shopped because I liked to see the way she moved and processed the tactile world around her. I paid attention to her eyes to see when they lit up with excitement or teared up with hidden pain. The Perel video is only 4 minutes long… what she says seems intuitively true, there’s a common wisdom to it.
I don’t know what the ultimate outcome of this exploration and learning will be. In some instances, I’m reading and seeing things that I had read and seen before. I think ultimately, I hope to find someone who will also take these “lessons” to heart. It seems like if you can follow these basic principles, you can realize that we’re all caught between push and pull, and with grace, we can let go of “our position” – which is, of course, difficult to do in the moment. The BIG issue in my last relationship was about space and individual needs. As I reached out to reconcile, I was met with statements like, “this just proves you can’t give space.” My fear, rational or not, was that in giving space, the other person might not return. I could have just as easily argued that the finality of things only proves my position, my fear was right. How much of these things became self-fulfilling prophecies? After the break, I gave hours of space that became days that became weeks…. and I’ve arrived at a point of being able to say – you have all the space in the world and should you choose to get closer, to cede some of that space, I’m here. Of course neither of us are or were right. The stupidity of it all is the desire to hold on to one’s position – the need to be right. She’s right – I hadn’t changed at all, and had also changed immensely. The ability to love someone else is the ability to see the most monumental shifts in the smallest, most imperceptible changes – to recognize the struggle within. As I write and think, I’m suddenly reminded of The Beatles song, “Within Without You.”
We were talking, about the space between us all
And the people, who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion
Never glimpse the truth, then it’s far too late when they pass awayWe were talking, about the love we all could share
When we find it, to try our best to hold it there, with our love
With our love we could save the world, if they only knewTry to realize it’s all within yourself, no-one else can make you change
And to see you’re really only very small
And life flows on within you and without youWe were talking, about the love that’s gone so cold
And the people who gain the world and lose their soul
They don’t know, they can’t see, are you one of them?When you’ve seen beyond yourself
Then you may find peace of mind is waiting there
And the time will come when you see we’re all one
And life flows on within you and without you
Reading the lyrics, I’m struck by how I was exposed to this kind of thinking at such an early age (I grew up on the Beatles, my parents had all of their albums). I’m also struck by how this kind of spirituality has circled back in to my life these many years later (and yet, I have a bit of distaste and distrust of the “yogi” culture). I think I’m uncomfortable because I also struggle with anything that is “preachy.” The allegory of the cave assumes that some of us can attain enlightenment and can also attempt to free others from their misconceptions of truth. When I go down these rabbit holes, I usually want to pull back and resort to humor or anything to lighten up… This too is where love is beneficial. It makes you smile, it pulls you out of your own head. It, as Adrienne Rich put it “breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.”
The sun came out later in the afternoon and in an effort to break down isolation, I went for a walk. I hadn’t really left the apartment much this week – mostly because of the cold and the rain. The only words I physically spoke to another person were when I told a homeless man that I didn’t have any cash on me. In a moment of ironic awareness, I was walking, earbuds in, looking down in thought when a homeless woman (a regular in the South Main neighborhood) called out to me “keep that head up!” There I was, walking in the sunshine getting a pep talk from an effervescent homeless woman. It put things in perspective and put a smile on my face. The world is a strange and surprising place.
I went home, fed the cat and started in on making some bolognese – I’m a little obsessed. It was my best batch yet. I’m not usually one to brag, but this was restaurant quality good. I think the main difference was that I cooked it longer and used a bit more salt.
I am especially thankful for these past few days (weeks) of space. I’ve had lots of moments where I’ve been so lost in thought that I forgot what I was doing – this morning I went to pour my second cup of coffee without realizing the pot was empty because I had already had two. On Wednesday, I’m pretty sure I washed my hair twice because I forgot I did it the first time. I’m also alarmed, sometimes, at how close to the surface my emotions are. And I don’t mean emotions of longing or even thoughts about B. Though I think I finally identify with and understand her saying she was a fish brain. I like to think I’ve always been a fairly thoughtful and self-aware person who isn’t afraid of his emotional side. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed a change in my ability to feel – it’s gotten deeper. This morning on Facebook a friend shared the poem “The Jungle” by Carrie Fountain. It started off light enough with some humor, and by the end I found myself welling up and needing some room to breath. When I open myself to it, (something I don’t do quite as often when I’m worried about work and traffic and parking) the beauty and horror and the weight of being a human can absolutely flood me with all types of feelings. I am at once in love with and disappointed by the world, myself, B, the strangers on the street and in the bars, the moms picking up their kids at daycare, the two birds fighting over a piece of crumb cake outside the cafe, the delicious darkness and warmth of coffee, the river that carries logs way too heavy to lift, the shifting angles of shadows on the porch…. the ability, time, and space to write long rambling posts about how I’m trying to figure out what it looks like to live a life full of the entire spectrum of emotions. I’m thankful for time and space and ability. I wish everyone had this more often in their life. This too is an irony. The one thing I had trouble giving B is the the thing my fish brain is learning to appreciate.