To the guy on the bench who told me why I love people…

“You love them because they’re about you. You love your children and grand children because it means you don’t really die. You love other people because they make you feel good about you”

Yes, I have heard that legacy discussion about love of family. I get that statement that says people have children to continue their genetics in the world and they love their offspring because they are reflected within them. Basically it’s writing off love to ego and biological imperative. My response: Damn, that’s seriously cynical. I also think not accurate. His thought continues on to imply that all love is simply a narcissistic response to positive input. Again-cynical to the point of painful and terribly unoriginal. He claimed his values came from Buddhism. I call Bologna on his Buddha.

It seems any time someone wants to pop another person’s love balloon this discussion gets trotted out as if it’s the ultimate rational write-off. I think it’s poorly thought out and I also think love is not so much a thinking thing. Thinking is ego. Love comes from somewhere else as mysterious as deep space. No one really knows how it happens. We only know it’s symptoms and side effects.

Parenting is one way of understanding the deepest reservoirs of love, the many fathoms below the surface of rationality.  I did not want to love the children, I did not think of loving them. I held them and looked in their newborn, sightless eyes and felt their hearts beating and I loved them. Magic is so clear and present in the great mystery of love and parenthood. I don’t know how or why but I am certain that Kyra, six and right now the only grandchild, is a truly mystical and epic creature who sets my imagination free every time I breathe her name which is often.

Love is something other than can be chalked up to some instinctive drive. Bench guy–did you never hear that of all the attributes and feelings available, love is the greatest of these? Love makes us smile, cry and animates us into living beings capable of heroism, faith, grace, joy and profound tragedy. Love gives birth to us. When we do not love we are aware that we are not really alive.

Having your heart broken is the PhD of emotional learning and, if you let it, leads to some of the greatest wisdom and benevolence available to the life experience.

Does love contain some ego attachment? If you’re human everything contains some ego attachment but if there is one thing that will help you move past the story of you as told by you which is what ego attachment comes down to–well–it’s also love.

Love is the thing that makes you say through your tears, “I want you to do what makes you happy even if it feels like it’s killing me right now.” Love is what makes you mean those words. Love is what makes us give all we have to another and be sad we can’t find more to give.

Love is running home through the rain for miles with a wildflower pressed to your chest and love is hoping when there is no reason to hope. Love is waking in the night with the dream of the one you love fresh on your lips and leaves you cradling a pillow sobbing your longing. Love is also going to ten stores for the right cupcakes, hearing a song and humming it in your heart all day, and love is sweeping a floor, folding socks, checking the oil and the smile on your face you can’t stop when you see him even if he is not smiling back at you.

Love is simple. Love is complex. Love cures you after it deconstructs you into nothing but a squeaky single board of a foundation and then it builds from you a palace. Love wants and desires and craves until it aches with all its longings and then it releases and watches as all its built and hoped for washes away while it cries and smiles with joy and pain equally held.

Love changes everything. Love is biology–kind of and in part. It is in our nature just as the stars are meant to shine and the sun is meant to warm but does that make any of it less meaningful or beautiful? Of course not. We are blessed that we are wired to love. But it is also not merely wiring. The impulse is there but it is the greater, mysterious, God part of us which answers loves invitation and says, “Yes. Yes I will love you. Yes I know this means that from now on you will matter to me more than I matter to myself. Yes I will love you when it hurts and I will give all that I have and more than I knew I had because I have said yes. Each time I am asked I will say yes. Yes. I love you.”

It is not the ego which forms around such an answer. It is the divinity, the connection we are able to form, the bond we seek and love we choose whenever we are able to have a choice.

So, guy on the bench, go back and re-consider your views on love. Find that courage to connect with what is hurting you and why you have reduced the great mystery to wires in a box and the God within to a mere trifle of ego. I see now that you are in pain. I am remembering that you said your wife has now become your friend, that the intimacy you once shared is past. I missed that part of your hurt until just now. It explains so much. If I see you again I will hug you because the love which binds all of us living creatures compels such a response, because if anyone needs love–I’m thinking it’s you. I’m hoping-guy on the bench-you will find the courage to go back to the yes that brought you to life and that in saying yes to your wife she will remember that she also said it. Sometimes we just forget.

Pablo’s Prayer

My father was a thesaurus and my mother a dictionary. I spilled from their pages with all their words and the words of my ancestors in an inky black soup of memory and meaning, most of which I still don’t understand.

She: words have specific meaning, black and white. There are rules which do not include error or fluidity.

He: It’s tricky. Words may have many meanings, the context is not measurable for all the possibilities. One must not seek to control or catalog but languish in language.

Words are grandmother’s boney hands moving in her soul’s music as she whispers in Yiddish, words are those unspoken between lovers as they stare, words are what I didn’t say when my heart fell and broke open that day spilling its blood and ink silently around us. Words alter the course of history and rivers..you and me. Words are what we have when there is nothing else. Yet even then they may slip away leaving us lonely when we need them most.

Words can cure us then kill us. Words can be heartless bitches.

Words follow me now, chasing me through the spinning of the second hand of a humming clock,

“…if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little…”*

Sometimes I reach deep in my bones beyond love and loss through time and timelessness and I find these words scrawled somewhere at the bottom of me..

“…if suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you….”

My father took himself..the thesaurus.. with him when he boarded his last boat deep into the blueness of his own eyes, the words he left me, “You are the kind one…” I hold them with the good and evil I have kept for him in his context of too many things and endless meanings, the folded crossword with one letter still missing.

My mother still works that crossword. But sometimes even dictionaries do not have enough letters. Black and white cannot find the nuance, not all problems have solutions perhaps.

For what is beauty if not you and the turn of your lip or scowl of your brow? Perhaps it is within the ten thousand things, the subtle sweetness of the Earth, the silence of the sparrow or the sorrow of the stolen which may one day turn to spring,

“… But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated…”

Can I be followed into the light and dark of these words? I think it not so, yet I hope it so fondly I am sent into the libraries of time, rummaging forgotten volumes for keys to that jeweled box you keep from me in the back of that place that only feels like home.

If I cannot be found I am still not so lost words will not come for me,

“… in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten”

Words may not abandon me, they will hold me together as the gods of my aspirations. Maybe they will be my only lovers, maybe they will bring me flesh and bone but surely they will speak to me of their passion howling through the folds of memory and resting silently smiling at their destruction.

My mother was a dictionary and my father a thesaurus. I am caught between them seeking meanings.

*Excerpted from “If You Forget Me” by Pablo Neruda.

Stardust and Unicorns–sure–why not?

Say what you want. Attraction is shallow. One should seek equals at all levels, one should strive for compatibility and take the one hundred asset test to determine how one might spend the years of their lives entwined with another. We should give up on old fashioned ideas like love at first sight and romantic attraction–plug it into a dating database and call it real.

That’s the thinking, right?

Right. Right up until you meet someone who breathes with you, who sends sparks from his finger tips and every word is profound. Right–right up until you experience the inexpressible.

But that doesn’t really happen. We’ve given up on that nonsense so we mush all of our stuff in a tiresome program and it pops out a match and we show up pretending not to have a heart or soul but only a hard drive. We comb our hair, find our best shirt and face the formula. But we secretly are hoping for something which defies a quiz, we hope for the most ethereal and inexplicable thing as close to fairy dust as possible–we hope for love. We fear looking foolish which may be the worst fate in all of humanity so we leave it to computers. They’re so anonymous and neutral. Who doesn’t love that?

There is a program for everything. It’s so much more predictable and limits risk.

But why? Why do we do this?

I’m raising my hand. Pick me– I know. What is–we are scared to death– for 200 Alex. We are afraid of our potential because it is so powerful and authentic.

We are humans, mammals in fact, desperate for connection pretending to be driven by logic. I picture Hindu gods laughing at us–oh silly little humans–thinking things makes sense.

We are all just little packets of DNA and Consciousness floating around in our stardust bodies. We are magic in the flesh. Why not just own that? Logic is for the simple who cannot wrap their head around the vastness of the true reality.

Can we just cut through the crap?This isn’t Sci-Fi but real life where we actually fall in love, every day, all the time with all kinds of people as in..’I don’t know what’s going on but this person is all I can think about..I dream him when I’m awake..I only want his happiness..’ Giving your heart away is part of the natural condition of the fearless humans we are meant to be.

Logic has nothing to do with it. When I stand under a black sky and look up at the stars I feel a deep sense of gratitude. None of that is about programming or logic. That sky, those stars, that moon are not about preferences but instead they are about awe and reverence, they are about connection to something greater than me which reminds me that I am a part of a beautiful, magical place where really, scientifically, anything is actually possible. That’s not the Disney version. If you’ve read any of the great thinkers delving into Cosmology you know what I am saying here is not romance but fact. Love is like that too. It’s a miracle.

Embrace that.

We pick our friends through weird coincidence..we show up at the same coffee shop or we speak the same kind of colloquial language or see each other in the Tofu section and start talking. We fall for our children when we hear a heart beat the first time. They are not even formed people, yet we love them. And if we’re really, really lucky we meet someone who steals our heart and we don’t know or care why…we just know how we feel. It’s not calculated or logical and it’s not meant to be. It’s the  the way the sun hits the grass in February as it unfurls in front of a weathered barn and something about it makes us cry with its simple and complex beauty, it’s me walking home from town under the comfort of my night sky past the Shiva tree and saying under my breath, “thankyou,thankyou,thankyou.”

Life is not a formula. It is unpredictable. It will break you apart and put you back together. It will pull your heart out and restructure it while you sleep. You will suffer and you will grow but through it all- if you’re paying close attention- you will notice that all around you is love and the hands to hold you so that even when you’re falling it’s never too far.

Chances are just when you are content with everything as it is, change will show up knocking at your door. If I had a dollar for every time I told a friend, “I love my life. I don’t want one thing to change” I would be wealthy. Of course that meant change would surely come. And guess what? It followed no formula and showed up unexpected in one way– and like a dream I harbored for years in secret– in another. Because, we do manifest our deepest desires.

So here I am the cynic making a case for unexpected and unexplained love. I am making the case for prayer and intention, for magic and the unexplainable. I am urging you to dive right in without weighing the cost.

I am suggesting you throw out the play book, the rule book, the list of ‘should’ and shouldn’t’ and go with your gut and heart. Do no harm, walk sweetly with good intention and really know that you are loved in a million different ways. Turn every corner with a smile on your face and your arms open wide to what may arrive.

You have nothing to lose but your fear.

Mi Querida, you are so cherished. Trust that lovely soul. Dance under the night sky and know that the world awaits you.

You are so needed just as you are, in your dreams living under the warmth of your smile. Forget logic and follow love.

It’s all true. Every dream, every hope–all real. Your job is to only to say, Thank you.

You dropped a paper with your number, now the phone is ringing

The voice on the phone said breathlessly, “one hundred mornings of waking up to a particular brand of bad breath, to fifty negotiated Sunday plans and twenty five fights which end with..’no matter what you say I am still here… I found your note and I’m calling you back.”

A man’s voice, rich and tender reading my own words back to me. It was on my voice mail.

What is this? How did he get my words? What is he doing with my name and number? Wait, what note? I know I did not give anyone a note. I stared at my phone. What do I do? I froze, then I paced, then I listened to the message again.

I didn’t know what to do so I did the obvious and called him back. I asked him about the note. He said he found it on the street near the bar where he was playing music. It had my name and number. “No. Something is wrong here.” I told him that couldn’t have happened. He laughed and said, “But it did. It did happen.”

Then I remembered. I had a thought, more like a wish. I wrote those lines on the back of a receipt. I was daydreaming about what I might say if I ever met “him.” On that night ten days earlier it was the smooth voiced musician in front of me. It could have been anyone.  I was wistful but not serious..was I? How did this guy get my receipt and words? I didn’t leave it anywhere. I took it home and used it as a starter for my blog, #love-and-#humor-in-that-exact-order.

 

I must have tucked it back in my jeans the next day and dropped it somewhere.  Who knows how many people had seen it? How did it get there? Oh God, I must have written my name and number on it at the bar where I first jotted it down–where I was thinking the singer was beautiful. Who was I? Don’t drink and write. I repeated the mantra in my head. One indiscretion is all it takes.  Thank God I didn’t actually give it to anyone–but now this guy has it. I feel like that one night is never ending. How?

“Come down to where we’re playing. We’re here for one night. Tomorrow we’re off to San Francisco. Come on down it’ll be fun.”

“Okay. I’m in my pajamas getting ready to read. But, weird, okay. I’ll walk over.”

I threw on some clothes, dabbed on a spot of lip color just in case and headed in the direction of the bar. I walked in and saw the musicians. A couple of young guys. They played well. It was some kind of blue grass folk with a cool blues infusion. They looked like nice people and they sang their hearts out. I wondered where their mom was. Funny how that thought goes through me when I see anyone under twenty six. One of them mouthed, “Julie?” I nodded my head. “Julie everyone. This is the one we told y’all about !” The bar broke out in applause. Okay. It actually gets worse, I thought. Who knows what they said about me? I knew I didn’t want to know. Still, I was amused. Life is messy, especially for me lately. I might want to get that checked I thought as I smiled and grabbed a bar stool.

The young men took a break and I immediately apologized for being their mom’s age. I’m sure they must be disappointed. The guy who  called said, “It’s alright. I was maybe expecting someone else. But hey you came–that’s cool.”

I was thinking more along the lines of I could have stayed in pajamas.

I won’t lie, when I got the mysterious message it sounded like the start of a Nicholas Sparks novel and it sucked me in. Instead of “The Notebook” it would just be “The Note.” How romantic, right? You know you were thinking that too. But life, at least my life, normally takes a pragmatic turn rather quickly. Soon the young man was telling me about his search for meaning, synchronicity and his spiritual path. He asked me questions and recently found himself oddly interested in Zen teachings. He wondered if I knew anything about that. I tapped on the chair next to me and said, “Okay. Sit down. Let’s talk.”

Buddha was famous for his sense of humor during his lifetime. Sometimes I think he is still having a great belly laugh.

I told the young man what I could in this bar over the sound of his buddy playing and the drunks in the back trying to sing along. I felt the need to remind him more than once not to be attached to outcome..this is what causes suffering.

He offered to give me the note back. I said, “No. You keep it. You never know what anything is about but now it belongs to you.”

Walking home a few minutes later under a bright half moon I  understood in a new way what I just said about not sticking to a certain outcome and not thinking you know what anything is really about.  “Good advice” I muttered under my breath as I felt the chill of Autumn and the seasons change around me.

 

 

#love and #humor in that exact order

I know better than to drink and write. It may have worked for beat generation writers and Edgar Allen Poe but who am I kidding? I don’t think there is enough alcohol or opium to make me write like those guys anywhere on this planet.  Plus, everyone who reads this knows me. You will see me in the store buying kale in sunglasses. Yet, somehow I cannot resist this topic-writing about it and feeling it over and over.

So yes, a few gin and tonics into midnight and I will speak the obvious; there are only really two things in life. Those things are humor and love. They are filed exactly in that order.

This past weekend I met a man which covers the humor and the love in one sentence. For those who actually, really read this blog he was not someone from EHarmony. What a bona fide disaster that place is–it’s like last call at the worst bar on the beach. He was and probably is still beautiful to look at and has what appears to be a very good soul. He had only one serious problem from my point of view–he did not love me. He was willing to pretend for a nice one and a half act play but then the curtain fell and he was on his way.

The encounter and I don’t know, maybe the last forty years of my life or so have me wondering–am I the only one out here longing for the one hundred mornings of waking up to a particular brand of bad breath, to fifty negotiated Sunday plans and twenty five fights which end with..’no matter what you say I am still here’.  I’m not talking about the fake it til you make it kind of love where your eye color is somehow “amazing” or you’re devoted until the sickness happens as in ” in sickness and health.”  I’m talking about the kind that makes you feel special complaining about your love because you know you’re blessed to have someone so incredible to bitch about. The kind that notices the bruise on your backside or the fact that you love to dance or someone who will write a poem even if it sucks just to make sure you know, really know, that you are loved-not generally–but quite specifically adored even when your hair is a mess, maybe especially then.

I want to get up a little early and make coffee the way he likes it or be reminded where I left my fifteenth pair of reading glasses I’m always losing or have him whisper something vile and entirely inappropriate at the dinner table where there are other people I know. I want to cry about all I’ve lost and gained and be held even if I make no sense and I want to be chased with a feather or told I am ridiculous at Cross Word. I want also to look at his face and know I am in the presence of my personal Grand Canyon-someone so awe inspiring that despite his really bad taste in pants he makes me swoon like a swan when she meets her mate.

It’s not like I’m asking for the world–it’s more like the Universe. I get it. But here’s the thing, the point of this romantic drivel is- it really is better to have loved and lost. Once you know how to love not like Katie Perry but more like Yeats you have that knowing of what love feels like and how it acts even on a bad day. You know what it’s like to hold his face in your hands as he tries to finish his work or pass him and for no reason have to kiss the palm of his hand.

So my fellows who also closed the bar down, who got desperate enough for EHarmony which is far from harmonious or met someone who broke your already broken heart-take courage. You always have you to laugh at and trust me as I sit at my tiny desk in heels and skinny jeans about my latest mistake–you are just the kind of beer to cry in and then fall into in a fit of laughter. Life is not to be taken seriously and neither are we my dear one. Love will come or it will not. But tonight we have gin and tonic, each other and the fortitude to laugh at just the loserness of it all because no matter where you are you are winning some and losing some and loving some and crying some.

I know better than to drink and write-I know but I cannot remember what I know when my heart opens and I fill the space with drinking songs and thoughts of love.

My room is warm, my bed is cold and I’m afraid to go there alone. But I will. Tomorrow I will wake up and wonder…’dear God, tell me I didn’t really write last night..no I couldn’t have.’ Do me a favor–if I ask don’t tell me…just laugh about it and love me anyway. Because life is really only about two things–humor and love in that exact order.