You, my dear, are a revelation. I mean to say, you are (seem to be) the love I have always been searching for.
I wanted to record, especially now, before I forget, the beads on the necklace of my time with you. I won’t forget, but still want to lay them out, in brief:
There was the Luna concert. I was so happy to be there, so buoyant, so jubilant, and there you were, this steady, strong presence in the turbulent crowd. I’ve rarely, perhaps never before, felt such strong a connection, like rope, like a ribbon, with a stranger. But were you a stranger?
Then there was the first meeting, at the British Library, when we walked around King’s Cross like a pair of 15-year olds and ended up in that uninteresting pub, which we wanted to be a hotel room.
After that you came to my flat, and you brought what seemed to be ten armfuls of flowers, and a vase, and music, and champagne. And we sat on the couch and listened to McCarthy and Damian and Naomi and Spiritualized and kissed. And I started crying to Low--a song about heartbreak-- because it was so beautiful, the music, and you, and the feeling of perfect harmony, at last, after so many lonely years, and of settling for less than what I wanted. We couldn’t eat because, as you said, the stomach felt like a washing machine, and so we drank some more and locked legs on the couch, sitting at each end, facing one another, and discovered that we both like vintage classic cars. And we thought it wasn’t possible for the other to be more perfect. But then you were more perfect. In the bedroom I encountered in you a delicacy, a sweetness and softness that I did not know could live in a man’s body. Such dark rich loveliness and hidden pleasures, such deep beauty. We didn’t make love because, as you said, this was about more than sex. And so we hungered for each other, and still do.
Then there was the week in hell, after we met in the bar for lunch, in Kensington, and you said you needed to sort yourself out and I couldn’t’ stop crying. Later I told you I wanted you to be free for me, and felt I had lost you completely. I thought I had to do this, because I would lose you anyway, and you wouldn’t be true to me in the long run, that whether I gave myself to you or not, you would lose interest, or find that you did not have the courage or desire to free yourself, and I would lose you, and had lost you, and my heart had only more agony to bear, the lacerations of your future rejection, the knife of the story that you could not leave because of this or that, and you were very sorry, and I would be bloodied there, eviscerated, destroyed, as before. I would not recover. I would die. I thought I was dying. I texted you and you wrote back:
Too busy
dreaming of you.
And I thought that meant you were too busy to talk to write to me, but that I should be placated by the comment that you were “dreaming” of me. But dreaming was not thinking or hoping and certainly not loving, and that meant that I was only a dream, only a wish you didn’t expect to fulfill, and that I should therefore leave you alone. And I tried. But failed. A few days later I texted again, “please call me,” and you did not get the message for days. I thought you were ignoring me. You said you left your phone in the office all weekend, and I believed you because you seemed so genuine on the phone and in person. You told me, that day in Kensington, when I could not stop crying, that you would always love me. I believe you then but during the week of hell of lost faith in you. I stopped believing.
We had then that amazing day on Portobello road, walking along from used bookstore to record shop, and you showed me how well read you were in an area I have always wanted to know better, and let me read poetry to you. And you said that I brought you to the brink of tears. You seemed to love me, the spirit inside of me, as I love the spirit in you. And I told you that you were the love of my life, the only one. And you said the same to me. I saw my first blooming tree of the year, a maroon spray of cherry blossoms arching like a wedding veil across the sidewalk. We passed under it and its petals, already falling. I decided to be free and gay and loose with you. You said, “I will walk you to that lamppost and then have to turn around.” Before we got there, I pulled you into a doorway to tell you that, just for one minute, I was going to pretend that you were free and I was free and that we could be together, And we kissed what seemed a thousand times, our eyes blazing.
I said that I loved you for you, not because the situation was impossible, and not because I couldn’t have you. I wanted to prove this to you and for you to feel it, to feel free to take me or leave me. How did you feel when you kissed me then, I wonder? Did you feel released? Do you think you could love me if you could have me? Could I love you if I could have you? Don’t doubt.
There are so many things I want to say to you, to ask you, to talk about with you. When? When will there be time? Will there ever be time? Will I ever know you really? Will you ever be my comfortable old man whom I love in spite of your farts, your softening belly, your silence, your preoccupations? I long for this, too.
You are like rain, the life-giving sun, a flood of golden water and light. Or so I imagine you. And it is therefore fitting that we will be meeting in a building filled with life-sustaining seawater, by a river, soon.
So tomorrow I will meet you at the Aquarium, and meet your little daughter, Mia, and fall, I am afraid, deeper into love with you. I am so afraid. Afraid of losing you, I think, more than of loving you. Although I am also afraid of that…of really loving and needing someone. It will be good to see you.
I have a dream of living under one roof with you and our children, Mia and Brendan and more, and of learning from them and from each other, and of learning, finally, how to love..
This is not the document I sat down to write. I had meant to compose some beautiful lyric piece that would capture the beauty of our early days, hours, together, and have ended up writing what I usually write, a rambling confessional meditation.
I wonder how I will look back on this. I hope I will be able to.
I want to say this last thing. I love you with all the ardor and idealism and foolishness of an adolescent. I want more than anything to be able to love this way, and not to have rein myself in, because I am loved in return with all the blazing glory of life that I feel inside of me, and which longs to shout in exultation, to expand and finally to find its room. Doesn’t everyone want to love this way?
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
The Apostate's Diary: Sunday, March 15, 2005
My dearest MD:
Last night I had a conversation with my son, BNO that made me feel so close to him, so very able to understand him and to be understood by him, that I felt transformed. We have had many tender and intimate talks, in which he has told me about his longings and desires, but I have never before seen so much of myself in this child, never before felt as though we were indeed of one spiritual fabric, one heart. Never before have I had the sense that my own child was not only OF me but WITH me, not just an offspring, but a soulmate. And the comfort of this conversation, the consolation it gave me, was a healing balm that soothed the ragged, jagged-edged standard that my heart and my spirit have been. My heart has flown like a white flag, a standard of defeat and despair, in face of the distance between us, my sense of having failed him, of having lost him, of all the terrible small and large mistakes I have made, and all the battles I have lost while trying to hold onto him, my beautiful, sensitive, loving son. I have held it up and out there, in the line of fire, as it were, from his father, his stepmother, and the world that condemns women like me.
My dearest, dearest boy, who so often seems to live so far away, to be utterly inaccessible and unknowable, opened his heart to me. What wonders children of this age are—they are wonderful at all ages, but at 13, 14, they are so honest, so frank, so idealistic, so trusting, so tender-hearted, even though they are also old enough to be duplicitous, closed, cynical, and to think to themselves that they should begin to harden against the world. I think it’s their decision to remain open, in spite of their awareness of the hurts in the world, that makes them such delicate and wondrous creatures. They are small dolphins, just grown gazelles, youthful lions still discovering the sleekness of their bodies, the ease with which they move through the world. They sense their power, but haven’t mastered it yet. They’ve had setbacks, but they haven’t given up. They want everything and still hope to realize their dreams. Adolescents are so often misunderstood, maligned, disliked, perhaps because we older folks remember how miserable and uncomfortable we were at that stage, and disown ourselves in them. But we ought to remember how beautiful we were when we were their age.
What was he talking about, then, you ask? What was it that made me feel so in tune with him, so very comforted to know that, in spite of the great divide, the divorce, his father’s narrowness and his stepmother’s jealousy, that I had somehow won some ground, forged a connection with a son over whom I have so little control, so little influence? He was telling me that he felt different from most of his peers, and that what he longed for most of all was to meet his true love, the girl who would understand him and know him and love him best of all. He said that he had just broken up with his latest “girlfriend” (whose name, eerily or sensibly enough, is Kim), and had realized that none of the girls he had known so far was quite what he was looking for. None of them was smart enough, or sensitive enough, or imaginative, or musical enough. You know what he meant.
Of course he is very inexperienced and doesn’t really know what it means to have a girlfriend. I doubt if he’s even kissed a girl yet. But he thinks about these things a lot, as I imagine many boys and girls his age do (I did). One could say that he’s compensating for something else in his life, some thing he is lacking, self-esteem, a sense of purpose, a drive, an ambition, a hobby. Give him something useful to think about, get his mind off such silly dreams, such fripperies, one might say. Or one could see that he is developing according to his own nature, and that he is just coming into his sex, and that his body may be growing—as it always has—very fast, and that it is spring, and he is an animal like the other creatures he loves on the planet. One might add that he, my thoughtful, idealistic son, often says that he likes animals better than humans, because animals don’t hurt the planet. He is very angry about what people’s chemicals and pollutions do to the waters and the creatures who can’t defend themselves against us. I love him for this.
I told him that one had to kiss a lot of frogs before finding the princess. He liked that. The saying seemed kind of stupid and trite to me, but I remember thinking it very profound. I also told him about a poem I used to sing to him when he was a little boy, called “The Song of the Wandering Angus.” It’s by Yeats, of course, and I was glad to be able to send it to him…by email, just before I sent you the poem by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill. It was sending the poem to BNO than made me think of sending that one, about spring and blossoming and transcendence and sex, to you.
Last night I had a conversation with my son, BNO that made me feel so close to him, so very able to understand him and to be understood by him, that I felt transformed. We have had many tender and intimate talks, in which he has told me about his longings and desires, but I have never before seen so much of myself in this child, never before felt as though we were indeed of one spiritual fabric, one heart. Never before have I had the sense that my own child was not only OF me but WITH me, not just an offspring, but a soulmate. And the comfort of this conversation, the consolation it gave me, was a healing balm that soothed the ragged, jagged-edged standard that my heart and my spirit have been. My heart has flown like a white flag, a standard of defeat and despair, in face of the distance between us, my sense of having failed him, of having lost him, of all the terrible small and large mistakes I have made, and all the battles I have lost while trying to hold onto him, my beautiful, sensitive, loving son. I have held it up and out there, in the line of fire, as it were, from his father, his stepmother, and the world that condemns women like me.
My dearest, dearest boy, who so often seems to live so far away, to be utterly inaccessible and unknowable, opened his heart to me. What wonders children of this age are—they are wonderful at all ages, but at 13, 14, they are so honest, so frank, so idealistic, so trusting, so tender-hearted, even though they are also old enough to be duplicitous, closed, cynical, and to think to themselves that they should begin to harden against the world. I think it’s their decision to remain open, in spite of their awareness of the hurts in the world, that makes them such delicate and wondrous creatures. They are small dolphins, just grown gazelles, youthful lions still discovering the sleekness of their bodies, the ease with which they move through the world. They sense their power, but haven’t mastered it yet. They’ve had setbacks, but they haven’t given up. They want everything and still hope to realize their dreams. Adolescents are so often misunderstood, maligned, disliked, perhaps because we older folks remember how miserable and uncomfortable we were at that stage, and disown ourselves in them. But we ought to remember how beautiful we were when we were their age.
What was he talking about, then, you ask? What was it that made me feel so in tune with him, so very comforted to know that, in spite of the great divide, the divorce, his father’s narrowness and his stepmother’s jealousy, that I had somehow won some ground, forged a connection with a son over whom I have so little control, so little influence? He was telling me that he felt different from most of his peers, and that what he longed for most of all was to meet his true love, the girl who would understand him and know him and love him best of all. He said that he had just broken up with his latest “girlfriend” (whose name, eerily or sensibly enough, is Kim), and had realized that none of the girls he had known so far was quite what he was looking for. None of them was smart enough, or sensitive enough, or imaginative, or musical enough. You know what he meant.
Of course he is very inexperienced and doesn’t really know what it means to have a girlfriend. I doubt if he’s even kissed a girl yet. But he thinks about these things a lot, as I imagine many boys and girls his age do (I did). One could say that he’s compensating for something else in his life, some thing he is lacking, self-esteem, a sense of purpose, a drive, an ambition, a hobby. Give him something useful to think about, get his mind off such silly dreams, such fripperies, one might say. Or one could see that he is developing according to his own nature, and that he is just coming into his sex, and that his body may be growing—as it always has—very fast, and that it is spring, and he is an animal like the other creatures he loves on the planet. One might add that he, my thoughtful, idealistic son, often says that he likes animals better than humans, because animals don’t hurt the planet. He is very angry about what people’s chemicals and pollutions do to the waters and the creatures who can’t defend themselves against us. I love him for this.
I told him that one had to kiss a lot of frogs before finding the princess. He liked that. The saying seemed kind of stupid and trite to me, but I remember thinking it very profound. I also told him about a poem I used to sing to him when he was a little boy, called “The Song of the Wandering Angus.” It’s by Yeats, of course, and I was glad to be able to send it to him…by email, just before I sent you the poem by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill. It was sending the poem to BNO than made me think of sending that one, about spring and blossoming and transcendence and sex, to you.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
The Apostate’s Diary, Feb 10, 2005
London
My dearest Manpreet,
I’m only addressing this to you because I feel I often write better, or at least more comfortably, when I adopt the letter form. But I shall probably not send this to you or even let you read it. I used to keep a journal, and have done so on and off since I was about 8, I suppose. I can’t remember, since all of my childhood journals were lost when my mother died and my father remarried and sold the house. The Great Fire of my life, the catastrophe that burned everything to ash and forced me to start over. It was my mother’s death that propelled me, I think, into recognizing that my marriage was not what I had expected it to be, not what I had been pretending it was. It’s so much easier to imagine that I am telling you these things, as I think of you as the most sympathetic and loving listener I could ever possibly meet, than to think of writing just into the wilderness, as it were, into the air. My childhood journals were lost, thrown away, most likely, and the books I’ve filled since then are stacked in a closet at home in the states. I can’t bear to read them. And in any case they are only halfway accurate. I have never been able to tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth, when I write “in my journal.” Always there has been some nameless, critical reader looking over my shoulder. So I shall imagine that I am telling you about myself, and trying to be as honest as possible, while also admitting from the outset that there are things I won’t say, because I want to present myself in the best possible light.
I have often wondered, though, what it would feel like to set down everything, absolutely every sordid thing I have done and thought, without judgment or analysis. So much of my journals have been about analyzing my actions, thinking them through, rather than just recounting them. What a relief it would be to find the courage to narrate the events as they come, without worrying about what people might think about what I imagine is my scandalous life. The things I do that I can’t tell anyone about, the things that I hate myself for. And to do more than that. To narrate, also, the mundane, the ordinary, the strange, the days rolling past.
Today, for example. Not much happened. I felt inspired by you to be more responsible about my work, and therefore got myself to the internet café by 8:30 to take care of email. Then I realized I didn’t have the address of the student I was supposed to write to, and had to write to someone else in the program who might have it, and ask her to pass my message along to him. Rather discouraging. Then I bought groceries, grapefruit and rye bread, because they are lower in carbohydrates than other foods, and, since high-suger foods only fill me up for a short time and I am trying to eat as little as possible, both to save money and to lose weight. I also bought the paper, some apples and ham, for my lunch. 8 pounds. I can’t seem to get through the day without shelling out at least 20 bucks, and if I spend that much I will soon be out of money all together. I am constantly worrying about money. It seems that I never have enough. I am awake at night, like half the people on the planet, worrying about it.
But I did not sit down to record my anxieties, but rather what seems too important to neglect.
Starting again, then: Last night I had a conversation with my son, Brendan that made me feel so close to him, so very able to understand him a… [This part of the letter was not sent]
[also taken out of the letter]
I have loved Ian this way—I have loved the god in him, as well as the man, but he has not loved me as much. He only sees the disappointing, ordinary woman in me, not the divine. He sees little of my spirit, I think, but still he loves me. I don’t quite know why. It has been so hard, so painful, to love him. I am so tired to loving this way.
What I dream of in you, and perhaps foolishly, is to be loved in return as passionately, as tenderly, as I love.
It is so sad with Ian, for the root of my great love for him is still there, still strong and deep in the ground, like an old vine. But there are few leaves and less fruit these days than there ever were before. How can you continue to flourish when you love where your love is not watered? When your every branching out is regarded as an excess, a limb that ought to be cut back? So I am somewhat puzzled by his desire to come to see me.
I do not look forward to feeling the need to restrain myself with him again and again, as I always do. He is nice, he is passionate, he is loving, for about three days. Then he withdraws again, and I have to learn to put on yet another hard layer of bark, to protect myself from the pain of it. He always makes me cry.
I have loved him so well, and for so long. And for what? For dry, parched ground around my feet. For a bit of dew and lots of dust. Why he has been faithful to me, why he has continued to come round, I cannot explain. He has been, ironically, the only one I could trust.
I have not known Craig long enough to say for sure, but my gut feeling about him is that I cannot trust him very far. I will be okay with him as long as I hold myself together and do not crash.. When I tell him about how it goes with me sometimes, how forlorn and devastated I feel, he falls silent. My sadness frightens him, because he has never felt it and therefore can’t understand it. And once, when I was really in a bad way, which had everything to do with Brendan and the hardship of that situation, he repudiated me for being depressed. We nearly broke up, and I have never quite trusted him since.
Ian, for all his untouchableness, knows melancholy and can talk to me. He usually comforts me. I know that I could go to him in utmost need, and that he would help me. But I would continue to grow only in a twisted and half-withered, parched way.
Do you understand why I haven’t been able to give Ian up, even though, on surface of things, Craig is more generous and more affectionate? I have held on to both of them, because they give me different kinds of love that I need. Both leave me feeling rather desiccated in the long run, but they give me what I have needed to survive. And I have needed them. I hope you don’t think less of me for this, my need for them.
The letter I sent:
Thank you for taking the time to speak with me about my concerns. And for such a lovely time yesterday, meeting by chance in the station and walking around Kensington, then sitting together in the cafe where there was an old lady hacking away and feeling ill on one side, and, on the other, a lonely old man, who, happily, soon joined the crown of white-haired gentlemen spending the afternoon talking about the war. And how we smiled at them and at one another as we watched them bidding one another farewell so affectionately.
I do have a lot more hope now than before. You always make me feel better.
Do know that I really never do want you in any way cause you harm or anguish or worry. I hope you'll sort things out soon.
With lots of love,
J
My dearest Manpreet,
I’m only addressing this to you because I feel I often write better, or at least more comfortably, when I adopt the letter form. But I shall probably not send this to you or even let you read it. I used to keep a journal, and have done so on and off since I was about 8, I suppose. I can’t remember, since all of my childhood journals were lost when my mother died and my father remarried and sold the house. The Great Fire of my life, the catastrophe that burned everything to ash and forced me to start over. It was my mother’s death that propelled me, I think, into recognizing that my marriage was not what I had expected it to be, not what I had been pretending it was. It’s so much easier to imagine that I am telling you these things, as I think of you as the most sympathetic and loving listener I could ever possibly meet, than to think of writing just into the wilderness, as it were, into the air. My childhood journals were lost, thrown away, most likely, and the books I’ve filled since then are stacked in a closet at home in the states. I can’t bear to read them. And in any case they are only halfway accurate. I have never been able to tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth, when I write “in my journal.” Always there has been some nameless, critical reader looking over my shoulder. So I shall imagine that I am telling you about myself, and trying to be as honest as possible, while also admitting from the outset that there are things I won’t say, because I want to present myself in the best possible light.
I have often wondered, though, what it would feel like to set down everything, absolutely every sordid thing I have done and thought, without judgment or analysis. So much of my journals have been about analyzing my actions, thinking them through, rather than just recounting them. What a relief it would be to find the courage to narrate the events as they come, without worrying about what people might think about what I imagine is my scandalous life. The things I do that I can’t tell anyone about, the things that I hate myself for. And to do more than that. To narrate, also, the mundane, the ordinary, the strange, the days rolling past.
Today, for example. Not much happened. I felt inspired by you to be more responsible about my work, and therefore got myself to the internet café by 8:30 to take care of email. Then I realized I didn’t have the address of the student I was supposed to write to, and had to write to someone else in the program who might have it, and ask her to pass my message along to him. Rather discouraging. Then I bought groceries, grapefruit and rye bread, because they are lower in carbohydrates than other foods, and, since high-suger foods only fill me up for a short time and I am trying to eat as little as possible, both to save money and to lose weight. I also bought the paper, some apples and ham, for my lunch. 8 pounds. I can’t seem to get through the day without shelling out at least 20 bucks, and if I spend that much I will soon be out of money all together. I am constantly worrying about money. It seems that I never have enough. I am awake at night, like half the people on the planet, worrying about it.
But I did not sit down to record my anxieties, but rather what seems too important to neglect.
Starting again, then: Last night I had a conversation with my son, Brendan that made me feel so close to him, so very able to understand him a… [This part of the letter was not sent]
[also taken out of the letter]
I have loved Ian this way—I have loved the god in him, as well as the man, but he has not loved me as much. He only sees the disappointing, ordinary woman in me, not the divine. He sees little of my spirit, I think, but still he loves me. I don’t quite know why. It has been so hard, so painful, to love him. I am so tired to loving this way.
What I dream of in you, and perhaps foolishly, is to be loved in return as passionately, as tenderly, as I love.
It is so sad with Ian, for the root of my great love for him is still there, still strong and deep in the ground, like an old vine. But there are few leaves and less fruit these days than there ever were before. How can you continue to flourish when you love where your love is not watered? When your every branching out is regarded as an excess, a limb that ought to be cut back? So I am somewhat puzzled by his desire to come to see me.
I do not look forward to feeling the need to restrain myself with him again and again, as I always do. He is nice, he is passionate, he is loving, for about three days. Then he withdraws again, and I have to learn to put on yet another hard layer of bark, to protect myself from the pain of it. He always makes me cry.
I have loved him so well, and for so long. And for what? For dry, parched ground around my feet. For a bit of dew and lots of dust. Why he has been faithful to me, why he has continued to come round, I cannot explain. He has been, ironically, the only one I could trust.
I have not known Craig long enough to say for sure, but my gut feeling about him is that I cannot trust him very far. I will be okay with him as long as I hold myself together and do not crash.. When I tell him about how it goes with me sometimes, how forlorn and devastated I feel, he falls silent. My sadness frightens him, because he has never felt it and therefore can’t understand it. And once, when I was really in a bad way, which had everything to do with Brendan and the hardship of that situation, he repudiated me for being depressed. We nearly broke up, and I have never quite trusted him since.
Ian, for all his untouchableness, knows melancholy and can talk to me. He usually comforts me. I know that I could go to him in utmost need, and that he would help me. But I would continue to grow only in a twisted and half-withered, parched way.
Do you understand why I haven’t been able to give Ian up, even though, on surface of things, Craig is more generous and more affectionate? I have held on to both of them, because they give me different kinds of love that I need. Both leave me feeling rather desiccated in the long run, but they give me what I have needed to survive. And I have needed them. I hope you don’t think less of me for this, my need for them.
The letter I sent:
Thank you for taking the time to speak with me about my concerns. And for such a lovely time yesterday, meeting by chance in the station and walking around Kensington, then sitting together in the cafe where there was an old lady hacking away and feeling ill on one side, and, on the other, a lonely old man, who, happily, soon joined the crown of white-haired gentlemen spending the afternoon talking about the war. And how we smiled at them and at one another as we watched them bidding one another farewell so affectionately.
I do have a lot more hope now than before. You always make me feel better.
Do know that I really never do want you in any way cause you harm or anguish or worry. I hope you'll sort things out soon.
With lots of love,
J
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
