I love you

  Valentine's Day...I have a tricky relationship with this day. This year, having finally gotten used to the look and feel of my hyphenated name, it is the day I fully acknowledge that my marriage is over, that the man  I  have loved most fiercely in my life, the one I have given myself to freely and gladly again and again, is lost to me. Our first date, years ago, years supposed to be on Valentine's Day, but he had car trouble, and had to cancel...I think, that's the story, but looking back, it could have also been that the woman he was living with insisted that she spend the day with him. It would have been my first Valentine's Day with someone in more than three years, and while I had become mostly embittered by the holiday and its corporate roots, I was still very much excited to be with him. We had our date a week later—and that became our yearly celebration— dinner and a trip to an antique shop where we saw many wonders and whatsits, but eventually, bibliophiles that we are, got lost in the booky section, staying there on the floor reading to each other until the shop closed down and we had nearly been locked inside for the night. I found a volume of Emily Dickinson poetry that I brought home, and treasure as a memento of that day, and of the time when we were so excited for each other's gaze. 

  But this is not about that day. This is about today, and now...and now, my heart is broken and lonely, but I know that I am not alone—but it feels Alone. I've been wandering around the house, trying to imagine what it will be like when he's gone, for I'm going to do my best to keep the apartment we've just moved into—the one we've still not totally unpacked, because I think we both knew that our situation was approaching its terminus.  I can only hope for a more amicable break than the cycle we've been in. I did everything I could, but lacking my own mania, I cannot outwit somebody else's. I am so sad that my love for him has only endured through all of the tumult, the storms of his anger, and rage, and depression, and regret, and mania, and love, and joy and wit, I thought that because My Love would not die, Our Love would not die...I was so very wrong. 

  I've been through a lot in the last few years, and learned a lot in the last few days. We were supposed to celebrate next Tuesday, but obviously, there is nothing to celebrate...except, maybe that I've also realized that I will miss him very, very much, and the next steps are unknown to both of us, but I'm going to be ok. I'm going to try my best to take all the energy and effort I've put into everyone else and try, instead, to love myself enough to seek out happiness again. 

  I love you
  I love you


I love you

   I love you



I love you
  
   I 
     love
you


I 
have 
to 
let
you
go

Vulnerable

thinking of us
all the long way
from then to there
and here we are

thinking of us
lying in bed, spread
imagining you there
and here, I am

listening for You—
  for the rallying  cry, 
  for seeking and finding
  for frenzy and  wisdom
  for love struck
  for chiming in 
  for harmony, even from two crowns

striving for me—

  When every thing feels like failing and falling
  When hope is fleeting and my lover fickle
  When fact and fiction are equally strong
  When  force and fury beg forgiveness
  When fucking is fantastic and
   things are fanfuckingtastic


pressing, pulling, coming
  to the aching conclusion
  the swelling sense of  sweet
    lovejoyfancyneedlosshopedesire

The Womb in "Giovanni's Room"

Not having it right in front of me, but for starters:

  The title is "Giovanni's Room," but, it isn't Giovanni's at all..it's some woman's, a maid, whom we never meet. This may explain, partially, the presence of the romantic painting—a man and woman dancing or walking together, roses all around, I think. Eventually, Giovanni begins to "renovate" the room, but he only manages to bring in dirt, detritus, and disarray. But what if the room, belonging to a woman, is representative of the womb belonging to a woman? It's not just that the painting taunts Giovanni because of its own symbolic horror, and so he wants to erase it, but also that he is literally destroying, scraping out, the womb signifying the "abortive relationship" he has with David, and the dead infant in his past. 

  For David, the threat of the inescapable, disfigured womb— the all-seeing dead mother, whose influence dominated his childhood home even through absence—doubled with the image of the life he pretends, sometimes wants, but ultimately cannot have, becomes too terrible, and he must run to a living woman, any woman, to prove himself capable of rejuvenating life, in his loins, in her, in his future. 

Excerpt from the Sacred Prostitute

  "Differentiation is not a limiting factor; on the contrary, it is necessary for full psychological development. In the second half of life, the psychic process is predisposed toward reuniting the opposites, only now on a conscious level where the feminine principle of Eros and the masculine principle of Logos function congruently. Alchemists from the time of the Dark Ages describe this process in the poetic image of Sol and Luna, as gold ans silver, being melted into a unity purified of all opposition, and therefore incorruptible. But the sacred marriage can only occur after there has been a differentiation of the masculine and the feminine principles. As Ulanov writes:

          'Without wrestling with this task of differentiation, we fall into formlessness and a cheap         imitation of current persona roles. We miss our chance to become unique persons. Furthermore, we miss the spiritual significance of physical sexuality. If we deny sexual differences then we deny the fact of otherness that is so strikingly conveyed to all of us through sexual experience.'"

 

This could be the end...

I see you in the evening
Sitting on your throne
You're playing with a fireball
And post it up against wall

(so say the Kings)

and everywhere you go 
there is darkness 
and there is light

A well timed joke, 

a well earned smoke, 

as I muse and meander through what is

and was

and may be...
where, on earth, am I?
a blue hall with faint blue doors?
a roiling saturation of blood-fresh red?
a cut down tree, glowing violet at the heart?
     

All for one

Pitting one against the other
never turns out right—
the surest way to kill joy is through comparison—

"I've loved Him longer...been there, been through..."

"Yes, but I love him newly, with new perspective..."

"Oh, but I love Him, unfulfilled, afar..."

"But I am His home."

"I am his desire."

"I am His frivolity."

"I am his fantasy."

"This I know..."

"But this, I know."

"Me...look here...see how I know?"

"I will spend..."

"I will make..."

"I will send..."


All of us trying to know more, show more, be more...
  for You, to You. To prove that we are capable of what no other could do for You, or with You, or through You...all to be chosen...all for One, one memory, one moment, one man.