pantoum's Diaryland Diary

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WHAT HEAVEN IS?

The only relationships I have been able to sustain for very long are ones with brilliant, headstrong women who are comfortable enough with who they are to not be threatened by my independence.

I seek them out, am drawn to them across rooms and crowds, am entranced by them.

I love brilliant minds, but know myself well enough to know that I am headstrong too and unwilling to remain in a relationship with someone if it compromises my ability to be my whole self.

I need space—lots and lots of space. I need hours of sitting in a room alone and a partner who understands that, while I may appear to be doing nothing, what I am actually doing is cogitating on the mysteries of my particular world and I need to do this in order to write, to create, to remain emotionally available, to thrive.

Some people might label this solipsism, but most of my mental meanderings don't center around me so much as around my big questions:

• What does it mean to be human, to exist in a world where so many people brush up against you and color your life and then vanish?

• What does it take to sustain some kind of faith in a world where mind-numbing atrocities are commonplace?

• What does it mean to live in a world where Jesus isn't a profound concept, a verb, but is instead a religious weapon hurled at noncomformists and free thinkers and homosexuals who "trust the sanity of our vessels" enough to threaten fundamentalists?

• What makes some people cling to such narrow worldviews?

• How do you love authentically and on a long-term basis and sustain this love without losing yourself?

• How do you live authentically as you can, taking in as much as you can and giving out as much as you can, and still manage to be productive?

• What does compartmentalizing yourself for a job do to your soul?

• What would it take for me to let go of my worries about money and trust that following my path as honestly as I know how will provide enough sustenance for my existence?

I have mostly taken this route and am not debt free, but am at least doing what I want to be doing and don't require all that much money in order to be happy anyway so long as I can walk on the beach at least seasonally and enjoy lobster every now and again.

And those other questions:

• What do I do with my treasure chest of violent memories?

• Is it possible to do something useful with them, to mine them until they cease to control me?

• How do I transform the terror that my body remembers more vividly than my brain into useful wisdom that does not awaken me at night in a cold sweat?

• How do I let go of all the anger that helped me to survive when I needed it, move beyond it to a place where I control it instead of it controlling me?

• How do I learn how to care for me?

• And how the fuck do I learn how to trust people?

Or (finally) succinctly: How do I extrapolate a sustainable world from this jumbled mix of experience, philosophy, insight, terror, broken bones, and random couplings—find the poetry?

Ferron already asks my constant questions: "Where can the quiet be? Where do I live in me?"

Twice now I have found a woman who was able to accept who I am and still live with me without being threatened when I go off wandering in my head. She and I were tethered at a common center, but moved away as individuals staked together by the magic of love.

We returned to that center, where we asked deep questions and cooked noodles and fucked and loved each other, and, even after eleven years, sat in that amazing space that can only surround you when you love someone and lean into her precious body while you are doing anything together: washing the dishes or reading the newspaper or fucking or making love—and there you are in that sacred space where you know each other at so many different levels and are still discovering new ways to love each other there.

That, to me, is what heaven must be. A place where the insights you gain from your private space are balanced by that hard-to-find, sacred, and loving common space you share with the woman you love.

6:57 p.m. - 2005-02-28

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