FIVE AND A HALF DAYS TO GO...HELPFUL HINTS FROM THE UNREQUITED

I find your upcoming temporary separation confusing...is it that will be a problem being alone? I sense some fear there. You can be strong on your own. Have faith and courage, believe you can survive this. You've fallen from the weight of the cross, and you stand up again and step forward, we all have crosses to bear. If someone here can help carry it, even temporarily for a breather, then so be it, but the journey is still yours to carry to it's eventual end.

It's not just fear. I live from the knowledge of love as I live from sunshine; unlike most humans, I am a chlorophyl-based life form, but like all humans, I am a love-based life form. And when my best part goes away and leaves me alone with the rest of me, it is more sadness than fear, although fear certainly plays a part. No, the worst part is what I carry and have promised not to speak of until her return. That in turn reminds me that I have no choice but to move forward by that step at least; we just have to agree on the terms of HOW and WHEN and to WHOM.

Here are three poems I wrote when stuck in Vegas in '93 for what seemed like for-@#$%&!-ever and came so close to betraying my vows I could taste it [or rather, him]. The longings were all equally true. Otherwise, it would all have been, would all now be, so easy. They all address, in some way, the issues here; indeed, that's why I wrote 'em.

FROM HER ABSENT HUSBAND
Though merely pumps which we at will replace,
Our hearts still make our pulses ebb and race;
Unless with all our will we mask their traces,
They still project our souls upon our faces.
When all is well we scarcely know they beat
But high emotion, rank, or dark, or sweet,
Releases demon drummers and their savage
Wild rhythm booms berserk through every passage.
But beating is not all a heart can do;
I know that mine can yearn and cry for you,
Can live in hope, in fear of consummation
Of awful fear: abandonment, privation.
Oh, say: I'll soon be held against your breast
And feel your heartbeat thrilling through my chest.


AND AGAIN.....
Though I've been called an angel, I am none.
To be half-angel and half-beast's my fate —
No special doom, but Everyman's estate,
The warp thread of this human race we run.
To live alone is opening a gate;
I wallow in my weakness and my woe.
Temptation tosses conscience to and fro;
I most desire that which I also hate.
To live alone is facing what you know:
I look within and see each scar and wart,
Each crease and convolution of my heart.
I fear to reap as I would love to sow...
To look into your soul is courting fright,
Unless a loving heart reflect the sight.


THIRD SONNET FROM AN OUT-OF-TOWN SPOUSE
Three times I've tried to tell you how I feel;
The third time pays for all and I am done.
In icy air beneath the desert sun
I watch my words begin their wayward reel.
For hearts must beat, and hide their secret scars;
In all the world, in every tongue, they cry.
The miracle is more that you and I
Have joined our hearts despite our cages' bars;
And still the wonder is not quite expressed:
I know my heart's recesses, and its sin;
How did we leap, to fall in what we're in?
How is it that in your heart, mine finds rest?
One dazzling gift of God in life I've known:
My heart for all its faults calls yours its own.

Now why on earth do you say:

"I used to think that it was in this suffering that we truly learned, learned to see how beautiful the world and people around us are, learned to see how much of a gift our lives are... as we march to our own deaths straining from the weight of our burden."

Can you not say that any more? Because that is pretty much where I am, I'm just not strong enough to bear it in mind when everything else seems so heavy. It isn't really, I know that, but I have forgotten how to make it light again. Maybe this is a good time to go ask for help again -- putting my weight on my knees is always enough of a surprise to get me to focus better...

"And perhaps it's in these things along the way, we find that happiness has been there all along and that we were too distracted to notice."

And that's one of the things to focus on.

BUT... what if the path ahead seems to be premised on giving up that happiness for all the uncertainty Hell can muster [and uncertainty is what Hell specializes in, in case you haven't noticed -- the people who declare war on uncertainty by making a fetish of religion just don't see who is driving them -- I would say it is the Author of Uncertainty, who knows they can't even begin to deal with him...].

I am so afraid of what the future holds, and about the only adult scrap left of me is the knowledge that it will catch up with me no matter what I do, so that I might as well walk toward it and embrace it. The claws can't dig any deeper because they go in from the front than from the back...

On that cheerful note,
I remain
yr obedient servant
El Troll [apparently Spanish uses the Swedish word, as we do...]