City of Legends

Not even close, if you believe my doctor, just going in so many directions, and drained a bit, trying to settle into a relationship that is, in a word, challenging.  Aren’t they all?

I am very gratified with the response to "padparadscha".  I enjoyed writing it, and am enjoying seeing people find resonance with it.  Tying it with my newfound avocation of collectiong gemstones (primarily black star sapphires and padparadscha) I am enjoying myself.

I realize I have been terrible at updating this blog, and will, again, resolve to do better…I am just stretched so thin (I write, I edit, I consult, I write long, meandering love letters, I flirt, I eat, I sleep, I breathe, I am, I said, I am…)

I hear a lot from friends, family and readers about my current relationship, with the woman I call "White Sunday" or "the Sunday Girl".  Some of it is clear-eyed and sane, some of it wild-eyed speculation and some of it just bullshit.

I want to be clear on some key elements.  This is not a garden-variety infatuation.  I spent many months considering whether or not to allow myself to reveal my feeling for this woman.  In the aftermath of my second marriage, and the perverse disingenuousness of the Aubergine affair, I was quite content with the notion of remaining ronin to the grave. 

This is a formidable woman I am dealing with here.  Part of the reason for all the secrecy and side-door maneuverings, above and beyond my usual totem-muse cloak and dagger, is that there will be repercussions, amongst my family and friends and amongst her family and friends, when and if we are public.  You will understand if and when this comes to be.

I earnestly believe her to be a better writer than myself, a better poet, and someone that a lot of the most irrelevant of my life’s misadventures have prepared me for being with.  She is wise, passionate, strong, eloquent and has total control of my heart. 

That bring us to the question of the ronin.  I have made it my intention to be with her, for the rest of my life.  She knows of this, she accepts this and, although I do not yet have a clear answer on it, my haiku "Matrimony" from "The Sacraments" lays out when I have made the offer and when I anticipate an answer.  It is my avowed intention to do what I must to win her, to claim her and to be with her, by whatever means she and I need to path out, for the rest of my days (see "The Sacraments", "Last Rites") or, failing this, to take permanent vows to the ronin state.

This may seem extreme, even lunatic, but above all it is what I, clinging to my principles of romance and how I define love, will be.  I am giving up two long-held states of being to be with her.  The first is my ponytailed visage.  I am giving up the tail, which I have proudly worn as my own sign of the Nazarite for more than a decade and a half, to be with her.  It has been a symbol of my standing apart from the mediocrity of this life.  Life with her could never be mediocre, so I have no need of it.

The second is my celibacy, which I have maintained for more than six years, awaiting the right woman, if she were to appear.  I do believe she is the right woman.  I will surrender this to her, gratefully, and she understands the importance and symbolism of this.

I do love her.  I am certain of this.  My poetry attests to this.  And my view is anyone, family or friend, who stands between her and myself will have to accept the fact that she will be first in my life and that if forced to choose, there will be no consideration required.

The opening line to my poem Horizon, which has its own complex mythology that even I do not fully understand, is the title of this blog entry.

The poem celebrates horizons, explorations, the brave who dare "look to the horizon with unclouded eyes".  But at the same moment, it is unflinching in expressing despair, pain, loss, the price of exploration.  It speaks of living on, filling one’s belly with "morsels and mold".

To follow a path, one must walk it.  Every day.  Never straying far.  To others the very path you walk may be invisible, or incomprehensible, even dangerous.  You keep walking.  Running, when you tire, to fight the entropy death of will and vision.  I don’t expect applause, or sympathy, and certainly not empathy from those who notice my path.  I have come to understand that, next to declarations of "soul mates" or "soul twins" the too-easily said "I understand" has become the tool of the predatory or parasitic co-dependent.  I’ve been guilty of the abuse of it, as well (never said I was perfect).

This morning I changed my status on Facebook to "It’s complicated", which immediately set my status to "In a relationship, but it’s complicated".  I received a few notes mere moments after the change, probing for information about my new lady.  There isn’t one.  It’s my lifelong companion, my muse, who sometimes has been very cross with me for taking mistresses in her place.  And I have usually suffered for it, in one form or another.

Of the nine classic Greek muses, you would expect mine to be Erato, the muse of lyric poetry, or even Calliope, that of epic poetry, but I suspect (knowing my addiction to long and agile legs) that is Terpsichore, the muse of the dance.  Perhaps.  That is certainly a topic worth a few term papers and speculations by readers. 

But I am, at this time, acknowledging her, my muse.  She has taken many forms, and I have mistaken more than one person for her in my day.  Beyond my horizon, she is there.  And with me, every day, even when I cannot see her or hear her voice.  Any other woman who enters my life must, as so many have discovered too late, accept her as the first and most central relationship to my heart.

I wrote this long, meandering philosophic piece here…then erased it and am rewriting.

Rather than talking about who I am and what I am and what has gone before in my life, I’m posting my shopping list.  My shopping list for the quintessential muse.

The quintessential muse (QM) is who I need in my life, right now, and for the rest of this run.  It’s sort of the benchmark for the lover I really, really would like to find.  Someone who fills need unfulfilled by past associations or, if those needs were fulfilled, there were other issues that broke us apart.

Brains.  Yep.  Smart.  Real smart.  Not just book smart, not just sheepskins on the wall, I have met many learned fools on this road.  I want someone who radiates genius.

Creativity.  Oh yes.  Only the firestarters understand the glow.  Whether an artist, a writer, a photographer, they must understand the creative force.

Spirituality.  Love, as I define it, is unconditional.  Only someone spiritual enough to understand the essence of unconditional love has a chance at giving that.  I have not always been the best person around, not by a long shot, but I do love without condition (a point some fail to understand, I am not the sort who believes that anger of disappointment cancels love, that’s ridiculous).  Note:  This does tend to drive some people crazy, as they are used to barter-arrangement romances.

Courage.  Someone who isn’t afraid of the world, of themselves, of me.  Cowardice has damned more promising relationships than I can count.

Honesty.  Those relationships not obliterated by cowardice were ripped apart by lack of integrity.  As a Quaker I value the truth, even the unpleasant ones.  I have found that I tend to be attracted to people who have been through Hell in past relationships.  Unfortunately, those are the ones most often prone to dishonesty, as they assume this will save them from their own follies.  I don’t care of you’re lying about yourself to me, or about me to your friends, it diminishes you.  And it means I can’t trust you.  Get out.

Passion.  If you’ve read my works, you know I am something of a passionate person.  Trust me, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

That’s a good starting point, no?  What, you say, no physical description?  While it is true that beauty does have its place, and a certain way you carry yourself does impact me on the human side, I’ve fallen for a few too many pretty assassins to take it at face value.  Nothing wrong with long legs, full lips and eyes that can melt steel.  But I’ve touched them, kissed them and looked into them and seen…nothing of any real value, more than once.

So after six years since my last major realtionship (let’s not count that long-distance implosion a few years back, okay?) I think I’m ready to at least put on the training wheels and get out of the garage.

Wish me luck.  Or at least not a total trainwreck.  I am tired of typing the word "debacle".

It has been coming in flickers and flashes (I know my creative personality all too well).  The desire to write something blood-fusion-hot in the way of some erotic poetry, to breathe out the solferino flames of the dragon.  There’s just one problem: No current muse.

Oh, yes, I could link to a memory and write something fiercely carnal and heated, that would melt keyboards and ignite screens.  That people would use to get laid.

But I’m over writing about the past in the present.  At least from that aspect.  Remembering a meal is not very nutritious.  And, make no mistake, I am hungry.  To the point of mad ferality. 

I could write of Abstra, the muse of the abstract lover.  But that would be disingenuous.  And, to be honest, to me, a bit boring.  I am considering retiring her.

I could write it of any of the lovely ladies who inhabit this constellation of my life, as friends and collaborators.  But that would elevate her to a place where she would rapidly become uncomfortable (as I know women, for the most part, regardless of what they say, want to control the temperature in the room) and off-balance.  Besides, it would be, at least in some vectors, a lie. While I may think of someone in that way (no names, please) I am doing my best to save the heat, the fire, the thermonuclear glory, for someone special, someone who might stick around and share their life.  You know, someone who wants more than a remote or weekend fling with verbal snapshots to remember in their old age.

I guess, for all the speculation to the contrary, I am sort of the anti-Joe Gideon.  I’m not looking for tourists in my love life, you know, the kind of person who has read the brochure and wants to know what it is like to dance with the man who has danced with the legends on the cliffs.  I want someone who is serious about moving in, taking up residence and giving me a reason to move the furniture around a bit. 

For all my chaos, my native state is as a domesticated animal.  Never been otherwise.  Stupid, on more than one occasion.  Gullible?  Certainly. 

I think I will just keep the fire in the belly of the dragon until it is the right time to breathe it out again.  Trust me, it’ll keep and when it does finally have cause to be released, you’ll know it.

And so will she.

Hmmm…my partner seems to have not been posting here in nearly two weeks. Methinks she is tired of constant adoration! Nah. I know how busy she has been and, unlike me, she is not a total freak of nature when it comes to writing obsessively.

Sweet dreams, my love.

And on the topic of sweet dreams…in amongst the billions of writing projects I am involved with (and poor Candy has gotten herself swept up into) I have committed myself to a variant on an old project of mine, "The Tales of the Amomancer", which is an allegory on my life and view of the world. Oh joy. More fodder for those who once read the the story of Narcissus and now think they are fully qualified psychiatric professionals.

You may have noted a series of dark works this evening on my blogs, with more likely to follow this brief respite. Don’t worry. I am just letting off some of the darker steam. I made several verbal faux pas earlier today in conversation with the big C, and am beating myself up for them. Unlike some other people (not Candy, but others)I do not have the compulsion to blame others for my missteps, I have allowed myself to get worn down and as a result, I have gotten sloppy.

I need to make some adjustments.

I need to lay down beside Candy and let bleed the wounds I have bound in illusion and allusion for so long. For too long. But the diligence and endurance that brought me to here, where I belong, was not for naught.