a word | love's storm

the stormIt hadn’t occurred to me until, I admit, after a couple of drinks one recent afternoon and as late summer fell all about us, I listened to my friend and realized that perhaps there are two types of people in the world in this regard, anyway; there is the “I could have” strain, or the “I could have been” and there is the “I will be” or “It can be” (one more active – indicating an act of will, whereas the “can” indicates that there are obstacles or unknown variables).

I suppose I’ve lived a life of “will be” as if it had been scripted out for me, and I tell you, I didn’t like the script. It’s living someone else’s life, or many people’s lives – everyone except your own. You’re so busy taking care of everyone else, that the self is lost and, in time, one simply stops caring about the self. I know. This happened to me. And because this happened to me, I sit and listen to my friend and it feels to me like I’m watching a train that is about to derail (though honestly, he already seems somewhat derailed) or to be simply heading for a crash, or worse, that he’ll just keep going on a collision course but with nothing but the end of life, which, in this kind of life, is long.

Life is long, life is short. It all depends on how you live it and with whom. Live it happy and it is fleeting, like those joyful summers of youth and even some of adulthood. The world, life, spin faster with each season: summer is so fast, then winter, winter is long or can be long if your situation is all wrong. Live miserably and Sunday afternoons are an eternity. A fight, histrionics in the kitchen on Friday night and the long weekend that follows tend to make life very long indeed. This is what I’m hearing about: the histrionics, the martyrdom (on every side of this situation) and I’m thinking, screaming in my head, “Get out!!!” I’ve been there. I’ve not thought of myself as the long-suffering martyr, but in retrospect, I did throw myself on the fire for the benefit of others – raising children that were not my own, taking on an entirely foreign family, being understanding for years when my first boyfriend wasn’t around while I sat there, thumb-twiddling, like the Virgin Mary, and I could go on). No, it’s not so bad, I suppose. But the point is – however it is you “martyr” yourself for someone else, it’s never good. Listen, I have illness myself but I wouldn’t want a husband who only stayed with me because I’m sick and epileptic or any Latin name in my thick medical record. I’d fucking hate him for that. I hate him for pitying me. Fuck pity. Ultimately, pity is a selfish thing. It says, “I’m better than you” and it says, “You need me” and I don’t mean in the “in-love” or right way. It means, If I could, I’d leave, but I feel stuck.

All of this is just so familiar, but to hear it come out of someone else’s mouth is like holding a mirror up a past self and not liking what you’re looking at, for martyrdom in the analytical sense, is another form of Narcissism. It all comes back to the self in the end and that’s really rather boring. I’d like to believe in the true capacity for love without the need for some perverse dependency. What happened to falling in love and being in love and knowing it as a good thing, not some dark, film noir bullshit in which you have to go home to every night and convince yourself you are so in love because it’s the “right thing”. Yes, it’s the “right” thing because a book tells you so. It’s the “right” thing because secretly, you actually like this dark punishment, though you can’t figure out why. You can’t figure out why because you’ve seen or caught glimpses of true happiness but are afraid to reach for them – in part because you think you are undeserving and in part because you are afraid of change and in large part because you are stuck. You are stuck on this concept “duty” (but this again is another “work” term – you don’t “work” for people you supposedly love. You simply “do” and it doesn’t feel like work… I know this. It never feels like work to me to be with him, it feels bright and happy and electric blue, even if this means picking him up off the floor, never work, never pity). I like this and I like the word “oath”. Oath is important. We make them and we mean them. They are a stand-in, or our voiced, word.

That said, things change. I’m not so changeable that I dump out my morality every day for something new, but I am changeable in that, and I think most people are this as well, that vowing yourself for the rest of eternity when you have no idea what eternity will bring you in terms of events and people is often a mistake. We make the best promise we can in the moment for some future that we can foresee. But what if the unforeseen happens? What if the oath I made is to someone who, when displeased and things don’t go his or her way, decides to beat me – smack me around a little bit, both verbally and physically. Assault me and I’ll love you more for it, says a feeble man, because he believes he deserves it. He rationalizes. Say what you will, but that person – in that type of relationship – the abuser can do no wrong. If you ever needed an agent on your side, pick the abuser because they certainly know how to negotiate the best deal for themselves. As for La Bete - he hasn’t found his Beauty, but he’s so busy thinking he’s unworthy that Beauty could be standing there before him shouting his name at the top of her lungs and would he notice, or would he think it is for some guy behind him? I feel no pity for La Bete in that regard. It is Belle with whom I empathize. Shit, what does the woman have to do or to be for him to notice, and why is it that every other goddamn prince on a white-horse notices? Let La Belle stick a bullet in her head and lie down like Sleeping Beauty and call it a day. She may as well.

Back to oaths: what if it’s not even that dramatic and I am just miserable because we wind up being those two people sharing a delusion and it’s dark and I lose any sense of self or ego in the process. Must I keep my oath then? Or did the other person already break theirs? What about “to love and to cherish”? Is abuse another word for cherish, because last time I checked, I didn’t see it listed as a synonym. Screw it if you’re sitting there counting the pathetic “happy” moments you’ve had because if you have to add them up, baby, you’re in trouble. You’re either really happy or you’re really not happy. Look, everyone, or anyone almost, can understand wavering and hesitation even in a situation in which you know damn well you are even in love with someone else, but at least be honest with yourself about it. As Rocky Horror ends, “Don’t dream it, be it”. Ah yes, if only we could all be as kindred as Columbia and Riff-Raff; brother and sister or not, they have a kindredness that is impenetrable and good for them. Small wonder my favorite book is Ada or Ardour by Nabokov, the story of two cousins who are in love. Some loves are forever. As I write a book now, a new novel, the premise: it is possible to love once, fully, and forever. I believe that. I believe that for all of the times we think we’ve been in love, meet that right person and it’s like, holy holy Eureka! Talk about the light of a light bulb lighting the entire world. Therein…

I’m just sitting there in this dark place with a beer and knowing outside the sun is still bright and warm and knowing that this is deeply ironic because I’m seeing the light outside, while he’s lost in the dark inside (in every sense) and this is just too symbolic. Our thoughts are unified and we’re laughing and talking and it’s serious but it’s light and it’s all this stuff I just want to work out. I want to untangle the knots for him because I see so clearly (that said, it’s always easier to see someone else’s problems, far harder to see your own, so that is my disclaimer). Another friend tells me I have a way of sorting things out in such a clear and simple way. She tells me I bring light, and as she says this, I tell her I’m just taking each thing in turn for what it is, to quote Dylan, and without prior definition. It’s just not that hard for me when it’s not me, that is. When it’s me, I am a total calamity. I am emotionally up, I am down, I am never, or rarely (this one time in the bar being a rare exception) am I just “level”. But when I am level, I am level. My head is clear as the light bulb that lights the whole world. One light bulb, like Orphée, and when in this state, I can be the Beauty from La Belle et La Bete, taking the Beast to the water and offering him a drink from my cupped hands because from where he sees ugliness, hideosity, she sees only loveliness and yet more, she is in love.

Of course, La Bete is in love as well, but like any Bete, like any fool with no sense of self-worth, he runs off into the woods when he wants Belle. When he is standing there before her bedroom door and smoke is rising from his body (and she does love him then even) he begs her to close the door, as if the sight of her were too much (read: IS too much). It seems clear he wants to have her – to be plain, to ravish her – he runs away and La Belle is left in total despair. I love this film – I love Cocteau, but I hate that it is up to La Belle to make the first move because La Bete is so damn passive.

Throughout history, literature, film, there has been a passionate relationship between Beauty and the Beast. He always wants her in every version, and he’ll do his little bit to woo her with his fancy dinner and his wine and his many attendants (ever watchful in Cocteau) and even dresses her in finery and baubles, but he never makes the first move in any physical or real sense because of his deep rooted insecurity that he is not enough. Sigh. I wonder sometimes, is this just a way of “letting her down easy” (which I hate, and is impossible anyway) or does he really want La Belle to go? And, further, if he doesn’t want La Belle, want kind of tease/friend is this? Just walk away.

But no. He won’t. He won’t because he does love La Belle. Trouble is, he doesn’t love himself. What happened to the old-fashioned courtship in which each holds up their end and at that magic moment, the two look at each other and say “I Love You”. Am I the only one who wants that? Did this go out of fashion? Passivity I’ve had it with you. It’s all too much of a big deal. As a friend says, If you want to be in it, stay and enjoy it. Be a participant in life. I’d go one further than her and say make real active decisions in full-knowledge of what you know damn well to be the truth, and I mean Truth. I’m tired of the rules of other people, and I’m tired of a book that calls itself “good” when it gives bad (and sexist) advice. You have to consider these things. Or I do. I do because it’s just that time of the year when I feel time slipping away too fast sometimes, and I know that everything can change in a New York Minute. That’s it. The world spins fast on a dime, but we control that spin. This much I know.

s.r.p.

labor day, 2:51