love

old souls – dead souls

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Yesterday I randomly came across this list of ’12 reasons why old souls have such a hard time finding love’. Normally I would think it was mumbo-jumbo – ‘old souls’? And who the hell is out looking for love?

Still it spoke to me in several ways. Truths:

  • Left unchecked, their hyper-intuitiveness can wreck relationships
  • They often have a greater purpose that must be attended to first – one that love would distract them from (They usually have to accomplish quite a bit on their own before they find love – this is because old souls love deeply, and completely. To be given love too soon would keep them from the other important things they are here to do)
  • They’re natural healers, and often attract people who need help, not love (at some point in time, it’s crucial for them to realize that they have to choose a partner, not a student, or a charity case)

I have written in recent months about how I have seen this final point repeat so many times that it is impossible to count by now. I went back to old journals and snippets I’d written down somewhere – the pattern has repeated throughout my entire life, a history I had not even guessed the depths of until I went far enough back into old journals. I remarked on this tendency so many times and more than once resolved to take another path.

But it’s so hard not to get ensnared: by the time you realize that someone needs help more than love, it’s already too late.

Different vibes

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She told me that my latest letter gave off ‘different vibes’:

“You couldn’t quite decide whether to be slightly annoyed or to embrace this emotional whirlwind. So not like you! Or at least not like the side of you you let us see. I’ve always seen you as extremely cool and composed in all situations, even somehow untouchable. Men came into your life and then left with more or less drama. But you remained self-sufficient and content to continue living your life.”

Very rarely, maybe only once or twice in a person’s life, someone will appear like a tornado – or maybe a hail of tomatoes – at least briefly throwing everything you know into disarray and drenching everything with a passata-like goo. I suppose this upending of my sense of order explains the different vibes.

love endures

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Listened to this Modern Love podcast on ‘seesawing libidos’ to close out Valentine’s Day.

“In the end my married friends were right: there may be a limit to passion but love flourishes.”

Now, goodnight.

the whole cake

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It strikes me every time I read something from several years ago how many repeated patterns there are in the lives of all the characters involved, including myself. It shouldn’t come as a surprise – I am a certain type of person, and despite changing my surroundings, approaches, and putting up solid boundaries when needed, it does not change the fact that I am the same person at my core, and the feelings with which I respond are essentially the same. It also does not change the kinds of people I encounter in my life, or the preferences my heart (or mind) seems to have. None of this is a value judgment – just observations about how fundamental, deep change is not easy or quick. If it happens at all, it happens like soil erosion – it is happening but isn’t visible to the naked eye or even perceptible for many years.

Autumn 2011 (?) – excerpts from an email

A weekend of major baking (1200 cookies for a PR event at work). I invited a young German assistant to come and help me.

Latest drama: Mal is convinced he is going to die, like a total hypochondriac, despite not actually having real symptoms of anything. All I could do was roll my eyes, even if I wanted to be sympathetic, because 1. what a total overreaction, 2. go to the fucking doctor if you are so scared, 3. he was sooooooo unsympathetic when I had my own much more realistic health scare not long ago and has not been sympathetic or understanding when I have told him about the actual health problems I faced. Eventually he saw a doctor who told him that his symptoms were imagined/psychosomatic. Being the dramatic manipulator he is, he uses even fake health crises to milk what benefit he can get from them. He told me he feels he has had a “near-death experience” now. Oh my god. Seriously. Until they are cutting your balls off and shooting radiation into some part of your body, don’t even talk to me about near-death. He apparently told a mutual acquaintance that if he had been diagnosed with something terminal, he would immediately pack up and move here, as if he had been invited to die at my house. At some point he told me the same thing, imagining I would be flattered that he would choose me as nurse and caretaker for his final days?! Me, being the cynic always believing the worst in people like him, I said, “Oh why… better free medical care in Sweden?” He got offended and said, “No! To spend my last days somewhere beautiful with someone who really cares about me.” I guess that is a nicer sentiment, but note that it is always about who cares about him, what he can get out of it and not about for whom he cares or some kind of mutual care or respect.

Of course I am not supposed to be talking to him at all since my deadline for getting rid of him was September 30. It really had become such a chore and difficulty that I literally had to give myself a deadline. It is beyond difficult to just cut someone off, even someone so destructive and selfish. I have put a lot of distance between us, causing him to call me a “frosty fucker” the other day (haha). I enjoyed being called a frosty fucker so much that I just had to repeat it. It has grown easier, though, because I’ve been working and dashing constantly from place to place – Oslo, Trondheim, New York, Seattle, Stockholm, and will be right up until the end of the year, meaning there is no time to mess around with his nonsense, inconsistency, excuses and bullshit. I sometimes find myself in the position of sort of missing him when we are out of touch for a while, but as soon as I talk to him again, listening to his stupid excuses and bullshit-filled banter, I am back to wanting to forget that this summer happened at all…

Actually being around R (the dentist), I was just struck again, hard, by the realization that it is just so easy to get worn down into a pattern with some people (ML) where you accept and think something, some pathetic behavior, is okay or even normal, which it totally is not. R is open, funny, generous, warm … he barely knows me but he invited me to stay in his house during this extensive dental treatment. We had some great conversations and even greater laughs… and you know, he did not have to do any of that – I was not his friend, but his sister’s, but he still did. I like to think I am a lot like that most of the time. I am not a taker, so when I am taking (like from R this past week), I am extremely grateful and gracious, offer to help in any way I can, offer whatever I have (in this case, I brought a shitload of cookies to him). I just don’t understand people who can take and take and barely register that it might require a thank you.

I was telling R about this situation with Mal, and he laughed and said, “It sounds like an indie movie… full of unknown actors.” It made me think… maybe I should write a screenplay or something out of this ridiculous summer. Then I would at least feel like I walked away with something.

These days, after this stupid summer entanglement and its idleness, I am oddly contemplative/reflective on what it is I really want to do in life… ever since Steve Jobs died the other day and I re-watched his Stanford commencement speech about death (or threat of it) being the best catalyst for taking action in life. Do I want to write product sheets about the Android OS for the rest of my life? No. The last thing I want is a routine life.

…And then on compatibility, with your husband and with people in general. I understand what you are saying about choosing the “right qualities” when you decided to be with him… his stability and some of the more fundamental things. Yes, you might have liked to have been with someone who wants long, deep conversations and shared literary interests, but it is rare (if possible at all) to get a whole package. Isn’t it a matter of what is most important – and how you can get by and relate in the day to day? And I guess, as we may have discussed before, you can get some of the more in-depth conversational needs taken care of with close friends, even if it is still not quite the same thing.

And if love is important – or what makes you feel loved, rather – I just talked to my German assistant about this. She is young, so inexperienced. She asked whether she should wait around for someone if she is in love with them and they just don’t respond to her in kind. I assumed she was talking about Mal (and if she wasn’t, that means she has gotten herself into yet another unhealthy situation with someone else), and it made me so intensely sad for her to know that she KNOWS it is not going to change. She is just an accessory and a “safety/back up” for him. It is not that he does not care at all about her, but that he cares more about himself. Obviously. He is always going to give her a few crumbs to keep her hanging on but will never give her the whole cake, so to speak. To which I almost screamed, “Don’t settle for stale crumbs. Wait for – and accept – only the whole cake.”

Fade away and radiate

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“Fade away and radiate”

If I had known my mother was right about the transitory, fickle nature of adolescent friendship, I might not have invested so much. In fact, this truth still applies. It’s this slow-motion dissolution of a connection between two people, at different moments striving, trying desperately to remain relevant to one another. Romance/love is exactly the same, where at different times one partner is more in love with the other. And what remains is one of the few conduits to a close but different interpretation of a shared past that comes back – almost taunting, if not haunting – the lost friendship or love, the missed opportunities, forgotten depths and secrets. Where does all that initial – and sometimes even sustained, if temporary – awe go? How does it get buried underneath layers of time, superficial concern and change?

Writing this I feel very much as though I have already written something like this many times. Perhaps because these same feelings and questions churn mercilessly through the brain – and even the heart – too frequently.

Photo (c) Paul Costanich (RIP)

Settle the horses

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You know the anger and frustration you feel when you lose a document you’ve written but not saved? I just had the same experience only much more crushing. I had been reading this book aloud and recording it but had only paused the recording – not saved – when I was about two hours into what would have been four hours of reading (to complete one long – very long – chapter). The computer restarted. I lost everything. Now I have to go back and repeat this stuff again, and it feels very painful to think about.

Like so many things today (inauguration day in America). Avoid avoid avoid.

Almost daily now, especially needing the calm and the avoidance, I come back to “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver.

The lines: “You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert,
repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your
body
love what it loves.”

I really disliked this poem when I was younger, when teachers would force it on us, year after year, and it never really had the chance to sink in. That is to say, I never gave it a chance to sink in. Now older, more reflective, I think of this letting “the soft animal of your body love what it loves”, and it has deeper resonance and meaning. How simple sounding but so hard to actually do.

Settle the horses that so eagerly and anxiously want to bolt thunderously away. Advice from all sides, every day, every source: Give it time.

The drone of years

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Almost 20 years had passed since she had last seen him; both had weathered the time with at least some grace. Perhaps they told themselves this, awkwardly embracing, pushing aside the thoughts of the kinds of things they used to do together. Cordiality ruled the day now, over 40 and discussing blood pressure medications and carefully controlled diets. They were polite, discussing many things, but at the same time, not very much. Controlled, too, in how they spoke, the words they chose, the topics they discussed – directly and indirectly – never wanting to cross a line or appear indiscreet, despite their history of nothing but indiscretion. They had work in common, this business-like demeanor, that is, their shared workaholism, which seemed to substitute for the children that neither of them ever had, for the partners each of them seemed to have for lengthy intervals during their otherwise lone(ly) adult lives but who always disappeared eventually.

After a confidence-bolstering few glasses of wine, and many hours of conversation, which had lifted slightly in tone as the hours flew and the hour grew later, he leaned in toward her, very close, and she saw the old glint in his eye, the disarming smile that had so weakened her resolve two decades ago, and she saw past all the little things the 20 years had done to him – and to her. It was as though no time at all had passed.

He gripped her forearm tightly and looked into her eyes before lowering his gaze, as he had done many times before in brief fits of shyness that belied the exterior performance, “I loved you then, but I thought something was missing. But I see now – it was there…

…I just didn’t know what was important.”

Photo (c) the late and lovely Paul Costanich

Fullest

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An excerpt:

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
If I have made of my life something particular, and real,
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
Or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.” – Mary Oliver

One of life’s greatest missteps and misfortunes is to not really live. To question what might have been, to let opportunities and people go who might have helped us grow, explore and see things in new ways – to question because we did not choose to experience those things for one reason or another. Our practical lives and minds steer us toward clear and safe paths: keep the miserable job because it is stable. Stay in unhappy relationships because you won’t find someone better suited or because you can’t bear to be alone. Don’t spontaneously travel to a far-flung land because it is dangerous – or because you just can’t see yourself being that spontaneous. Stop listening to music because it’s… I don’t know, what young people do? (As the lovely, old Australian film Strictly Ballroom reminds us: “A life lived in fear is a life half-lived.”)

Without really living – embracing, learning, loving, doing – haven’t you only visited this world?

The abuser
I had a job for many years that, in no uncertain terms, was bad. I liked the actual work and subject matter (I did learn a lot) and loved many of my colleagues. But the organizational culture and company – totally delusional. And they played the role of abuser. Most people there were zombified automatons, brainwashed to think they were making a difference, to think they could do no better elsewhere, that every place is the same or would be worse or – god forbid – that the way this place operated was normal. But my nomadic nature taught me better – I had changed roles and companies frequently and was doing other work in parallel that showed me just how miserable that place was.

Almost everyone with whom I worked closely has left and all of them express to me this feeling of having left an abusive partner – having been told repeatedly, “You will never find something better. You aren’t good enough for something else. Nothing else will be better than this anyway.” As soon as they left, a giant weight lifted from their shoulders, and they realized, “Wow, I can actually do things. I am actually effective and smart.” And the toxic nature of the relationship and culture of the previous company becomes clearer than ever.

But while there are the few who have been “liberated” there are still the herds and hordes who haven’t and probably never will be. Mostly “lifers” who have nothing to compare it to and would not have the skills or sense to make it anywhere else.

I wonder when I think of these people whether they are truly living. In some cases, I would say, no, they are not living according to my definition of living – but then they don’t have to. They can define it for themselves. Some people there are just going for the paycheck, camaraderie and flexibility on holidays and their external/non-work lives are full of living. Some like the exceedingly family-friendly nature of the company and stay for more than a decade while having a family. These things make sense. But the die-hard, drank-the-Kool-Aid types don’t make much sense, and I can’t compare what they are doing to living. (At least I would ask in the end of my life “if I have made of my life something particular, and real…” –and the answer would be no.)

The seeker
What would life be without music? It’s something about which I am passionate – even if I have never been one to make music (which I kind of regret – but at the same time, it’s not such a deep regret or loss that I will ponder it at the end of my life wondering why I didn’t do something about it).

But no, I am on a constant journey of discovering new music – and sharing it (like it or not). I’ve written about this before, and about the supposed drop-off in music discovery at age 27 (or something similarly strange. Oh no, 33. As if that is so much better). I will never understand this.

The other day I told a friend I might be in Gothenburg for a concert; she asked me what show, knowing full well she would have no idea who it was because she is just not into following music. It defies all logic for her – and for many of my friends – that I can put together a mix of music several times a year with so many things they have never heard of.

But for me I can’t say I think I would be living without constantly seeking out new music. To fully live life, it needs a soundtrack.

The lover
I do not love easily or often. When I do, on these rarest of occasions, I know it. I know I love and there are no questions or doubts about the feeling or what it is or what it means. (Does it mean there is no fear? Of course not. But there is no doubt whatsoever about what the feeling is.) When I love truly and deeply, pulled by an undeniable force that I can’t control, I would go to the ends of the earth. Despite my infamous insular, self-driven and independent nature, I am, by love, transformed to become expansive in my inclusion of the person I love, inviting them to also inhabit the world we create together – a person for whom I would go anywhere, do almost anything and defend, support and love through dark and light, bad and good. This all-encompassing approach should make it clear why I don’t and can’t feel this way about just anyone (as much as I simultaneously revile and admire people who think they fall in love with every person they meet – the whole thing must be very easy for them. Not to be dismissive, of course).

It happens that this infernal New Age book I recently read (yes, I keep referring back to it) described well how I might describe it. In addition I would say that love is… or, maybe no, not love, but loving – active loving – is fundamentally a conversation. A conversation that goes on, lingers, does not end, that continues even in silence.

“…the value and process of soulful romance rests in what he calls radical conversation, in which one intends, continuously, to discover more and ever more about oneself and the other. Through such an exchange between two mysteries, one draws nearer to the central mystery of life.

Loving the otherness of the partner is a transcendent event, for one enters the true mystery of relationship in which one is taken to the third place – not you plus me, but we who are more than ourselves with each other.”

“Radical conversation has emotional, imaginal, sexual and spiritual dimensions as well as verbal ones. And the conversation is approached not only with skill and intent but also with innocence and wonder. Neither the other nor the self is a fixed thing. The bottom is never reached. One hopes to be forever surprised.

But of course it’s not all delight and ease. Far from it. We are constantly discovering how we project our shadow – both its light and dark aspects – onto each other. The dance of soulful romance always includes owning back those projections and transferences. Our relationship will expose all the places we are emotionally blocked, blinded, wounded, caged, protected, or otherwise limited.” -Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft

Does this mean no doubts ever creep in? No. But they don’t negate, erase, eliminate or diminish the underlying feeling or its strength.

Doubt’s a constant stream of questions (these don’t all apply to me; just a generic list): Am I rebounding? Am I clear-headed enough to embark on something significant? Am I repeating the exact same pattern that got me into a long and one-sided love affair from years ago? Am I ready for this? Or, for example, as one friend pointed out about people ending long relationships and possibly heading into new ones, have they really grappled with the question, “Who am I outside the old/long relationship?”

Yes, questions and doubts because that is what it is to interact and be with those with whom we are in love: to shut out the noise of too many superfluous questions and practicalities, all of which do not matter at the core of it all, and to find a place together (emotionally more than physically) that is both centered and calm at the same time as setting you alight and keeping you deeply rooted in the moment, wanting more but being content all at once.

At the core of it all, I will still live fully. I am fully alive. And I love. And I know I love.

Photo (c) – the late, great Paul Costanich

Between two poles

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“Automatic cars can facilitate our dark side.”

Many things feel as if they pull me between two poles. At one pole, I love seeing the paw prints of wild animals in the snow – mysterious visitors that I rarely see apart from this evidence of their earlier presence. At the other, I hate snow, and I particularly hate the melty, slick state of it right now (it won’t last long; colder temperatures are on the way). I took my life in my hands by heading down to the mailbox (no slips/slides/falls, luckily).

One pole pulls me to music: Weyes Blood’s “Seven Words”.

The other pole pulls me to poetry and all the memories and emotion tied to it, to the moment I lived it.

To Sleep
– John Keats
O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
      Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light,
      Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close
      In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the “Amen,” ere thy poppy throws
      Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,—
      Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
      Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.

 

I even sway  – or perhaps sway most of all – between two poles about how to communicate – at one pole, wanting to say so much but, at the other, saying very little. This is always the danger of communication or non-communication. When more seems to be at stake, when your feelings become much more entangled than you could have imagined, you start censoring yourself or stop asking questions and trying to clarify things to get to the heart of the matter. It’s almost involuntary. But I am aware.

And, with this awareness, I am defying my own inner limitations and trying to be courageous about stepping into the middle ground, between the two poles, to say, do and encompass everything and openness.

Photo (c) 2013 Lady May Pamintuan

life is too short not to go all the way

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Back in 2010, I wrote a blog post about cheesecake, love and death. When I wrote it, my beloved uncle, Paul, had recently lost his wife (a cheesecake lover); they had only been together/married a short time when his wife died, although they had reunited after initially falling in love as teenagers who were separated and not in contact for most of their entire adult lives. I think maybe they managed to be together for all of five years. The loss was huge, but they fit a lot of living into those few years they had. And Paul was there caring for her until the very end and had gained adult stepdaughters, grandkids and family through this relationship.

Never have I met a more generous and giving man than Paul with his inimitable and irrepressible sense of humor, his boundless capacity for love and acceptance (the man collected everyone who came into his life, from “stray” people, to new friends, to ex-wives and ex-wives’ future families to new loves and their families and friends). No one who met Paul was untouched by his humor or sense of giving. This is certainly truest of his son, for whom Paul has fought fiercely since the beginning, and his grandson, whom I hope will remember how much Paul loved him, did for him and taught him.

For me, Paul has been influential since my very earliest days. My dear Teddy, the teddy bear who has accompanied me through life since I was just six months old, was given to me by Paul.

In my shy, early childhood, Paul taught me one of life’s most valuable lessons: Be yourself and don’t worry about what other people think. Don’t let other people dictate how you feel (i.e., I sometimes felt embarrassed when he drew attention to himself, which he very often did – he was an outgoing, gregarious, magnetic and funny guy). But I learned very early on: there is nothing to be embarrassed about and nothing so serious that it can’t be laughed about. Just be. And laugh.

He has always been there – my first Mariners game, all the Thanksgivings at my mom’s house (Paul being her brother), Christmases at his when he invited anyone and everyone he knew who did not have another place to go, whenever you needed help moving or had a Sunday dinner. A period when my brother had to live with Paul, when Paul took him in; a period when Paul had to move in with my family while waiting for his house purchase to close. Always compassionate when others might not be, which often led to convoluted relationships, the simplicity of his good and giving nature erased the convolutions and made every connection seem natural and inclusive (you know – remaining friends with exes and their entire families and including them in the extended family he continued to build throughout life).

But eventually, even the most ubiquitous people are no longer with us. Sadly, Paul died on November 16. After his aforementioned wife passed, he met a wonderful woman with whom he spent the remainder of his life. They too did not have the chance to spend a long time together, but Paul’s entire life is a testament to the fact that it is not about the amount of time as much as how you spend it, how much you pack into it. His girlfriend inspired him to live his travel dreams and adventures and to explore the world, even when he faced his own battles with cancer. He never let it stop him for a moment. His humor and lighthearted, social nature belied the tough interior and resilience he displayed time and again in life, particularly in the last few years.

In so many ways I can never begin to recount, Paul was an extraordinary man and human. He led with his heart and lived with compassion, patience and perseverance. Many memories and words to describe them – and him – cycle through my mind, but nothing can really capture the essence of who he was. I know when people die, we tend to exaggerate, saying they were “larger than life”, but not being prone to hyperbole myself, I think Paul is one of the only people I’ve ever known to whom this expression could truly apply: larger than life.

I struggled earlier in the week to tell him what he meant to me – and what I suspected he meant to everyone – but could never quite find the perfect words. But I think he must have known because, in living a loving, open, generous, if imperfect, life, he lived the perfect life. Perhaps it was too short, as those of us left behind will all agree, but it was certainly beautiful, painful and well-lived all the way.