My Love, Renewed

Since the first day I saw you, a part of me was yours.

Had I found another man to give myself to, or given up the idea altogether, that part of me would always be yours, ready to awaken at a single touch.

Despite that, it wasn’t until I knew and loved myself in full that I was able to dedicate myself to opening up to love with you.  Those two things have lived side by side in flux ever since, much in the way that we do.  My love for myself and the person I’ve been becoming has waxed and waned and waxed again and again in these years, in constant motion with the circumstances I’ve faced, dreams I’ve grown close to, and yes — the ones I’ve had to sacrifice.  My love for you though… even in the darkest of times it has shone like the fullest of moons.  Even on the days my heart aches for the walls I gave up to be able to love fully again, she knows her happiness lies in resolving our issues and rediscovering that same love — looking up, away from the turmoil at hand, to the majesty in the heavens.

My heart knows sadness and heaviness and pain.  With this knowledge it is enabled to choose with eyes wide open, unblinded by the naivete of early days.  My heart has chosen you once again, as yours has chosen me.  Though the year grows darker and colder, I feel your embrace tighter, warmer, stronger than ever before.  Our love will light up the winter once again.  <3

I wrote a song…

…a while ago.  I called it “Cold Place To Be”. I’m there again, under entirely new circumstances. 

What do we do when we don’t have the power to change

What do we do when things aren’t how we want them to be

What do we do when we’ve lost our way

What do we do when we don’t have the strength to stand

What do we do when we’ve close our eyes and can’t see

What do we do when our tongues dry out, can’t speak 

What do we do when our brains shut down, no dreams 

We sing, we sing, we sing until we sleep, and then we weep

I don’t want to stay in this lonely night

It’s too dark for love, it’s too cold to bare my soul

Give me wings to fly so when I die I can live in the sun

I wrote that song at a turning point in my life. I was beyond ready to end the cyclical lifestyle I had cultivated so carelessly for myself. Today I find myself in a much different situation, a much improved situation, and yet these long forgotten words speak to me again. Even the melody, the aching cry of the song pulls at me. Tonight I cannot make music for words I wrote earlier in the week. The only music that speaks to me is melancholy, and it echoes the hollowness I feel inside. I’ve sought productivity, creativity, and recognition. I have achieved these, to some degree. But not like I did last time. Last time was pure and innocent–I had truly begun with not just a clean slate, but one I had chipped from the side of the cliff myself and rinsed in the most sacred of streams. What I am surrounded by now are the discarded attempts at something beautiful–discarded, because the beauty was shallow and gave way to the ugly motivations (intentions?) that lay beneath. And though I have worn many a mask, at the end of the night the mirrors reflect the inevitable truth of the only face I’ll ever possess.  

Life Goals

There comes a time in everybody’s life when the prospect of finding, or at least having a partner for some portion of the future arises. I’ve been told that this is most successful when ones own life is so full that it’s spilling over–and that contrarily, it is least successful when one is simply trying to fill a void. This is true. 

But there is more to it. We can fill up our lives with mostly useless crap (TV, shopping dates with friends, pub crawls), call it full and open the door for that partner. Eventually however, one day we will realize how meaningless or unfulfilling that crap is and decide we want to focus our energies on some other interest or hobby. Suddenly the sprees and bar tabs leave something to be desired. We’d rather take a local arts class, try our hands at backpacking or explore a spiritual outlet. 

This is the true measure of a well-matched pair. Can those changes be weathered, or would it not be best to wait to open the door until we’ve started making those changes already?

Some things, we don’t want to know.  When and how will we die?  What happens to children in genocide-riddled countries?  Some things we think we want to know, but truthfully would be better off remaining ignorant about.  And then some things, some things we will never know.How does a curious mind cope with this?  David Richo says,

“…it is also a given that we will never understand why certain things happen.  In fact, the comfort we derive from explanations makes up wonder about the authenticity of our explanations.  Perhaps the need to know is part of the ego’s demand that it be in control.”

Control, yes?  Because we need to be in control to avoid feeling pain and sadness.  If we know why something happened, we can better understand how to rationalize and even get over it.  When it remains a mystery, there is room for hope when there should be none.  When there is no available explanation, and the mystery cannot be forgotten, what is there to do?  How does one work through the confusion of feelings and emotions and maintain functionality?  By accepting that there is a grand design, some unseen gears at work, endlessly moving all the pieces into and out of alignment?

I know what you think you’re feeling.  You think you’ve lost it.  You’ve lost everything.  Gone.  You fucked up.  You fucked up and it’s so sad, because a beautiful thing is now gone, and neither you, nor I, nor anyone else will know what it would’ve been.  Everything was going so great, right?  But then you made one mistake.  Or maybe a couple mistakes.  And maybe they were big ones.  But they should’ve been something to just work through, right?  I did say it takes work, didn’t I?  You didn’t believe me, now you say you do but you didn’t then.  There’s probably not much you wouldn’t say now if you thought it would get me back.  But you know.  It wasn’t perfect.  We hoped it could be.  But it never really was.

Hiroshima

It is not the thousands of people who died that horrify and disgust me.  It’s the stories of those who survived.  I am reading John Hersey’s Hiroshima for a class, and finding myself amazed at how even 40 pages into the book, people still care about individuals.  I have read stories about horrible, terrible things before.  People get lumped into categories:  Dead, survivor, dying.  All too often, there isn’t much of a line between the dead and the dying.  Either you can take care of yourself, or you die.  If you’re a survivor, at best you hope to help as many as you can, but if you come across someone you cannot immediately help, you move on hoping that their misery soon ends, through rescue or death.  If you’re trapped, you’d damn well better not let a potential savior get away.

In this book, someone actually came back for a girl trapped under a bookcase.  A woman and her children were promised a rescue for the next day.  I just always assumed that when catastrophic events occurred, people became apathetic.  There is certainly a strong degree of that described in this book, but it is almost beautiful how kind people still are.

Rude Awakenings

This is the first thing that has ever made me second-guess wanting to live in Israel. Ever since I was a naive American tourist there back in 2009, I have wanted to at the very least visit again, if not live for a year or more. Then this morning I read this article (just one of the many my mom has sent me), and I am ashamed of Israel. I wish I could continue to blindly support it, but in good conscience I cannot.

Fortune Telling: An Application of Scientific Principles

“I remember very clearly one morning in October 1967, when I was walking to class. The subject was one of the pillars of engineering: strength of materials, which is a misnomer for the resistance (stiffness) of loaded structures. I was reviewing in my mind the previous lecture, which had been about how to select the thickness of a steel bar such that it will not break when a specified weight was attached to its end. It is an easy piece of analysis, but when I was crossing the street I was struck by a mental image so powerful that it felt dangerous. I saw that by knowing the principles I knew what will happen to that bar. I knew the future of the bar and of those sitting on it.”

~Adrian Bejan, in a recent Mechanical Engineering (ASME’s magazine) article

Future

Does it matter more what you do in life, or who you are with?  At age 6, I never would have imagined I’d be where I am now.  But I probably expected I’d be with my mom, at the very least.  No matter what I’ve done, or where I’ve gone, I’ve had some sort of family with me (excluding my trip to Israel and stint working at a summer camp–and at the end of both, I was eager to return to my family).  By this I don’t mean my mom still walks me to the bathroom, obviously.  It’s just that the place I call “home” has always been with my family.  Whatever I enjoyed, I’m sure I only enjoyed it because of the people I did it with (because I’ve done some things that could be fun, and loathed them for the very same reason).  So will it matter where I go and what I do, so long as I’m with the people I love and don’t regret having missed an opportunity?  Because that’s another thing.  I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on anything to this point.  Maybe in the moment, I was upset about not getting to go to a party or something, but in the long run that stuff doesn’t matter.

Unspoken Spirituality

In the book I’m reading about tzniut, the author devotes one chapter to soul.  She analyzes exactly what makes a person who they are, the thing that cannot be changed, no matter what changes a person goes through.  Her conclusion is that it is not a person’s accomplishments, looks, or causes that define who he or she is, it is their goodness.  The author goes on to talk about spirituality, and how the essence of true spirituality is the fact that it often does go unnoticed.  This paragraph really struck me:

“Your soul is what you want to blossom and shine.  Ironically, however, you don’t accomplish that by highlighting it…Spirituality is deep and personal.  The less you advertise it, the stronger and more visible it becomes.”  ~Outside/Inside by Gila Manolson

There was an example in there which I quite liked too, but I’d feel bad quoting her whole book.  I have been reading about a chapter a day, taking time to let the message settle before moving on.  Considering the chapters are usually 1 to 3 pages long (maximum!), this book serves as a great example of the idea that quality trumps quantity.

Reading this chapter prompts me to try and think about times that I helped others.  Did I broadcast the fact that I had done so?  It is embarrassing for me to admit, even to myself, that yes, I did.  Juxtaposed by the fact that I don’t often do things selflessly for others…well let’s just say, I am now inspired to do many little things for others, and hope that they do go unnoticed, because then it will be a little secret between me and G-d.