Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Round faces

We could lay in the dark all night and talk about love but in the end we’ll always be in the dark. Is it so inconceivable to love more than one person at once? You’re dangerous. We are all dangerous. Changing paces. Fleet of foot. Changing faces. I found your face in the dark. I stumbled upon her hair in the chasm. Scraping the walls of this endless cerebral well I found myself pondering about every lover I’ve ever had. I figured out what love was in the dark. The well was deep. Love was beneath my fingers. Then I turned on the lights and realized it had slipped through. The window was left open. Must have gone with the breeze. The winds are strong here in the Rio Plata. Better hold tight to your pretty laden scarf. It might find itself in the well or the river.

Many rivers currents are determined by the amount of snowfall in the winter. It’s different every year. The river you’re so fond of might not flow as fervently as it did last season. I’m blaming this one on climate change. Human made of course.  Ostensibly it is a completely different river. I’ve been lost in the desert amongst red, orange and black striped boulders countless times. This creek is the creek I crossed last spring. I’m not lost but I might be. Can you truly know it’s vigor if you don’t swim in it? I think so. That’s like saying you can’t know what intimacy is if you don’t make love to someone. Just half your foot in the frigid creek is all it takes to redden your five little toes. Lay next to someone for hours without ever kissing. Some say sleeping is just as intimate as sex. I read that in The Paradox of Love by a French bloke named Pascal Bruckner.  I’d concur too. Dreaming next to each other for the recommended eight hours of sleep. What’s more intimate than that? Well, I am not going to go there. You can jump in or you can admire the rivers vitality however you please. Either way you shouldn’t be ashamed of loving someone even if you haven’t kissed them or if you have forgotten the lines the creek has carved along your fondest bend. You can always discover another secret spot along the creek. Just get lost.

We all think we’ve found it. But what is it? Forget it and embrace it. I am not ashamed to say that I don’t know what it is. I don’t need an answer for it. It ebbs and it flows. Cliché. I should let you know I’m a cliché.  Just eat grapes and be happy. You could make wine from the grapes too. Then things could get real wild. I’m a wild grape nourished by the rivers of the Willamette Valley. I am tired of writing about wine. This is the last of it. I swear to the god I don’t believe in. In this case I’m throwing up hail mary’s to Dionysus.

Ciclos. Cycles. Circles. Round and round. Round faces. They all have about the same form. When I kiss one round face I find the same shape in it that I found in another. It’s because they are all round. Round and round the rivers bend. Don’t turn on the lights because you will realize you don’t know who or what it is. Perhaps the least I had discovered in the dark was that my nepenthe was her lips speaking a language I am slowly coming to understand.

1 comment:

  1. "I have found almost everything ever written about love... to be true. Shakespeare said, "Journeys end in lovers meeting." What an extraordinary thought. Personally, I have not experienced anything remotely close to that... but I'm more than willing to believe Shakespeare had. I suppose I think about love more than anyone really should.
    I'm constantly amazed by its sheer power to alter and define our lives. It was Shakespeare who also said, "Love is blind." Now, that is something I know to be true. For some, quite inexplicably love fades. For others love is simply lost. But then, of course, love can also be found. Even if just for the night. And then there' another kind of love. The cruelest kind. The one that almost kills its victims. It' called unrequited love. Of that, I am an expert. Most love stories are about people who fall in love with each other. But what about the rest of us? What about our stories? Those of us who fall in love alone. We are the victims of the one-sided affair. We are the cursed of the loved ones. We are the unloved ones. The walking wounded. The handicapped without the advantage of a great parking space. Maybe the lights never should be turned on?"

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