There is not an awkward self conscious moment between us, only the linking of two souls who have been to the very edge of life and considered flinging ourselves in, but instead - turning away.*s*.
We sort, sort, sort; worker ants sifting papers, conversations, inner and outer dialogues, though normal people leading "normal" lives would prefer us silenced. Sort, sort, sort; wives, girlfriends, land, lives, loss - through changes and situations which would make us feel like idiots...an cultural taboos which force us to tell the world in word and front and action that we are "fine" when our ribs ache for the feel of our men against us and they are NOT there - cannot be there......
We sit, we sort. I speak. You speak. We look across the miles and we both know. We cry for the otehr and ourselves; for the sheer relief of NOT being the only one to feel what we both feel, or endure torture of this magnitude. In the space between us, we touch. Not a hand.... not a hug; simply spirits, touching. Overlapping, hungry, lonely, star riven spirits, realising how devatstaing the longing is ONLY because of the momentary relif from it.
We sit. Composed around the edges, unremarkable no doubt to those nearby who sit and observe us, I know, you know that I knew what you know. We belong to a minscule elite club of people who unwillingly, unwittingly travel through our own Garden of Gethsemane, fated o know what every living being would prefer never to face: privy to the face of life, death and loss in us all. This knowledge is our torture and life itself. Soemtimes we lose the one person we love most to regain the ONE inside ourself. This walkw e undertake bestows upon us a terrible beauty.
I speak with authenticity that makes my simple explanations reverberate with enormous truths, truths you and I know but which seem out of place in this world of masks and lies. We awaken. In the small moments, in the quiet, huge answers echo. Words are only symbols of the huge truths that lie beneath. I am not surprised you cannot find the words to fit the enormity of the feelings that you drown within. The truths we are forced by life to deal with, and face, and survive are huge demons - drgaons that seek to destroy us utterly.
I am becoming a living gem. I was unable to see as life chipped away at my edges, but now things are becoming crystal clear. Grief is death while we yet live. In Western culture and using the English language there is no tradition of sspiritual death while the body yet lives on. Satori is the Japanes word used by Zen Buddhists for the awakening fromt hat spiritual death. It is a comfort to me that though we die, yet life ensues. The Zen tradition has as one of its goals the death of self, so that the true soul of a person may emerge. Life used Ian to catapult me into that death... you and I walk the same path. Very few Western TV crowded minds can grasp what we must live through and survive..or make sense of this unchosen pathway. The Western world worships SELF; magaziens are devoted to it, we go to therapy to find it...so naturally when loss and betrayal and grief pummels self to death, we panic. We are right to be afraid.
In the immediate aftermath, all we have previously valued and believed is challenged. Nothing in any part of our owrld makes any sense any more. Yet it heightens awareness; a simple flower will reduce me to tears at its sheer beauty, a simple warm gesture... a smile shudders heartfelt through the foundation of everything I think or feel. Contentment is found in what I have previously seen and felt as boring; and what we thought unimportant suddenly assumes new meaning. Losing everything, even ourslef, opens us to what is really important - you my friend are the one thing I have savlaged from the wreckage of my entire being and all my hopes and dreams.... now empty and shattered.
What I have found my dearest friend is that life has given me a wondrous gift in exchange for taking everything I loved from me. I have found within myself a state where I have so little I cherish, yet what I have a treasure.... you. One other. I laugh at the inance and stupid. I would defend you to the death.
I love you my friend
