"I have a feeling this year is gonna be interesting. It's gonna shape us, make us different people," he predicted in a serious tone. I went "Huh" again and then asked: "Is that a good thing?"
"It could be," he answered. "Depends on what we make of it."
"Well, I for one am gonna try to change a lot for the better, so you could be right," I said with a smile.
"There's a lot less you have to change than you think. For me anyway."
I nodded and knew for him I didn't really need to change, but for my sake I did. I knew it, I didn't think it, it had really sunk in, the way things you have accepted and are convinced of do.
"Are you okay?" Brian asked, sounding a little confused.
"Fine as a day in May," I answered.
"Cause you're very quiet," he remarked.
"Actually unable to form a thought right now, which is new but maybe good. Hence the quietness. Unsettling, isn't it?"
He laughed. "Yeah, a bit."
But he managed to stand a little bit more of it until he suggested we go back inside and call all our friends. Which we did.
And then, believe it or not, we spent hours just sitting across from each other on the bed looking at each other, touching the other one every now and then. I was taking in his presence, the feeling of him being there in this room, seeing him, taking a good, deep look at him like I hadn't done in a long while. You take a look like that when you first get to know someone and then you go to this stage of thinking you know the person and you stop looking at them, when you really never should. I remembered something Max Frisch had written in his diaries, about how you have stopped loving someone if you say you know them, because you deny them the possibility to change and evolve, which is what love is all about, loving the person because they change and because you change as well. I think that was the essence of it. And I wonder if one shouldn't extend that to oneself. Shouldn't you never say you know yourself because then you are trapped in a place and have nowhere left to go?
These thoughts weren't really thoughts, more like flashes through my mind, clouds coming and passing by, not tangible and gone too soon. But they were still closer to me than the real world. Time and place were of no matter, I didn't get tired or hungry and I didn't move. Much of it reminds me of the state I was in before Brian rescued me, only this time I wasn't there alone. I will remember this night for the rest of my life. Our souls made love while our bodies stood still, we bathed in each other's inner pool and came out refreshed and soothed. I believe he healed a lot of my wounds by looking me openly in the eye for so long. I no longer feel guilty for being the reason he's quitting, because he is so calm around me it is clear he doesn't want to be anywhere else. I no longer feel jealous for the same reason. I no longer think something is wrong with me, because he loves being with me and he is to me everything a man can be, the Platonian idea of man, so if he judges something worthy, I believe it. And I am no longer so terribly confused, because I have a true North again.
So when Brian left this morning, he didn't leave as much as he did before. He is gone, but he is more here than before. His energy reverberates in the house, echoes from the walls and swells to a low humming at times. It suddenly appears to me I might be going crazy. Hearing energies humming and bathing in inner pools can't be beneficial to a person's sanity. ...
