Love, Take 3.

Love doesn’t start and end with one person, love is a constant experience, people come and go but love continues to exist with and without partners, or recipients, or family or friends or hometowns or art, it’s not like a current of energy which requires a closed loop, two ends, a transmitter and receiver, no, it’s a unique frequency emanating from within us at all times, a sound wave that resonates with certain people and places and ideas, creating beautiful harmony, composing within us a song. A song comprised of notes on a scale unique to us but sharing notes with other keys. 

This is what happens we connect with something or someone. Resonance. No one can choose which frequencies they harmonize with, no more than you can control the pressure at which your heart pumps blood or the color of your skin or the length of your spine, all one can choose are which notes you decide to play in the song of your life. No one should feel shame for resonating with an undesirable frequency, that’s beyond your control, but just because a note sounds natural in your key, doesn’t mean you have to play it. It can feel difficult not to. That forbidden key tantalizing you, tempting, the 7th interval in the Locrian mode, but you alone are the composer of your song and your life. 

There are certain things that resonate with me, a shimmering green lightsaber, cloudy autumn skies with a cool gust of air, the outline of a woman’s stomach peeking through a loose dress, the moment in a storm right before rain begins to fall, fingers running through my hair, the disconnect from the world in an airport terminal, a seat of honor at a table I dont deserve, and kind words from a man who speaks few of them. I cannot change these no more than I can change the setting of the sun.

Now my love is like a man scaling the side of a mountain. The women I love are like the rocks I slam my ice picks into during the climb. I insert myself so quickly into their lives, with force and a violent swing, and the ice picks seems so secure, that the rock thinks I’m here to stay forever, grows accustomed to my presence and the cold metal inside of their heart, but just as quickly as I pierced my way into them, I pull out the blade and keep climbing, leaving a gaping hole open to the freezing wind, open and leaking, bleeding. I don’t mean to leave so suddenly, I truly am looking for the spot on the mountain where I’ll set up camp, but I can’t know where I’ll stop until I get there and see that I need to keep moving. What compels me to move on, I don’t know, all I know is the remorse I feel that my coming and going inevitably leaves pain and holes, that the only evidence of my presence are wounds, the women upon which I haphazardly inflict them tending to them alone. Pain is the final step in the evolution of loving me, an inescapable consequence.

Today I ask you, what is the net effect of your presence in someone’s life?