All the Flavors of Love...

Merci, merci, a great big dip of peppermint rocky road right... there... where it’s already all... No.  And don’t you dare even snicker a thought about anything peach flavored south of someone's belt.  Nope.  Not what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about love, not lust, not even the playful kind.

I’m talking about a morning shift waitress who has a kind thought and a bright smile for her regulars, a gal who’s known for giving quick hugs while walking the coffee pot around… no matter how tired she is.  I’m talking about a good mother who doubles her workload to enforce a genuine gentle discipline on her child who really, really needs to know the limits... for safeties sake.  I’m talking about the fireman who doesn’t hesitate before challenging hell… to make a rescue.  I’m talking about the emo little girl who can’t find any comfort at all for herself…  but can give comfort to the dying.  I’m talking love here folks, and that?  That is one freaking fragging hugely diverse concept that no one ever really seems to get a good grip on.  And they should, because Baskin Robins doesn't have a thing on Love for having a wide assortment of flavors.  Way to many folks settle on vanilla, or chocolate, maybe come to understand Neapolitan at best, and never realize just how much love really does pass through their lives.

For give or take the past two, three weeks I've been walking a road I've walked a few times before, a road no one should really have to walk, certainly not more than once.  But fate and a friend saw that I needed to, and well you know how fate is.  It's going to happen one way or another.  And my friend?  She walked it with me, even though it isn't her road, for her it wasn't the road across hell, just the road across me.  She knows she'll have to walk the road across her own hell, someday, and she knows I'll walk her across that one just like she walked me across mine.  Between now and that next walk it is mine to learn how to be as good a guide for her as she was for me.  Just one of so many flavors of love, what is between she and I.  Thanks sweetheart, you know who you are.

You know,  I don't really have a clue how many distinct flavors love can take on.  I'm a writer, I love to write a form of erotica I call anti-porn, methinks it's time I got serious about trying to really understand how many different ways genuine love gets presented to the world.  It isn't at all confined to the sexual, and yet the sum of the love in the world is what ultimately powers the erotic where the heat of that fusion forges homes and families strong enough to withstand the test of time.  That's what I'm after, I want to see more genuine families in my land.  Bottom line is that's what my land needs more than it needs anything else. 

*chuckle*  Strange fate, to be a contra-social rebel patriot and philosopher rubbing shoulders at the edges of "the lifestyle" with the shrinks and the subs and the doms and the godless preachers and the agents of God who rarely see the inside of a church… yea, right.  It would be so farking much easier if all we had to do was blow up one death star to make the whole problem go away.  Oh, well.  Time to put the pistol ammo in with the printer paper, they serve the same cause after all, get out the door and get on with it.

I forgot I enrolled...

*chuckle*  I'm of a mind to believe my lady friend has decided, in that wise woman way of hers, to open a campaign and case file on me.  I'll not begrudge her efforts, she means well,  I'll not refuse what she offers.  Pretty sure her motives are both genuine and ultimately benign on my behalf.

She has a project underway, and for her project she needed some light aluminum keystock reshaped a bit, the edges and corners rounded off, the faces free of dings and burrs.  She doesn't have access to such tools, such things are a staple of my life.  Of course I volunteered, sheesh, I was the one surveyed the need and picked out the stock for her.  Yesterday the situation had advanced to where the stock would be needed soon, it was time to go to work.  Now I'd planned to take the stock out in my garage and get real with the serious tools, make quick work of it, but she asked I bring the whole affair over to her house.  Ok, sure, it will take a bit longer but still quite do-able, I gathered up the dremel and files and such like to do it onsite. What the whale, working onsite the fit could be checked on the fly.

Another thing you need to know, to appreciate her effort, is that she knows my quite negative attitude concerning all things oriental, and it was she who decided I just had to learn to eat with chopsticks.  Yes, the lass in the post a few weeks back one and the same multi-cultural lady determined to make a beginning at civilizing me I suppose. I didn't balk, I wrote it off as covert ops training since someday I might need to fake it for a traitor just long enough to get in range.

Ok, I can work the damn things, the years of doing pencil art enough practice at fine motor control it wasn't all that hard.  Never mind that you're never supposed to lift your plate off the table (that cost you supper when I was a kid) and every  posture involved contradicts what I was taught as proper manners since you're never supposed to bend your wrist and shovel it in, but no matter.  That's just culture and everyone involved in setting those attitudes is dead, they're out of range to deal any more misery on the subject (it only took me five minutes to realize where the tension headache was originating, and shut it down).

Anyway, I got to her house, got the stuff inside and picked a spot in the living room to work.  Now shaping aluminum isn't really all that intellectually demanding, and I've had a lot of practice at setting the hands to a task and letting the majority of my mind roam free.  Directly I became aware of what was on the big screen TV: a history lesson about Japan from PBS, the history of the nation in its' early dealings with the Europeans tied off against the internal politics of the Shogun and the Samurai, stuff dating from the 1500's through the 1800's.  

Sometimes you just have to keep a straight face, and only grin on the inside. I suspected, but didn't know, not until I checked the broadcast schedule for yesterday… nope, no history lessons scheduled locally, that had to have come off the internet somewhere.  Little to no possibility of coincidental exposure, and her face had been way, way to blank while I was working, blank as if she was wondering when I'd object or make comment.  What the hell,  she offered it with that love of the nurturing variety which is a big part of why I'm so fond of her, and how can a man think ill of that?  Nah, you can't.  Like I said in the title, it must have just slipped my mind that I'd enrolled in her class... oh well.  If that's the worst thing I ever forget I'll be in great shape.

The Mechanics of Sin

Originally Posted 4/10/2011

I'm gonna talk about sin, trust me on that. But I'm going to talk about sin from an angle I promise you've not heard often, most likely you've never heard anyone talk about it the way I will. I promise. But give me just a bit, so I can set it up so I CAN talk about sin and not sound like the preacher man down at the church, OK? Thanks.

Most of my life I've worked in with technology, one form or another. Which means that most of my life I've been working with science after a fashion, the same rules apply. Somewhere about the middle of my life technology went stale for me, it's just kind of passé now. Ok, the guys and gals dialed it up another notch, fixed this, invented that, they can now do the same things a bit faster, a bit more convenient. Good for them, I'll buy one when the old one wears out. It isn't that big a deal anymore, not to me. What is a big deal to me is how people live, technology or no technology, and the parts of how people live that technology really never has effected at all are getting to be more and more important to me all the time, trying to really understand the world you and I and everyone has to share.

Tactical, Vigilante and Succubus...

Ok, if that’s how it lays that’s how it plays. This is a battle, and I’ll no more retreat from evil in my world than in my self.  To retreat is to give evil the victory unchallenged, an act of cowardice and treason.  Seems I recall a quote, not sure from whom, that goes “the only thing needed for evil to win is for good men to do nothing.”  Or words to that effect. Maybe Winnie?  No matter.  Sitting idly by while something eats the foundations out of your world is not a wise thing to do, not when things truly evil attack your chance to live with joy.

Now most will think of battles as between two major powers fighting it out in the physical realm: who has the biggest army, the best killing machines, the advantage of terrain or weather or line of supply.  This isn't that sort of a fight, even though it does share many of the same modes of thought.  This is a conflict between empowered lies and neglected truths, between the realms of ego inflamed and compassion revived, ultimately between the realms of love and hate, and each and every one of us is a battlefield of one sort or another.  Each and every one of us is under attack, and we all must mount some form of defense of self lest in the end we have no self left to defend.

There’s three things you absolutely must know to mount a successful defense. You need to know what it is you’re contesting, you need to know why you have the right to deny it existence, and you need to know what victory will look like.  Those are the strategic things you need.  Now in matters tactical of course it’s helpful to know who and where and how, of course that’s pretty valuable intel as well.  But not as critical as the first three.  There's a great many things I might say spinning off this paragraph, there's a veritable tome of thought this paragraph might serve as preamble for.  But those are not what I'm going to be writing about. 

I'm going to write about one of the enemy's main weapons, a tactical consideration.  This isn't intel comfortably come by, but a full understanding is vital to victory.  The enemy isn't going to lay down just to be accommodating, the enemy is going to continue its' campaign of aggression because bottom line is evil can not support itself in any other manner.  Evil is the inverse of life, it can not exist on its own, one way or another it has to have new victims to consume or it will die.

Control of memories, be they full or fragmentary, is one asset evil greatly desires.  Evil thrives on manipulating memories, calling them back into a false frame of reference to suit the evils' needs.  Why?  Because our memories can be used to influence our emotional environment of the moment in ways that serve evil in that moment.  It is a common tactic, a very common tactic, and a very effective one.

Take me for example.  All my life evil has used one person or another working my memories of the times I was physically abused in the name of love or falsely accused in the name of justice to transform justified anger into a blinding blood lust rage. I have to be continuously and acutely vigilant to deny evil access to my life by that road because should I slip up that rage displaces reality and disables any access to my ethical self.  In those moments I am more than capable of killing, I go vigilante and want to kill, and it isn't hard to imagine how evil could turn untimely recollection of old injuries into the headwaters of an entire river of new misery and injustice for evil to feed from for generations to come. 

In my case it is anger that evil attempts to remold to serve its' needs, but anger isn't the only emotion that can be transformed using distorted non-sequitur memories for a mold.  The insecurities that serve as the foundations for greed work very nicely, the middle monkey syndromes of cruelty are made to order, the scalding lust of misused sexuality has seen heavy service across history, even the seemingly benign live and let live attitudes currently held up as the apogee of civil behavior can be pressed into service when what evil needs is camouflage to allow some deep perversion of slow growth time to spread tentacle roots into many lives in many places rotting out the foundations of a society. 

Beware this most versatile weapon of the enemy, challenge your own memories and your own responses to those memories in the context of enforcing a sanctioned blockade on what evil needs to continue in our world.  Like I said, evil can not exist on its own, we can starve it out of existence if we've the inner courage to disable its' way of life.

Wisdom's Lament

Lay me where the cleft moons rise

Script lay of love in language high

Drawn fluted rune a verse devise

Writ poet's tongue to shallow'd sky,

Till bolder comes the rise and call

Seductress tempered feral sound

Birth chanting chorus begs the fall

A dancers leap lands lover found.

In candled ways cold days rewarm

Fire buried wick flame froth'd a foam,

Sans pain congeals conjoined form

Mold mate of man to forge a home

Entrain'd in woman's begging moan

Plea echoed heart to loins to bone.

Nah, can't happen, don't be a damn fool. You're mature, pragmatic, cynical, immune… you know better than that, you know what dreams like that do to the rest of your life, you know...

She was never more than a dream image anyway,

Some sweet fiction born of base biological urges

According to those sterilize the world in morality.

A man can't lift the weight of a crown off a dreams head,

Lift the heavy mantle of expectations off her shoulders,

Grant her seventy two hours as woman instead of dream,

One hour for every year accorded the life of man

To make love to her, with her, laugh and play,

Set a symphony of delights in the nerves of her body,

Hold her warm while she sleeps, dry her tears,

Give back to her a bit of what she gave so many

Before she has to put that damn crown back on

And go back to being the Queen of Dreams,

Safe sanctuary for the lonely and the displaced…

I won't miss her, not at all.

Yea, right.           

If you believe that?     

Likely you'll believe anything.

For Alex, with love.

Call Me Dinosaur…

Well, that's a wrap.  I have one of my answers that I've been looking for.  I don't like the answer, but it is an answer.  And what an answer it was, what an utter and complete insult it is.

For some time now, like say the last thirty some years, I've been wondering what I'm doing so very wrong that I'm a magnet for the debauched and the perverted.  What?  I don't wear a sign, I'm not in their social registers, I don't think I'm on anyone's special high intensity training list.  So what is it that attracts them to me?  I asked a kid down at the diner I know to be part of the bdsm world that question, and I got my answer. 

She was sincere, and in her sincerity she tipped a balance in my head.  Once upon a time she had been sitting in my living room, and out of the clear blue with a look simply dripping malice and contempt said "I could be a dom to you that would make you beg mercy." 

In the moment I went serious, stood to battle stations and stared her in the eye.  "No, you could not," I replied. It was a staring match for several seconds before the moment faded.  I let it pass, figured she was just jacking with me for sport.  But today that moment was explained to me, and a sadder man and wiser I now am. 

I've been called judgmental a fair number of times because in my world there are a few absolutes.  Not so very many, but a few and I live to them.  You don't beat up on the helpless, you don't cheat at cards, you don't try and lie to your God or yourself, and you don't surrender your self respect and dignity to anyone's assertion of authority no matter what they say.

These things are all basic Manhood101 according to the way I was raised. (in post script... I'd said American in the first, hastily written form, but no.  It isn't a thing of nationality, it is a basic thing of uncorrupted humanity... please pardon my moment of nationalism)  But apparently that isn't so very true anymore, not everywhere as it should be.  What she told me is that the effort of manhood is considered an undue burden, and the cure for that burden is to voluntarily subject yourself to enough abuse your spirit is degraded into blow sand to be used in etching your tombstone.  Well, maybe among the bdsm crowd that's how it plays, but not with me. 

What did I say to her?  I said "I don't beg mercy, I shoot."  And then I said goodbye.

She said what attracted her kind to me was seeing me carry that burden at best ability, and carrying on with the intent of doing what I can where I stand for the good of the cause.  She said that's why so many of them over the years have tried to seduce me into weakness and impotent misery.  They thought I needed to be free of the very burden I maintain is my justification for existing.  I suppose that's what I get for NOT  being so very judgmental, for not judging people on their demeanor and being willing to talk to anyone who wants to shoot the breeze. 

Sorry (NOT), I intend to keep right on talking to anyone who wants to shoot the breeze.  But, I think I'd better be a little more careful than I have been, and watch where I go until I've gotten the appropriate hardware and permitting in place.  Sooner or later some well meaning freak is going to decide that if I don't have the good sense to degrade my life voluntarily they'll just be good Samaritans and do it for me, and I'd have serious problems with that idea.

So for now the 12 gauge and little .22 will have to serve.  In a moment of sheer stupidity (and financial crisis) I sold my last hog-leg and M1 some years ago.  Where I really do like the big Ruger and the awesome knockdown power of the .45LC round it really isn't well suited for daily wear.  Automatics are fast firing and prolific, but they're not as reliable as a revolver and you might not have time to jack the action.  So… perhaps a Bulldog, or the likes.  Something ultimately reliable with enough knock down power to qualify as a euthanasia grade self defense weapon at extremely close range.  Something to make a terminal argument in favor of freedom from the worst kind of oppression there is, the kind of self induced degradation some believe is the way we all should live voluntarily.  That's what concealed carry is all about.  Call me a dinosaur, I don't care.  That's why I live in America.

The Ghosts of Gomorrah

First published 11/7/2010

Since the story first broke concerning the mistreatment of prisoners of war in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq I've believed that abuse, particularly the sexual abuse inflicted by female soldiers of the United States military police, was a deliberate open air black op initiated to outrage the enemy beyond any hope of a negotiated settlement.


When the nature of the mistreatment suffered by the prisoners was released my first question was had the Army deliberately assembled an entire unit of MP's around the psychological deformity of sexual sadism? It would take a unit in full consensus for such outrages to proceed on any regular basis. There would be risk to such a plan, the transfer orders to build such a unit would show willful intent to a court of law and the unit would be dangerously hard to conceal if entrusted with the normal duties of the military police.

Still though, such a unit would be an ideal choice to set into history the sort of events that will galvanize a people into maintaining guerilla warfare against all odds, said determination exactly what the Bushites would need to assure their carefully choreographed and most profitable little war would continue unabated for the run of their political power.

Something Bad, Something Sad...

In my last post I spoke of the joys a man may know that support him.  In this post I'm going to tell of the sadness that has re-invaded my life that others may understand the nature of what it is to truly forgive injury and trespass that healing may follow.  I am not claiming I've succeeded in such a work of forgiveness, but it is a work underway at best effort.

As of this writing I have no foundation under my life.  None.  I'm floating my life on the attitude control jets like a landing spaceship riding the rockets.  Fortunately for me I taught Sulu how it's done, as long as I don't have to do it for so long I run out of fuel I'll set it down flat and intact.  But this is totally nerve wracking work from which I can allow no rest, there is that fuel gauge to be considered. 

There is a folk saying that goes 'men are what their mother's make them.'  I hope, I pray to God that is not the literal and absolute truth.  Why?  Because in the last weeks I've been compelled to admit what I never wanted to admit concerning my mother, and deal with a lifetime's worth of ramifications for my self and my siblings. 

After forty some years of searching I'm compelled to admit the most likely answer for the cruelty I and my siblings suffered to the will of our mother is that she was a practicing member of the bdsm lifestyle from the late '40's coming forward.  As I've said in a recent post in the months past I've actually gotten to know several who are members of that world, and as my understanding of them has grown so have the inescapable comparisons to my mother. 

In every essence of her persona she was a perfect fit to their world of brutality and secrecy, their world of misery enshrined as justification for misery reflected onto all around them.  The fit is to perfect to deny.  There was —something— she confided to my wife as my wife was attempting to comfort her in her dying deliriums that Barbara would not tell me, said she refused to remember it lest she use it against her with cruelty.  There was the time my Uncle opened his mouth to say something, something rough enough to put his face into an expression I knew well as his combat mode, and my Aunt shut him down hard.  The hints have been there.  There were several comments heard from my father during my childhood  in a voice so cold as to burn that very well might have been his reaction to knowing as fact what I can only speculate as a forensic reconstruction.  In re-reading my personal journals I've realized I'd deliberately ignored this possibility at several points, I didn't want to think so low of my own mother.  I'd approach the obvious, and then back away.  My mistake, I should have had more courage.

The question now is do I have enough courage to forgive what was done in the name of love perverted?  There is a rage that has lived in me for many, many years.  Since the second grade to be specific, which is when the first of the blatant assaults occurred.  It has always been a submerged rage to hot to touch, to hot to acknowledge, a rage that tormented my dreams for years.  It has never been more than half a heartbeat away from taking control of my life and actions.  It is submerged no more, it is now full in the open and demanding satisfaction.

Satisfaction.  If my life has taught me one thing it is that there is no satisfying such rage.  Oh, the temptation is there in spades, the temptation to use any and every thing I've ever learned of the physical world to extract a blood revenge from the modern iterations of the same sort of perverts.  Twenty plus years working industry and I know plenty of ways to work wholesale lethal intent.  It would be so easy, so very easy.  But it would not satisfy the rage, all it would do is feed it and set me even lower than the most pathetic of the creatures I'd be ending.  After a whole lifetime of denying that rage I'm going to gamble what's left of my life, and theirs, that I'm strong enough to leave it on the surface and convert all that hatred and contempt, all the utter revulsion and bitter disgust into something non-destructive, hopefully something to be called positive.

How?  By always remembering that if my eldest brother Jesus was able to forgive the complete and entire fucked up mess of humanity then I should be able to forgive the minor percentage of perverts who worked harm on my family.  Once I'm convinced my strength is adequate to the task it is my intent to wage war on that perversion, not with lethality but rather with compassion and honesty, to walk among them and expose the lie that holds them to misery as a way of life.  To kill them would be to easy, to help heal them is by far the more demanding challenge, by far the more powerful stroke against the wickedness.  May God Almighty grant me to cool my rage using it to warm my compassion, that I might work such healing, may he grant me the wisdom to bring this intent to reality in His sight.  Such is my intent for whatever is left of this life.

Something Happy...

It never fails, at least in my life.  If some new joy arrives right along with the joy comes some source of sadness.  I’ve had a good woman come into my life as a friend, a woman and a child and the return of life to be lived.  And with something living came something dead back to life to be a torment and a torture as balance opposite.  I’ve been getting beat up by my past taking advantage of my present, and I’m tired of it.  I’ve been on the defensive long enough, it is time to give battle and counter attack. 

The question is of course how does one attack sadness?  To attack is to impose suffering, even death.  But more of the same does nothing to remove the first source, it may be superceded by the more powerful sadness inherent to the attack, but that is simply sadness replaced by that sadness, sadness remains.  No, you must dismiss sadness with happiness holding a more powerful place in your head.

What happiness's do I know that can overwrite the wounds of a lifetime gone by?  Oh, there's a few I know, a few…

To sit of an evening with a little one on your arm, cuddle the young one close and rock them to sleep, feel them go limp in your arms as sleep takes the day away and delivers them into dreamland… to see them smile, and curl into you… yea, that's a serious happiness that runs deep into your soul every time it happens… just like it does when you do the same thing for the little one's mother after she's gifted you those soft sounds of ecstasy as you were taking the needing from her with soft hands and kind eyes, set her into that place where the glow of her contentment will light the room around her… yea... 

It's close, to close to risk a shift, you reach for that last 1000 rpm and it's there for you, that minor key scream as your garage sweetheart pulls hard passing redline giving back to you all the hours of massaging parts and agonizing over split thousandths you spent building her… you don't have to believe you did it right, you know, it's a proven thing and that is a sweet thing as well…

The sun is riding the western horizon, you stop and look back on your day, what a day, and you see it is done and well done.  You turn for home weary, aching, the sweat dried to an abrasive on your skin.  You walk in your door, and are greeted with the smell of fresh bread baking, you don't even get your boots off before your woman is on you, her hands on you and she smiles as she helps you undress, silencing your thanks with a finger across your lips and a promise in her eyes… "no baby, no, tonight it is me for you because you earned it for both of us…" 

Yea, I've known a few of the joys of manhood, and it is those joys recalled that allow a man to stand on his own ethic and his own faith against what the darkness' of the world will throw trying to drag him down.  It is the good things that make it all worth the effort.

Neo Victorian Expanded

This continuation is being written in a quite different frame of mind than the first segment posted in mid 2011 (which has been moved to display just below this one).  In the months since I've actually gotten to know a few of the members of the bdsm community, heard their stories, observed their lives.  The first installment was written from simply observing and analyzing their offerings of art.  It was a bit to the intellectual side, somewhat emotionally aloof.  This segment is much closer to personal, I now know names and faces and hearts, aloof is an attitude I can no longer maintain on the subject no matter how much more comfortable such an attitude might be.  I closed the first installment of this subject with a question I can now take a reasonable guess at answering, at least in part.

Concerning those who are living in "the lifestyle" as the practitioners of bdsm often call it I asked myself "…why these individuals who do indeed seem to be fairly intelligent and a bit introspective would have chosen to reprise the qualities of a culture that in all fact was failing, dying, unable to muster the strength and flexibility to meet the needs of a changing world.  I do not know if this was simply naiveté on the part of these youth, or if they were seduced with malice into a misplaced romance with a failed culture to serve some other entities purposes..."

The Neo Victorian

Words tend to stay the same while the functional meanings of word often shift with the years. Take for example the word "pimp." In my youth I learned a definition for this word-symbol, it referred to the lowest form of humanoid life walking the planet, an abuser and a user, a heartless and cruel creature that preyed on destitute and desperate women compelled to sell sex to survive, a parasite robbing them of what they earned in the worlds oldest, and most damaging, profession. To the standards of my youth a pimp was well below human, vermin of the sort where the correct action was to puree its' innards with a large caliber round of hollow point and leave the carcass for the vultures. Now? Now the word has migrated in many places, particularly among the young, to mean anyone who sells things, simply a salesman, albeit a rather flashy one. Of course the word pimp is just a symbol, it has no morality beyond the definition people attach to it. My only objection to this change is that now there is no finite symbol to represent the vermin, they continue to operate, just as cruel and worthless as ever, behind the camouflage of the expanded meaning, at least until a new word is set to represent their evil excluding all other meanings.  Another place I've noticed such a migration here of late relates to two words currently in service among a growing counterculture, the various forms of the words "dominate" and "submit."

Marked...

see here world LOOK at me

see the way I am

bolted marred the open scar

wounds by mine own hand

REFLECTING what I think of you

your ways set sad as sand

scattered on an icy road

before my day began…

watch me world at my play

games of pain and shame

some feed my INSANITY

and some just hang a name

on moves among the HOPELESS

drones conforming to the lame

AFFLICTIONS as the coin earned

that buys a claim to fame…

oh doctor lover make me well

you with dirty hands

slice away with scalpel LIES

cut future failures stand

mantra molded to the SHAPE

of pauper parents bland

DESPAIR cinched tight as any wire

bound blood vain virgin clan…

NO… fuck you world go away

you'll never get it right

pale horse a-riding painted up in white

blindfold captive HOPE of love

will penance serve each night

in gleeful SINS of dirty sex

scream cum alone cum fright

pay terror for the children's HURT

your world deals for spite.

Harvested from among nightmares...

I've been re-reading my most private journal, the one where I record the range markers of my personal inner quests, the journeys of the soul usually conducted during episodes of lucid dreaming, and came across this little passage, thought I'd share it here,  since for the moment I don't feel quite as alone as I usually do...

From the first flickering of awareness in the womb the infant is not alone.  The sound of a heartbeat is always there.  There is the other, the one who is not me, and the other is all about me and keeps me warm.  And love is as guaranteed as it can be,  the system providing love with every calorie, every gram of calcium, every flicker of the endocrine telegraph.  And then, in a remarkable foreshadowing of old age, the universe becomes to small, and motion is reduced, and there is a time when pressure breaks the bond and we are alone in the cold.  So much like the end of the life we live on middle earth, here between heaven and hell.  The universe is to small to hold the deterioration of aloneness, where there is no umbilical to bring in the nourishment and the love to hold us in place.  And so we waste and wither and fail, slowly or suddenly, and then once again there is a narrow passage, with no certain knowledge of what lays beyond.  Does the infant have a clue that there is a life, an awareness beyond the vagina?  Probably not.  There has been nothing in the (to our perspective) little one's life experience to let it know for sure that there is more.  Perhaps muted sounds, dreams telegraphed from the parent, but little more, and no perspective to place them in.  Is this why we so soundly believe in an afterlife?  We all remember that first passage, and confidently expect the next to be much the same?  No knowing, not for such a little one as I.

I’m not in love...

No, I’m not.  And as of last week the Pope stopped being Catholic.  Oh well. *grin*  Down the rabbit hole again.  I’m not in love, but I do love her.  I feel... alive... again.  Yea.  Alive.

Give or take two weeks ago I took a woman and her child into my home to give sanctuary, it was needed.  I was fond of her, fascinated by her, well before this went down.  She can power the gift of the muse for me and in my world that is a huge thing of great value.  In many ways I am transparent to her, and she to me, the intimacy between us of surprising depth allowing for no longer than we've known each other.  We’re not lovers of the body, we’ve agreed that will be our farewell to each other when it is time to part.  What we trade are perceptions of each other, and benefit by what we share, ours is a strange affair of the heart.  She calls me her mentor, and I chuckle.  I’ve learned more from her than she from me, I’m sure of that, at least by the numbers.  But I do have twice her years, and from time to time that allows me perceptions of value to her as well.

While she was staying with me she did everything she could to earn her keep, she did far more than I would ever ask or expect of anyone.  Besides cooking some of the most delicious food I’ve had in a long time she stepped in as soft momma for my niece, doing in days what us clumsy boys hadn’t accomplished in years.  Sometimes it just takes a woman’s touch, you know?

She can’t stay, it’s impossible.  She has her man, she loves him.  Even if she didn't I'm to old for her, it would be unfair to her to ask her love what would be lost before its' time in her life.  Yea, I'm in one of those.  But... for what it is while it is I treasure her company.  And, when it's over I'm calling in several favors and throwing one hell of a drunk.  Just to give myself permission, you know?