Concerning Matches and Redneck Women…

It’s an old saying, an old superstition if you will that has a solid basis in fact.  I’m pretty sure it began among the infantrymen, the soldiers of the great wars and it has to do with not getting yourself shot.  It’s said to be terrible luck to be the third man to light his cigarette from the same match.  Makes sense, by the time the third guy gets a light the sniper out there in the darkness has a bullet on the way aimed at that tiny dot of light that just happens to be right in front of your face. It dawns on me though I’ve seen something concerning women that also comes in sets of three, and in point of fact is exactly opposite the first consideration.

Life at my House Number 39

At times I think to cut it off,

            this world of art

            this world of soft

Turn return the world that's real,

            fire and flame

            torque and steel

Leave the flowing emo-stain

            to cover hearts

            that brandish pain

As fortunes burned to buy

            …

            a name.

I might join... would you?

We are not young, but neither are we old.  Life is not before us, nor behind us, we are astride our life, living in it, making it what it is.  We each have our mate and family, the in-laws and outlaws and friends, we are not part of each other’s world of real life.  But here in this place which is not the world of our real lives we have each other to help us build a second and secret life from the dreams and desires we set aside to live in the world of our public reality. 

You see, in this place the perfect stranger rule holds,  we don’t share the names we use in our world of real life, we don’t share the details.  We have no more idea about those than you do.  We really don't know each other at all, even though we know the most intimate details of each other's dreams. What we do know is there is a freedom here to be found nowhere else.

There is only one exception to the perfect stranger rule and that is of course Mrs. A and myself.  We were on the periphery of each other’s world when we co-authored the first of these stories.  No one else in our real life knows of our stories, but we do know each other's name and face.  We carry a love for each other and to protect the love between us we refuse to become part of each other’s first and public life even in secret.  When she moved away a few months after we began I didn't ask, and she didn't offer, her new address... we put ourselves as close to perfect strangers as we could.

But as the affair played out in it's strange intimacy we found the stories we'd built between us proved of value in understanding how the person we are beneath the surface fits and functions within the world of our public reality, and so we’ve agreed to share these stories with you as an invitation to take a pen name, and a partner, and when you and your partner are satisfied with a story share what you built between you.  Who knows who might find some bit of understanding in someone else’s story that will, in the end, become the wisdom needed to nurture, preserve and protect what is wholesome in the world of real life.

***   ***   ***

===originally published 7/2012===

So, is this the flyleaf from some publication of a writers club, or is it perhaps the first of the stories in such a work?  Would you join such a club?

Of Man and Muse

The verse pretty well says it all, but if you want the back story read on...