the old-school guestbook archives
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mahabudallah ~ 2001-03-17 - 07:06:25 love. it's such a small word, almost as small as god. some things are too vast for words. I often avoid the word god, in spite of the fact that my life is flooded with divine light. so many people hear god and think of the old white guy in the big chair who the christians kept trying to foist off on us when we were kids. of bigotry, of hatred, of gentle people getting nailed to things. the universe, I say, instead, bodhichitta, energy, light. Mahabudallah: Islamic/Sufi expression. Literally: Love to/from God. It carries a subtle meaning in that it expresses the unseen concept of the dynamic of Love. When we Love, we are divine, and what is Loved is divine. God gives Love to God. To Love is to partake in divinity. To love is to be in God. for love, which occupies roughly the same dimension as god in my life, I can't seem to find much in the way of other words, so that little set of four letters will have to stand in for all that my vast and tender heart is capable of. I've found a sweet new love in santa cruz, the boy with dreamwater eyes who held me in his arms the morning the world came to an end and was born again in the sunrise. he and I touch each other with open eyes and hearts, we reflect each other's light. when we are together, the people around us say look... look how beautiful they are. new love is simple and warm as sunlight, a sweetness held always at the back of the tongue. he and I had known each other for less than twenty-four hours the first time we spoke the word love. why are people so afraid of love? I think I love you... said a lover of ariana's, just recently, after months and months of space and time and tenderness shared. you think? I want to ask. I knew I loved ariana the first time I saw her dancing in the sun. but I understand, I do. I've lived in that place of fear, crouching under the shadows of betrayal and love gone wrong. in that place love feels like a dangerous venture, one to be entered into with the deepest caution. I don't remember when it was that I gave myself permission to let loose my love, to fly into love headlong, recklessly. but I know I've never regretted it. I still get hurt, I still get my heart broken from time to time. but all the cautious distance in the world won't stop that from happening, it's part of the deal. the more I let love flow through me, the closer I get to the sound of my own heart, and my heart always knows the best path to travel. it takes me to some wild and beautiful places. she and I are untangling our love from the storms that swept through the space between us this week, unwound by the devastation of which sensitive women are capable when they love deeply. I've been packing up my life, clearing out of her space, just for a time. we swing wildly back and forth between normalcy and insanity, giggling together one second and then shifting into tight-chested words and hard-eyed tension the next. last night I fell apart. I was packing and shifting and there was strangeness and the silence of unhealed wounds heavy between us, and I fell apart. when she came into the kitchen and put her arms around me, I realized I was trembling. I forgot to maintain for a second, I whispered, and everything fell apart. you don't have to maintain all the time, she whispered back, holding me in her arms the way she has so many times and then I really fell to pieces, just crying and crying, helpless and lost... and then everything shifted and slowed. we made tea. we cuddled on the couch and talked and everything felt almost normal again and when she fell asleep in my arms I knew we were going to be alright. sometime before dawn I managed to wake her enough to get her off the couch and down the hall to bed. we curled close and warm in the darkness and she whispered we're okay, right? yeah. we're okay. and then an easy morning built to afternoon stormclouds and by evening the pain was raging between us again, her angry at my still being in her space, me tearing through the apartment throwing the last of my things haphazardly in my car with unshed tears and unjustified rage crushing my chest, refusing to let her help me carry things down. she came while I was sitting there in my car, sorting and shifting my posessions, clearing the back window. she padded barefoot and shivering across the road, holding the case to a CD I'd left behind. can we have a moment? she asked. and so we sat on the trunk of my car and looked down dwight way at the light playing off the waters of the bay and we tried to talk our way into some kind of ease but just kept falling into more pain, more hurt, more fear. one of those times when nothing you can say makes it any better. but then it was-- better-- and so suddenly... she started talking, appropos of nothing, about the next book she wants to put together, and I started talking about the one I want to finish before I leave the bay and we got excited and then we were giggling and then hard turned easy again and suddenly she was asking me did I have to leave just now or could we do something fun? and so we did. we ate thai food, we went to a movie, we came back to her place and talked and giggled and then we were talking about writing and how we both need to do it more, and then we decided to write, and just sat and wrote together, which was wonderful and which we never do. she invited me to spend one more night. she's asleep on the bed next to me while I finish this. when I'm done, I'll crawl in next to her and we'll sleep close and warm and in the morning I'll drive down to santa cruz and we'll both take a few days to heal and rest from the storm. she'll have her space and I'll have time to spend with my sweet, new love, learning the rhythms of his heart and hearing the stories of the wild and beautiful paths it has drawn him down. I love the way you love, she told me. not just me, the way you love people. there's no question, it's just what you do. it's true. it's what I do. I love often and easily, headlong and recklessly, and I hold on to the love when the storms blow through. it's just what I do.
(((rings))) |