Dear Friend,
I was mildly shocked one time when a friend described me as a serial monogamist. As if it were something we both agreed upon as a given fact.
My view and yours, they are not always in line.
It happens.
Like when you say you’re not someone, bright, funny, sweet, powerful, delightfully deep, lovable, gorgeous, talented. Safe.
I don’t recognise the description of you as less than who you are to me.
Something about relationship.
Yesterday afternoon.
Chiara coming home from one her visits to Tuscany.
She flew in from Florence to London City Airport.
Albert who promotes her workshops in Germany, had messaged he was town and she’s trying to work out how to meet up with him, and make our friend’s scratch theatre performance. She’d a headache, and wonders if you can get a hangover from two small 330 centilitre bottles of pale ale?
She’s tired from the travel and lack of sleep and has been drinking too much coffee. Worried a little about the pressures on the theatre school in Tuscany, she passes on their love to me, and comments on how much butter I’ve eaten since she went away.
She becomes tearful, deeply moved by the book she’s reading about her parents. It’s tough reading about them in their youth, now they are becoming more vulnerable with age. Albert, a different Albert, wrote about how a woman had her eye on her Father when he was a union leader in the 1970’s. She didn’t like the idea of the other woman’s attempts at seducing her Dad. He was in Paris in 1968. He met Alan on a train. Alan was cold and hungry, a poet. Alan had decided to leave France and go fight in Vietnam, against America. He got as far as Turin.
I see a video of circus artists. Astonishing physical work, she hopes she’ll be able to hire them for her experimental opera sequences, the chemistry between performers the magic she seeks.
Would I like her to bake me some fresh bread, for the morning? I can have it before I do my writing.
This all happens over the course of a quarter hour.
She tries on her new suede miniskirt. It’s second hand. Cost a few pounds. She looks amazing in it. Mustard. Goes well with her green jumper.
She’s missed me.
The feeling is mutual. I like solitude. But this woman.
“How could you miss me?” I say.
“Oh yes, you’re so big. How could anyone miss you!”
She’s always called me Mikey. Still says ‘seezers’ for scissors. Melts my heart.
In relationship our woundings surface. We go through it. Reading Charles Eisenstein, he calls it ‘the crucible of healing’. My need to be seen as a good boy, that shows up. Chiara and me, we’ve sailed some rough seas together. Hurts from the past spitting and hissing, fur flying. Recriminations hanging thick in the air, queasy slick greased fog. That’s a part of it too.
You go through it.
Come back up for air.
Own what’s yours.
Move on.
Anyways.
We listen to Lou Reed’s Coney Island Baby, over and over, wondering if it’ll ever lose its charm.
It doesn’t.
Crazy Feeling,
the Glory of Love.
"Ah, but remember that the city is a funny place
Something like a circus or a sewer
And just remember, different people have peculiar tastes
And the
Glory of love
The glory of love
The glory of love, might see you through
Yeah, but now, now
Glory of love
The glory of love
The glory of love might see you through"
Lou ReedTill Tomorrow
Love
Mikey
Circumstances un the world right now are tenuous at best and alarming at worst. It forces me to either worry a lot, especially during the 3:00 AM witching hour, or open myself up to the indwelling Holy Spirit.
"I will never leave you or forsake you." It's one of the most crucial things in the life of the follower.
He leads.
We follow.
When my eyes of my heart are on Him, the peace that defies understanding washes away my worries, not the circumstances but my reaction to them.
You are a blessing Mike. Continue to share the gifts that He has bestowed upon you.
Forty seven years on, Sara and I, different but the same. Thanks Mike for the sweet insight into "soul mates".