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The date; it went outstandingly, to my deep surprise. I always think it's an interesting habit to imagine the voice of someone you've seen and read about but haven't met, and see how it aligns with or completely confuses your assumptions, your mapping of their physical attributes and written words to sonority. I imagined her voice would be pitchy, maybe bubbly; instead it was reedy, a touch rough, evoking something like my bad imagined stereotype of a New York high-society accent, except in reality it was far more endearing, and she's from Davis, and tosses "totally" around like a surfer.
She runs the textile production for a small clothing shop in the city, has a keen eye for details, and loves house and Brazilian music. It felt really good to be around someone who seems to be in the same place in life, taking on new responsibilities and exploring, while trying to remain accountable to your principles. We toodled around the pale water's edge, snacked happily, gazing at the massive bird-cluttered rocks and about bookstore shelves; it was beautifically ordinary, unpressured. I came home exhausted and thrilled, baffled at my outrageously good fortune.
I'll let you fill in any number of romantic platitudes here, as they all suddenly don't seem so inaccurate, like how whiskey and sadness makes country ballads profoundly sensible; it's a feeling strong and intensely vibrating and taut with anticipation, an electricity of breath stimulating my body. It's very hard to wait.
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She says nada. You only are as good as your half, it would seem. In a certain sense this a perfect scenario: the before and after, in rapid succession, straight from theory to reality in 24 hours. And in one way I'm okay with it; I knew it could end; when with friends, I feel normal, and I recognize all that I still have. Yet alone, it still hurts. Why should it? She didn't do anything; I hardly knew her; the sting is imaginary. Should I have not imagined so much? Why did it feel so right? I guess I'm still a fool in some notable ways; I wonder if that's the character of the artist, to be both strong-willed and ready for fire upwardly, but equally exposed from the underside to hurt from the lightest, unexpected touch. It's good to be reminded of that, though I wish I could make better sense of it. Creation and destruction come in equal measures.
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I think I found the appropriate analogy, after forcing my way into a second sleep. This was a dream intersecting another dream, simultaneous and multiple symbolisms overlaying upon each other, muddling and mixing in additive brilliance and subtractive obscurity. What happens when a cloud passes through another cloud? Clouds have no real dimension or shape; they're an amassing of shading and impressions and atmospheric conditions. Few people treat themselves or others that way, though. They come to a situation at least partially solid and with edges. Such is everyone's right and will and need, to decide their shape, and how others should be shaped. It's a matter of identity and self-preservation and our physical reality, and thus common and natural.
I have a feeling that I'm more inclined towards a vaporous kind of form, small globules of reality suspended in meaningful relation to each other, set in tensions but otherwise easily shifted around, at least temporarily. I look at myself in the mirror and images, and see not facts, but aspects in transition. When I meet someone, I try to envelope them in an effort to understand, and try to express myself through small acts of support and creation. This isn't some highly conceptual ideal that I just invented, but a survival technique I discovered when raw and young. You can gain a lot of knowledge through this, and won't be hurt as badly by leaving gaps. But you also can't love as deeply, and risk being displaced and ignored. I've spent my life trying to tighten those gaps, allow myself to feel and appear more while trying to maintain that open-celled nimbleness.
Going back to that grand old notion of The Perfect Type, perhaps I do have one: someone strong and willful but sensitive to minutiae and dots of flavor, and enjoys the sometimes silent company of eyes and mind and body attuned to their own wide range. A shared experience understood differently but vitally by an embodied other -- for me, that's romantic love. It's vague and perhaps ordinary, but why do its attributes need to be certain and extraordinary? It's the combination of simple things that create myths, the awareness of deeper, invisible potentials when various objects come into play. I'm going to keep focussing on the simple things, seeking out their inner dance. I look forward to finding a companion who finds love and joy in that too.
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