He doesn't like cats

What does it take to make a match? One that lasts. If he doesn't like cats, and I don't like dogs. If he feels that my politics are worse than jello. Wiggly and unfounded. If I feel that he is still recovering from being 25 even at 36, afraid of breeding and owning houses. 

What are the list of defects that I can tick off about him, and he about me. Like a campaign flyer on election night bashing the oposition. We are both aware of what we are voting against. Worse than repealing the carbon tax. 

He was visibly stilted at the revelation that I sleep naked in the presence of my son, despite his otherwise ambivilance about my nudity. 

I winced as he ate two big macs in a row, no chewing and then farted. 

He frowns as I glance at strangers with my inadvertent bitch face, proving without a doubt that I am simotaniously snobby and socially awkward. 

He is emotionally unavailable, abandoning all forms of intimacy untill I am left a neglected younger sibling in his presence. 

I am emotionally needy requiring hours of cheeck kissing, hair fondling and toe dancing for which my dance card remains empty. 

We are not agnostic about each others defects. 

Neither of us are perfect for the other. We are human and flawed. Cracked and crinckled like the discarded wrapping paper after christmas morning. We lack the new shiny gloss that either of us imagines we should have. 

But as my friend I accept him. As my friend he is just him. Funny, attentinve and relaxed. He cajoles me, is up for any adventure and says sweet and caring things at the best and the worst of moments. As my friend I hold him up to no higher standard than to listen to my boring bits of daily news in exchange for listening to his. We swap, him teaching me chess so I can beat my son, me ensuring he has a rain poncho or teaching him to make kambuca. We enjoy, we laugh, we keep company.

Is there anyone out there who will check all my boxes, fills all my spots, pass my corporate interview? Maybe the key to all happy relationships is acceptance. Unconditionally loving your flaws in exchange for you unconditionally loving mine. 

Lets not decide. Lets not try to pass each others test. No match is required. Let's just be, enjoy, share. The future doesn't exist. There is only now. 

One way love

Morning and evening 

someone waits at monsushema.

One way love

- matsu basho

"I never was that into her" he said. "She was always more into me" he said. They stay like this locked in acceptance of this imbalance. Thirty years pass. Him wanting more, her not getting enough. She gets fat, her a judge, him a lawyer. They both work too much, they both drink too much. One way love. 

He was buying me dinner yet again. For years he did this. Show up in Bali and buy me dinner. My sugar-daddy, he joked. He would call her later to say he loved her. That he missed her. I would sometimes listen to this conversation as he sat in my house. I would not sleep with him, no sex. I liked his company but was not that into him. I wished I wanted him. He owns a vinyard, he likes to travel. One way love. 

I sat over coffee with the father of my child. "I never looked at anyone but you." He said. We stayed coupled for 17 years. I know this fact to be true. I was the center of his universe as he honestly described it. He ate up all my offerings. Like thanksgiving dinner he always wanted what I gave him. I accepted him everyday and appreciated that he loved me. I loved him in return for being my unconditional safe haven. For 17 years I longed for someone I wanted beyond reason. Wanted like cookies and ice cream in summer. One way love?

The man who for six weeks was never my boyfriend returned after a month in Australia. I had forgotten what he looked like I said. His daily white t-shirt, yummy  curly chocolate hair and warm skin. And mostly his eyes, brown and deep. Now I remember. His Australian accent willing me to aknowlede we are not from the same place. 

I sat with him on a plastic wicker couch by the pool in the villa that had been the scenes of our six weeks of sex and friendship. His black newly purchaded samsonite suitcase on the floor holding his only possessions. We talked about everything but the subject at hand. I abandoned my visiting friend in a coffee shop so that I could sit with him on this couch and pretend not to want him. I wondered if anything had changed since a month ago when we had declared ourselves friends. When he said goodbye not wanting me enough.

He grabbed me and pulled me on to him. I burrowed my face in his beard. He kissed me long and hard. There was emotion there. There was longing. It felt good. I wanted him. In that moment he wanted me. I wanted not to think about the consequences, the future aching heart. I wanted not to ask or at least to ignore who he had been sleeping with this past month. I missed this man. I wanted him inside me, naked. Like a moth to the flame. One way love? 

 

She is his girlfriend. You are my friend.

You are my friend. 

You coached me befor I met her. Before I faced the woman over a cappucino who now casually refers to herself as his girlfriend. You sweetly talked me thru it, you told me to hug her, to be nice. You looked at me as you said this with your large sweet brown eyes measuring me, willing me forward. Your wild curly hair defying your seriousness and ensuring that despite the topic at hand you still appeared playful. 

I now find you irresistible, like ice cream. Is this the oxytocin? I try not to appear overzealous as I wait for you to let me into your cracks, like sunlight thru leaves.  

Will you touch my leg as we ride the motorbike? Will you grab my hand as we are walking. When we lay in bed naked for hours as you ply me with music will you reach for me from across the otherside of the bed, grab me and pull you towards you? Maybe sometimes, for a moment. I am mostly left wanting. 

You are my friend.

She told me her life story, sprinkling in details that compelled me to envision this new reality of her and him. The story of her hair being left in his hair brush that she thoughtfully removed to spare its view from my son. Her vision of meeting his parents as the new woman in his life. She doesn't yet realise that she will be eating his mothers chicken divan and complimenting its blandness. I would always be his family she said, as she smoked another cigarette. 

She is just his girlfriend. You are just my friend. 

You called me after I met her and genuinly wanted to know how I was. We got on a motorbike and I rode with you to the dentist. We spent the night withought sex, just naked snuggles, music and conversation.

You are my friend.

The next day over a final cappucino befor you left for two weeks home to Australia you asked me how I felt. Two days earlier we shed real tears at the thought. What would we be missing if we stopped having sex, if we kept our friendship and left the rest behind? We took the question and turned it over and over in our hands. Applying all the logic and reason that you and I could throw at these otherwise fragile human emotions. 

In the end you don't like me quite enough, your want is outweighed by logistical hurdles or subtle inadequacies.

I of course have the same, but some how this doesn't stop me from wanting you.  At least today and tomorrow and the next I really want you. 

You hugged me and I walked away. It hurt. My heart. Enough that I could feel it. 

You are my friend. 

Find another shell, keep sorting.

"You are on a beach sorting thru the same bucket of shells" my friend said. If these are the shells in front of you these are the shells you will sort for. But there are so many, why keep sorting thru the same pile. Go ahead, drop them back in the water. Let them float away. Find new ones. Another beach. 

I will keep looking, keep walking, keep dancing, keep doing. 

I won't think about that one's curly hair or running my fingers thru his beard or wanting his music or his sweet brown eyes. I still want him, I do.

I won't think about my life partner and his new girlfriend or the loss of eating mashed potatoes at thanksgiving as a family. We are done. 

I won't think about the one who would tell me what to do, and buy me unsolicited cake while flashing his smile. He was never a possibility. 

Drop them in the ocean, release them to the waves. 

Today is a new day. Let go of expectations, let go of attachments. In this new reality attachments are not the way. Don't attach, just be. Let people flow thru you and around you. Grab a bit of them hold on tight just for that moment and then release, let go. 

Be budda, he didn't attach. He walked away from his wife and sat under a tree. Find the tree, let go. Don't attach, let go. I like you, you are lovely, goodbye. 

The portugese man with the shaved head and the slight grey stubble, smiles and takes a strong lead, spinning me one extra time out of turn. I can't talk to him. He has nothing to say. Just spin me. I will ablige. 

The French man is very tan and hansom enough that the dance instructer imagines or wishes he was gay. "Do you ever dance in the evening" he says. I help him with his dance steps and he is open and grateful. He is too young, too tan, too short. But sweet and of course French. 

The Belgian won't speak to me in class but keeps asking me to go out in the evening. He is sweet and very young, I might need to lead. 

The older vinyard owner is coming back. I will enjoy his company for a time. A nice dinner, some wine. We can talk about food and building things. I don't desire him. He will always leave. He has a wife. 

Keep sorting. Keep looking. Keep throwing them back to the sea. 

The mute swan, the malagassy giant rat, the prarie vole and the black vulture are all monogomous. choosing partners, attatching, not letting go. They fall and then stay. They find someone and keep them. They do life's work together. 

I spent my life being these creatures. I spent my life monogomous to one mate. So what does the dating process of these creatures look like. How do they keep from latching on to the first potential mate and instead sort thru the options to find the best possible mate or just enjoy a connection for a moment. How do you resist the urge to get stuck with someone if you are a vulture, a rat, a prarie vole?

I am a prarie vole. I am trying to date. I have the urge to latch, to attach, to give up the search.  or a rat in this world. I must resist. Keep sorting. Be buda, drop the shell in the water.  Drop it. Let go. Be buda, find the tree.

Maybe the prarie vole has it all wrong. Maybe this is not what I even want. Maybe an intense emotional connection with another human being is nice in the moment. When the moment passes I should let go. Move on. Find the next one. Appreciate that moment for what it is, a moment. A shell. Enjoy that moment. Drop the shell in the water. Be buda, dont be a black vulture. Move on, fly away. Drop the shell in the water. Let go. Don't attatch. Drop the shell. 

Suspension of disbelief and other magical thinking

A friend just told me of her new relationship. That she is in love, moving in, signing a year lease on a vacation house. She informed me that despite having spent only six weeks in his company, despite him having just ended a seven year relationship just two months earlier, despite having had only a long distance relationship for months, she was in love. Because I am a logical person I wanted to tell her she wasn't thinking this thru. I wanted to tell her that in all fact she doesn't know this man well enough to be in love. She can't really even understand the depths and complications of the relationship he just removed himself from, maybe isn't totally disentangled from. Skype doesn't transmitt the smell or feel of dirty laundry left on the floor. She has no idea what the future brings, but she is willing to fall, to let go. To totally suspend disbelief to the point where it doesn't exist. This is what love requires, this magical thinking that makes you ignore the bad in someone. 

The other night I went to dinner at this same womans house. This was the kind of scene one could only find in Bali. The house was oppulent and rustic at the same time. The table was piled high with freshly made balinese food. Classical music playing in the background. There was brief banter about whether the servant cooking dinner would join us at the table. This conversation and its surrounds was a stark dichotomy with the stringy haired hippy sitting in front of me. These were the kind of hippies who had money and servants and time to arrange well apointed sceances. 

The dinner progressed and the conversation quickly turned to gurus. These are people who have them and believe in them. There is apparently a hugging guru. A fat lady from India who is known to hug 1000 people in a day. There is another who gives strict instructions about whom to marry and when. 

Apparently what people want from these gurus is to be told what to do with thier life. Apparently if you give over control to them they will run your life completely.

I understand this need. I understand wanting someone else to take the steering wheel. To drive for awhile. 

Being frozen, afraid to make choices for fear that they will be wrong. This makes everything impossibly hard. I wish I believed in hugging fat ladies as the solutions to my problems. I wish it was that simple for me. 

Believing in fat hugging gurus to know more about life than you or believing the guy you just met could be your soulmate. It is all the same. It takes ignoring most of what is in from of you. It takes selectively liking and seeing only certain bits. This is a skill. One that has been honed by most people. This is how I am broken, this is the ability I lack. I am a realist. I see the messy bits, the trainwreck before it happens. 

I think this is why the romantic beginings of relationships are impossible for me. I will never be able to suspend disbelief long enough to fall. 

Wherever you go, there you are.

When you strip everything else away, what is left? I ran away to a tropical island. I left naked of my possessions, I ditched it all and said farewell to the world in which all good adults should live. I came to never never land. I left the security of the reality that keeps us going day after day and blindly embraced the unknown. Now is the after part, the part where paradise and happily ever after merge in what is usually known as the end of the book.
A tropical island has a way of stripping away the trappings of a life. I wake up every morning to balmy warmth, the sound of roosters and time and empty space that begs filling, adorning or at the very least contemplating. The minute ritualistic distractions of city life that keep even the most miserable among us busy with the daily habits of sipping white chocolate mocha's, paying the cable bill, and ushering kids to karate are gone in one fell swoop.
After 15 years in a marriage and having narrowly escaped the drudgery of modern life I am left with the this empty space. I am left to ponder the pattern of yes and no answers I am responsible for having shaped my life. I am left to uncover layer by layer the elephants left languidly sleeping in the room who despite their size where easily obscured by nearly a decade of modern adult life. Now we are just us here, the palm trees sway, the geckos chirp and in this peace the reality and truth settle like a cold cloud around my shoulders. I can now honor and weep with my afraid to be alone twenty year old self who spent most of her adult life obscuring sad realities with the business of life. Once you have run away from home, you cannot do so again you have to face yourself in the mirror and understand what is good and what needs fixing. This is where I stand now. Alone in front of the mirror contemplating what to fix, what to break and what to make gentle peace with.