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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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part XI: all's well that's roswell?
dear heart, let's start where you leave off, with the x, yeah? The following is a direct quote, cut and pasted from an email he sent as a reply to my teasing him about how fast he works, buddhist-wise: "Actually, I don't work quickly. I'm more like a spider -- wait until the moment's right and all that. This has the beneficial effect of keeping me from making a fool of myself (sorry)." I think that the sorry referred to his being sorry to disappoint or disillusion me about the alacrity of the conversion process. However, that is not the significant thing about this. Um. I think the significant thing is that he is a waitandseer (much like the boy i am enamored with at the moment) and that you are a waitandseer (perhaps?) and that what this means is that one of you is going to have to blink if you want to get the ball rolling (and/or mix metaphors badly. or is that me? oh. wait. that was me. sorry.) this relates?: when i first met neo, i had this dream: i was sitting in an underground room where a banquet was going on and people were sitting around a table, feasting and laughing and enjoying themselves. i was a guest at the banquet, but i was not sitting at the table. i was sitting at the edge of the room, at a bench along the wall. i had to wait until everyone else was served before i got anything. a woman came into the room. she was dressed as cleopatra, but she was obviously there to entertain the guests. she came in and left the room three times, and the last time i looked at her and thought: she's me--i'm the real me, and she's the fake me. and when i realized this, she came over to me. she spoke, saying, "i'm not real, but here is something that is." and as she said this, she gestured at a tall alien standing next to her. i was startled, not having noticed his presence prior to her gesture despite the fact that he towered over me. as my attention focused on him, he stepped forward and began to speak to me and i thought, "if he's real, why does he have to say he's real?" and woke up. i realized immediately upon waking that the alien was neo, but the "if he's real" question stayed in my head. i kept trying to think, he's fake and that's why he has to say he's real. anyway, it took me all that day to wash the cynicism from my thinking and i finally came to realize that the question was posed rhetorically and that since neo truly was real he didn't have to prove this to me. i told this dream to neo a few weeks after having it, and i asked him, "if your life were a dream, what would be my significance to you in the dream?" his immediate answer was: "you are here to keep me in the dream." (i thought about this answer over a few days and finally asked him what it meant, and he replied that he often doesn't remember his dreams, or that he wakes himself up out of them for whatever reason, but that my appearance in this dream that is his waking life was keeping him interested and that made want to stay in the dream.) he asked what his appearance in my waking-life dream meant, and i had truthfully to reply, "you are a reminder of what is real, what is essential." so, to me, it seems as though x is functioning in the dream that is your waking life the way neo seems to be functioning in mine. and if x is this same reminder to you, of yourself, of what is real and what is essential, then i happen to think that that is pretty profound. if you turn your view outward, at the world and people around you, then why wouldn't you want someone around who keeps you focused on what is important, real, essential? i think, in fact, that we should try only to have those people around us, or at least that those closest to us should function, in part, in this way. later: i was reading your email over for about the sixth time and something stuck itself out at me, and that was when you were saying how stephen felt that his wife was the first one to love him for who he really was. it struck me, being the stephen in this equation, that this, in some very deep and sad way is true--that is, she did love what he was because what he was, in part, was willing to endure any kind of...i don't know...hurt, maybe? i mean, he was willing, because of his own feelings of undeservedness, to live with someone who because they understand those feelings, however unconsciously, plays into them and makes him feel as he feels he should feel: unloved and unwanted. (am i making any sense?) for me anyway, it all returns to the necessity to feel second best. well, that's not entirely true because there are other issues at play in there, some of them extending back into childhood and which are related to why it is necessary to feel as though one deserves to be unloved and to why one would be willing to embrace a life in which physical attention would be unwanted. it's more complicated than that, but complexity i think is a thing best approached slowly and purposefully. maybe? or maybe that's elephants? (there should have been an inappropriate joke warning all over that one. sorry.) i guess i know that people feel unloved and unwanted all the time, and many people feel as though they deserve to be kept in this state--or is that true? suddenly, i'm fairly unwilling to guess that this is the case. it's all speculation anyway, so i'm going to think about it some more before i say anything else, yeah? from the "it's easier to stay out than it is to get out" file: so the apartment hunt is underway. in fact, your old apartment is for rent--wouldn't my living there, next door to the stephen be kafka-esque? um. maybe? anyway, i'm also looking at a place in lea's little compound. (i spoke with her this morning and she told me that she and ama had "broken up." details to follow, as i'm going to visit with her and see the place that's for rent this afternoon.) i'm mostly just looking for a room of my own. unfortunately, this will cost $375 a month + utilities. max has agreed to foot the bill for a bit. if i do manage to get in to the MBRS program, i'm heading straight over to the cripps lab to throw myself (but gently, darling, gently) upon his, um, mercy. or mercies. depending on what he will allow. barring that, i'm sure i'll hit up d.m. and barring that, i'll throw myself off a bridge for pay, if necessary and/or possible. things otherwise are running sort of backwards. you know how it is when you perform an action and then only later understand what you have done? well that's been happening so often recently that i've come to expect it. this has been true of making plans to leave. in fact, it's been on my mind (and discussed with max) on and off for the last two or three years. the last serious discussion was about seven months ago, a few months after we were married. i agreed to stay--as always--but have known and knew then that it was inevitable that i would be leaving. i had hoped to make the move to graduate school be the time for that, but i think somehow that this is better, not only because i won't be starting grad school with this huge sense of loss that accompanies anything of this nature, but also because i want some familiarity about me as a stabilizing force while this all plays itself out.
i suppose that's about the extent of updatable material. there is, of course, lots more (almost typed "lost more"), but it needs to sit a bit until i have some perspective on it. yeah? yeah. all my lovin'-- sublingua
More lies:
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