Love will find a way...
Dec. 7th, 2012 01:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonLove will find a way, yes, but it will be the way the hound finds the rabbit's throat and how the fist always finds the wrong man. The way the belt misses the loop and the zipper slides itself back down right before that big job interview. The way a car's splash of a puddle sabotages your umbrella's best intentions. The way the banister snags the jacket's pocket as you bolt down the stairs late to a place you don't even want to go. Love will find a way, sure, but so will the law and if not of men then certainly of averages. You can bet on it.
My friends always told me - as a warning, as a consolation - that love will find a way so long as you aren't looking for it. Then again, I replied, so would the grave and it wouldn't be anywhere near as choosey. Why wait for either then to meet your angels, and if need be, your demons? For I don't know about you, but I have much work for both the halo and the horns right now. Such is the burden and the glory of even the worst artist it seems.
Which is not to say that love hadn't found its way to me before. It found me the way the falcon finds the gauntlet. The way the secret finds the wrong ear. The way the firing squad's bullets find the blindfolded revolutionary - who, until his last breath, dreamt of becoming a great poet. The imperishable hope, that those who joust windmills at least know which way the wind is blowing. But sooner or later you realize you don't have to be a poet, great or otherwise, to know that everyone becomes a critic. Especially the revolutionary. And so it was I learned, over and over and over again, that love would find a way back out of my life.
And in its absence I judged myself incomplete. Lonely, I made of my skull a haunted house for its ghosts and found myself content in their company at the end of the night. I preferred spectral kisses rather than face the risk of opening my bed to a future apparition. Sooner or later though, you get stir crazy living in your head. You get tired of having to roommate with scorpion thoughts and wasp instincts. You want a way to make contact with the real world - no matter how painfully it takes to do so. That's when you realize that anger will also find a way. The way a single match can light up a city, the way a scream escapes an alley into an empty street, the way the lock stubbornly snaps the key's neck between your fingers.
The only thing that kept the rage at bay was the bottle, the pipe, the bravado. You convince yourself their indulgence builds character, but the truth to their charm is that they allow you to forget it. So you cut back, with nothing to do but feed the wolves scraps of art in the hopes it'll keep you off their menu another night.
Days spent shadow boxing with a wall that punches back until you can go hit the bar and shake off the damage. Such was the cycle - hours that boiled into nights, that evaporated away as puffs of weeks or hisses of months before vanishing into years.
That is until I was blindsided with a revelation. Sucker punch Satori. I woke from my fury one morning and instead of discovering loneliness laying beside me again, found only the bright morning instead. In its light I beheld neither animosity nor need within. Throughout the course of the day I found myself wishing the best to every pissed off driver who cut me off, every smirking clerk reveling in their own incompetence, every rude barista serving up room temperature indifference or scalding hostility. I didn't feel better than them, but instead was filled with a sort of benevolent indifference. I felt as if their actions, though directed at me physically, seemed to be aimed at something much bigger than either of us could express.
When the loop of my black thoughts did pop up, I heard them as if for the first time. I was appalled at the venom they spat at the mind they crawled free from. It occurred to me that my mind had been a ship whose crew of habits had mutinied long ago. They had locked the captain away in a cabin packed with distractions to grow fat and dream longingly at the maps he charted so long ago. With fresh eyes I saw the view of the cross I had mounted in my anger and it was straight down on myself.
I also saw how so many who had left my life saw me. And having done so I realized that the love of a man unwilling to love himself, is not a love worth suffering for.
Instantly the rage had extinguished itself and in its ashes were the smoldering vestiges of the haunted house I dwelled in for so long. My ghosts found a way free - the way fireflies escape a child's jar, the way summer vacations race into autumn schoolyards, the way the calendar, like a good book, ends too soon.
I didn't know how long I'd be in this head space. This humble clarity and euphoric pragmatism. So I decided that there was only one sensible course of action to take while I had this brief chance. I decided that I would have to find a way to win myself back.
Why not? After all we'd been sleeping together for ages now and I guess it was only a matter of time before we took things to the next level. Admittedly it won't be easy. Our relationship has already started off on the wrong foot in each other's mouth. The me I was and the me I saw myself to be could never quite see eye to eye. Still we're learning to meet each other half-way, even if one of us steps on the others toes when we get there. But I have faith that love will find a way.
The way the key is delivered in a kiss to the escape artist, the way the candle is blown out with a child's wish, the way the poet winks victoriously beneath the firing squad's blindfold.
My friends always told me - as a warning, as a consolation - that love will find a way so long as you aren't looking for it. Then again, I replied, so would the grave and it wouldn't be anywhere near as choosey. Why wait for either then to meet your angels, and if need be, your demons? For I don't know about you, but I have much work for both the halo and the horns right now. Such is the burden and the glory of even the worst artist it seems.
Which is not to say that love hadn't found its way to me before. It found me the way the falcon finds the gauntlet. The way the secret finds the wrong ear. The way the firing squad's bullets find the blindfolded revolutionary - who, until his last breath, dreamt of becoming a great poet. The imperishable hope, that those who joust windmills at least know which way the wind is blowing. But sooner or later you realize you don't have to be a poet, great or otherwise, to know that everyone becomes a critic. Especially the revolutionary. And so it was I learned, over and over and over again, that love would find a way back out of my life.
And in its absence I judged myself incomplete. Lonely, I made of my skull a haunted house for its ghosts and found myself content in their company at the end of the night. I preferred spectral kisses rather than face the risk of opening my bed to a future apparition. Sooner or later though, you get stir crazy living in your head. You get tired of having to roommate with scorpion thoughts and wasp instincts. You want a way to make contact with the real world - no matter how painfully it takes to do so. That's when you realize that anger will also find a way. The way a single match can light up a city, the way a scream escapes an alley into an empty street, the way the lock stubbornly snaps the key's neck between your fingers.
The only thing that kept the rage at bay was the bottle, the pipe, the bravado. You convince yourself their indulgence builds character, but the truth to their charm is that they allow you to forget it. So you cut back, with nothing to do but feed the wolves scraps of art in the hopes it'll keep you off their menu another night.
Days spent shadow boxing with a wall that punches back until you can go hit the bar and shake off the damage. Such was the cycle - hours that boiled into nights, that evaporated away as puffs of weeks or hisses of months before vanishing into years.
That is until I was blindsided with a revelation. Sucker punch Satori. I woke from my fury one morning and instead of discovering loneliness laying beside me again, found only the bright morning instead. In its light I beheld neither animosity nor need within. Throughout the course of the day I found myself wishing the best to every pissed off driver who cut me off, every smirking clerk reveling in their own incompetence, every rude barista serving up room temperature indifference or scalding hostility. I didn't feel better than them, but instead was filled with a sort of benevolent indifference. I felt as if their actions, though directed at me physically, seemed to be aimed at something much bigger than either of us could express.
When the loop of my black thoughts did pop up, I heard them as if for the first time. I was appalled at the venom they spat at the mind they crawled free from. It occurred to me that my mind had been a ship whose crew of habits had mutinied long ago. They had locked the captain away in a cabin packed with distractions to grow fat and dream longingly at the maps he charted so long ago. With fresh eyes I saw the view of the cross I had mounted in my anger and it was straight down on myself.
I also saw how so many who had left my life saw me. And having done so I realized that the love of a man unwilling to love himself, is not a love worth suffering for.
Instantly the rage had extinguished itself and in its ashes were the smoldering vestiges of the haunted house I dwelled in for so long. My ghosts found a way free - the way fireflies escape a child's jar, the way summer vacations race into autumn schoolyards, the way the calendar, like a good book, ends too soon.
I didn't know how long I'd be in this head space. This humble clarity and euphoric pragmatism. So I decided that there was only one sensible course of action to take while I had this brief chance. I decided that I would have to find a way to win myself back.
Why not? After all we'd been sleeping together for ages now and I guess it was only a matter of time before we took things to the next level. Admittedly it won't be easy. Our relationship has already started off on the wrong foot in each other's mouth. The me I was and the me I saw myself to be could never quite see eye to eye. Still we're learning to meet each other half-way, even if one of us steps on the others toes when we get there. But I have faith that love will find a way.
The way the key is delivered in a kiss to the escape artist, the way the candle is blown out with a child's wish, the way the poet winks victoriously beneath the firing squad's blindfold.