Have I Ever Been In Love?

Every now and then, I'll hear someone ask a famous actor or a childhood friend: "Have you ever been in love?" And every time I hear their reply, I pause to consider what my answer would be.

Part of me wants to say, no, I haven't been in love. There never was a person in my world that captured my entire heart and made me believe they were the one for me. I have liked people, admired them, enjoyed their presence greatly, yes; but love? No, I think not. Love has escaped me thus far.

Not once have I felt loving feelings without a twinge of doubt, a flicker of skepticism. There is always that stickler of an intuition that says, nope, not this one, either. I can look at a person and see straight back to the end of the tunnel, to the place where the sun shines on the other side, and so far, it has always been the wrong sun. Too hot, perhaps, too bright, a sun that would scald and wither my lily soul; or too dim, maybe, too cold, a sun whose feeble light would never reach me. Maybe some day I will look down an old familiar tunnel and see a new sun. I'm open to that. But that moment has not yet come, and until it does, how could I honestly say that I have been in love?

But then I start to wonder about this conclusion. Because the truth is, I have known love. My heart, guarded with skepticism though it may be, knows nothing else but love within its core. I am a hopeless romantic, really. Every moment of my life is a potential chapter of a love story; every person I meet, a potential object of my adoration. Yes, I have loved people. I have loved them ravishingly, recklessly, completely.

But this is just a way of life for me. I can't half-love anyone or anything. Passion is the key word; quiet, internal passion, but passion. So maybe the question I should be asking myself is, when have I not been in love?

When have I ever been neutral about anything? Either it's all in or all out. When have I ever not wanted the purest and finest out of a situation or a relationship? I'm not looking for surface-level mediocrity, but the deeper things in life.

I don't know. Maybe I have been in love all my life. But I'm in love with life itself. If I am to fall in love with a particular human being, that person will need to stand out from the surrounding universe like a character in a pop-up book. Until then, yes, I have been in love. And at the same time, no, I haven't.

Dreaming of a Garden

The other night I dreamed I was standing in a garden, lush, green, somewhat overgrown, following a curving concrete pathway through trees. At my back loomed a church made of giant slabs of stone. I stood at the edge of the garden, unsure of my reason for being there, wondering if I had time to explore the path that wound its way among the greenery.

And then I saw a sign. A wooden placard, on a pole. As I looked at it, I understood its meaning. There was a scene carved into the wood: robed figures, one of them obviously at the center of the unfolding moment, bearded, wearing an expression of sorrow. Beneath this picture, there was a cryptic numeral: I.

Of course. This was a prayer garden, inviting the visitor to meditate on the Stations of the Cross. If I kept walking, I would find thirteen more signs like this one, telling the story of the suffering and death of Jesus Christ.

In the dream, I had previously been ill at ease, uncertain whether I belonged here and whether I had enough free time in my harried schedule to stay and enjoy the garden. But when I recognized the Stations of the Cross, I remember feeling a distinct resolve: I would stay, and I would meditate on the passion of Christ. I need this right now, I told myself.

So I did. I walked along the winding path, every two dozen paces or so discovering a new placard, a new Station. And as I walked, I felt this immense sense of beauty, mixed with grief, mixed with an almost electric sensation that buzzed quietly through my soul; a deep, moving feeling of spiritual presence, spiritual consciousness, like a hidden part of me was awakening for the first time in a long time, growing stronger and richer with every step I took.

I awoke the next morning feeling that I had actually experienced these moments. I found myself wondering if I should count myself more enlightened now for having been through such an intense and beautiful feeling. I still don't know what my dream really meant, but I do know that before I went to sleep again I took out a copy of the Bible and read through the story of Jesus' trial, suffering, crucifixion and burial in all four of the Gospels.

That night I went to bed feeling shaken by the strangeness of the story, even though I've read it many times before. But it was a good kind of shaken. I felt like I had seen something for the first time - something I'd been missing, something I needed to know.

How to hate me:

do not look me in the eye
do not listen when i breathe
do not feel me passing by
do not notice when i leave

do not think about my life
or the way it feels to be
trapped inside these lungs of mine
don't imagine being me

do not let me touch your hand
you'll discover i have skin
do not try to understand
if i knock don't let me in

lock the door and pull the blinds
stay inside and read the news
only watch the shows you like
only love the friends you choose

Automatic Lights

The lights in the building assume that I want to see everything in blanched fluorescent detail.

I venture inward through the doors in tentative half-step increments, and for a breath of a moment, I see the room as it is... humming demurely in a natural shade of semi-darkness. But just as quickly, the arrival of my plastic tennis shoes on the threshold marks the presence of The Human, and then in a blink my personal kingdom of convenience appears dutifully before me, bathed in sallow artificial light.

There are perks to these automatic lights. I can easily find my chair in lighting like this. Easily open my bag, rummage through my folder, pull out the proper file. The urgent concerns of this present moment can be properly analyzed, efficiently addressed, in the glow of these two dozen burning white tubes. And to the world I live in, the building I move in, it is supremely important to be able to do such things.

But can I feel the eternal hum of the ages, the ebb and flow of time, the rising of the moon, the setting of the sun, in a room with no windows and automatic lights?

Everyone assumes we want the lights on. One step into the valley of shadow and, flash, there is light, harsh and blazing enough to scald the soul. Sooner or later, we come to expect it, come to need it, come to fear the dark rather than learning to see in it. Our night vision has become permanently disabled by this insistence, this assumption that we need every corner illuminated, every shadow dispelled, every mystery solved, everything in its proper place, and nothing left to the imagination.

Vision

I cannot live without vision. Call it weakness if you want, but without vision, my soul stops breathing, seals itself in an airtight container to die. I need vision. I need to see.

And what do I see when my soul opens its eyes?

Some times snow. Last night, it was snow, flooding over the horizon from a different realm. Snow like heaven. Snow like angels. I stood up to see it better. I stood tall and stretched out my hands toward the surreal, the sublime. Snow came in shafts, in drafts, while I stood and felt the four winds rise, heard the crescendo of an enormous hidden whisper.

Some times it is rain... one thousand dark and silvery breathings, lapping in and out of the abysmal, ancient earth.

Some times it is light... a fullness of opalescent, white-hot presence, blazing cool and gentle through the east until the sleeping song awakens and the universe is on fire.

Do you see these things? The sights beyond sight that seep through the structures of seeing...