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Warning: Romance gushiness
Jan. 12th, 2007 11:05 pmI figured out something finally, in that post-finishing-reading-a-new-novel moment of clarity. I figured out part of J.'s deep and enduring appeal for me: he's perfectly zen. Since I wrote that poem about him and our marriage where I compared marriage to Aikido belt testing, I don't know why this never occurred to me before.
But I always tell people that J. is so complex and mysterious and that I will never understand him: but it's the complexity of a Zen koan. The complexity of one of those simple ideas that can't resolve into one set of words.
It's very beautiful, like religious calligraphy or the sound of a wave crashing on a jetty. He's such a good person, without being preachy or self-involved - he's funny and kind and spontaneous and generous. But beyond that, there's just that thing at his center, this quiet that isn't the quiet of emptiness, but of a deep, self-knowing fullness. Like still water that endlessly overflows a cup, dark quiet clear sweet water flowing over a cup endlessly, silently.
In R. A. MacAvoy's "Tea with the Black Dragon" and "Twisting the Rope" Martha and Oolong have that kind of thing - the dragon has been looking all his long life for truth, and he finds it in that perfect still/mobile spontaneous sincerity that Martha has. Mysterious not by virtue of being complex, but by virtue of being honest. It feels like that.
How odd, considering all of the different tormented romantic visions I love to read and reread that this is the one that settled so deeply in my heart.
Sometimes I wish I weren't as good with words: using fancy words to express my love feels like cheating - if I'm good with words, it doesn't count, right? J. leaves me the most beautiful notes - something about counting the seconds. I've always been private, in a loud way, so there aren't many people who just see through me. When I'm with J. I feel as if I was made of water - boneless, free, simple, not ice or glass or anything fragile - something mutable and true. How strange and lovely. I hope everyone finds there vision of what that feeling would be for them. That's what I hope right now. That everyone I know will find the strange right vision of love and romance that really works for them, the thing that makes their whole world shiver into, not necessarily a new shape, but the shape that feels right.
But I always tell people that J. is so complex and mysterious and that I will never understand him: but it's the complexity of a Zen koan. The complexity of one of those simple ideas that can't resolve into one set of words.
It's very beautiful, like religious calligraphy or the sound of a wave crashing on a jetty. He's such a good person, without being preachy or self-involved - he's funny and kind and spontaneous and generous. But beyond that, there's just that thing at his center, this quiet that isn't the quiet of emptiness, but of a deep, self-knowing fullness. Like still water that endlessly overflows a cup, dark quiet clear sweet water flowing over a cup endlessly, silently.
In R. A. MacAvoy's "Tea with the Black Dragon" and "Twisting the Rope" Martha and Oolong have that kind of thing - the dragon has been looking all his long life for truth, and he finds it in that perfect still/mobile spontaneous sincerity that Martha has. Mysterious not by virtue of being complex, but by virtue of being honest. It feels like that.
How odd, considering all of the different tormented romantic visions I love to read and reread that this is the one that settled so deeply in my heart.
Sometimes I wish I weren't as good with words: using fancy words to express my love feels like cheating - if I'm good with words, it doesn't count, right? J. leaves me the most beautiful notes - something about counting the seconds. I've always been private, in a loud way, so there aren't many people who just see through me. When I'm with J. I feel as if I was made of water - boneless, free, simple, not ice or glass or anything fragile - something mutable and true. How strange and lovely. I hope everyone finds there vision of what that feeling would be for them. That's what I hope right now. That everyone I know will find the strange right vision of love and romance that really works for them, the thing that makes their whole world shiver into, not necessarily a new shape, but the shape that feels right.
