Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Deep Love

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Illustration by my beloved friend Laurel Gaylord,
a.k.a. Studio Lolo,
used without permission

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This is a long post. I know better, and I beg your indulgence. But this essay somehow found me tonight and since I've been looking back as I look forward, the time seems fitting to share what I wrote almost four years ago; what I wrote before I called myself a Writer.
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I stand by it. My falling into deep love didn't exactly turn out the way I expected. My heart would be stretched almost beyond my capacity. And yet, here I am, wounded even, but still loving, still choosing love.
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I'm not alone. Maybe that's why each of us struggles sometimes. We have been to the alter of love, and we cannot settle for anything less....♥

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Deep Love
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In my counseling practice, I sometimes quote my favorite line from Paul’s Simon’s “The Boxer”—the one that says “After changes upon changes we are more or less the same.” But lately I’m thinking, “Pardon me, but I don’t think so”.
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These days I’m coasting along in this internal existence where time is on my side and I’ve mastered the important details. I know how to squeeze my privileged budget to drip out that trip to Italy and freely partake of the should-be smoky ambiance of the hole in the wall Smithsonian restaurant. I meet my friends there almost every Friday night and we laugh and catch up like the family we are becoming.
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I also know how to navigate the prickle of practical and craft of creative: I get the chores and requirements done first on those sometimes grey and sometimes stunning early mornings and then I write. Sometimes I doodle, or walk around this sanctuary of a house with my little Canon One Shot camera and click on the words and colors around me. Finally, I have learned to see the details-- even the woody path in Look Park and the small person-made lake where happy safe ducks float and bob and occasionally there is a wedding or some other celebration at the smallest open air wooden chapel that always strikes me as a sacred place. I haven’t yet but I would go there to pray in a jam.
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I’ve had six months of this good life. Exactly on June 30th I stopped my billable hour schedule and let my own rhythm put me to bed and wake me through the brightness of the sun or the damp of the rain. I hasten to add that I live this way because my lifelong partner is supporting me: working and keeping track of it all so I can ease into this transition of the writing life. “Ease” is a too safe and not fully honest verb here: I am feeling my way along an unknown wall. It is pitch black and I count on the wall to guide me, one step after another, and it does, but don’t ask me where I’m exactly headed. Some days I am moderately shocked that I don’t know. And other days I am significantly shocked that it doesn’t matter.
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So this is the context and the landscape upon which I have encountered deep love. How is it that anyone I say that to so easily understands what I mean? Sometimes I mention that it is the kind of love that makes you cry, just leaves you standing there wiping your eyes with your sleeve because you never saw it coming, and they understand that too.
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Other times I say it leaves me depleted by the sheer volume of its size and scope. Have I not loved like this before? How is it that I’ve lived these adult years, raised a family, worked hard, been a good citizen, and not until now truly felt and deep love all around me? Deep love: the kind that pays dividends on every emotional deposit—even the quickest glance in the grocery line, my hand on an unsteady shoulder, a decision to care and protect my friend who listens to me with sacred ears and will stand up at the alter with me, no questions asked.
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Don’t get me wrong. I already know how to love. And I’m not prone to melodrama. I’m also not in a permanent state of bliss. This is something altogether different.
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And actually, it’s not an easy existence. My heart is equipped with these little toothpicks, ready to protect itself should someone particular try for entry I cannot handle--little toothpicks: now that’s a fortified defense. This might be the problem. I don’t have a fortified defense. I don’t have much of a defense at all. I am walking along, strolling the crunchy streets of Northampton, planting my sun garden with wide hope and wide grins, writing poems and painting words with my buddy soul mate, and I am loving deeply. So deeply that I deplete and refill and expand and deplete again almost every day.
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Still, no matter how good it gets, death, drought, deception and disarray swirl around me like foreign objects—particles of dust descending on the blue pearl of my strengthening spine—but falling only on the surface, never beyond. The blue pearl is protected. I now know this from faith. Mostly these days I walk around stunned by the love around me. Sometimes it is quiet, like a prayer, other times it spikes up my spine and I gasp, sometimes I am overwhelmed by it for no other reason than I understand what it is.
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And what I understand is that my path starts with my own heart and ends at someone else's. I have been diverted and misguided and several tragic times dead dead wrong. I have twice committed the most unforgivable crime of betrayal when only love was needed, and I have watched my ego dance around every stupid purposeless question asked and expected of me: Am I right? Do I have power? Will I come in first? Am I strong enough? Smart enough? Full enough? Do you love me enough?
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But that was then. That is not today, because today I am breathing and writing on a green covered couch, looking around and seeing faces that offer me a place and purpose to be heard, who treat me kindly, who take the time, and who hear the rhythms too. It is not difficult to be right here right now.
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But none of this relieves me of the weight of deep love. Living and loving this way means that I have not only diminished my ego, but I have dropped my toothpick defenses and cast open my full and fragile heart. Not the defenses you would expect of someone who does not want to be taken advantage of, or misled, or under appreciated. And not the defenses that guard the bank account or strive for the promotion or protect hurt feelings.
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These first line defenses are now gone. They melted. Or maybe they shriveled from too little use. Or they recognized the little toothpicks of my heart would give it all up anyway, so what’s the use.
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So if you ask me what all this means to me day-to-day, I will tell you that I am way more vulnerable than ever before. I am quite unprotected and quite unanchored. I cannot tell you what my life will look like tomorrow or next week or next year. I will tell you I no longer know how to operate my skimpy arsenal of protection, and yet I feel more protected in general, not less.
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I will also tell you that I now cry at the drop of a hat or the sound of a gentle word, and I don’t try as hard anymore not to. A friend says “I love you” and I know it is true. My daughter’s voice carries a calm wisdom I have never heard before: she talks about this baby she will soon deliver and I know in the deepest safest place that enough of her life has been right. My partner walks out the back door and I swallow hard knowing she will help me find myself even when it looks like some of me will be lost to her. I look in my mother’s eyes and I know I have the deepest special honor of helping her prepare to say goodbye.
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I am transformed. I am transformed by deep love. That’s what it is. Am I happier because of it? No. Am I wealthier, or wiser, or clearer or safer? No.
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It’s not any of that. This is all it is, I think all it may ever be: I get up each morning, I put on my red fuzz slippers and my purple silk nightshirt, I make the coffee, feed the dog, skim the paper, greet my family, and I do what is expected of me, and sometimes I do what is not expected of me. I look for and welcome opportunities to love, to connect, to work, to create, to share, to understand, to see rightly and to laugh my head off.
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I am blissfully present. And surprisingly safe. Perhaps this is where I started, where I’ve been hiding all along, where I will now live and thrive. And perhaps, after changes upon changes, I have become more or less the same after all.

25 comments:

  1. did you read it? wow. thank you. even if you skimmed. thank you. :)

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  2. yes, I did read it and it's lovely. really.

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  3. well written and moving. may we each experience deep love, letting go of defenses, seeing the world new at least once in our lifetimes if not always.

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  4. KJ, I think anyone willing to open their heart to everything around them, and truly love and create and feel and LIVE also experiences the opposite side of these emotions/actions and finds them more hurful than, say, those who meander through life. No soul, no passion; work, home, work, home, the obligations of a boring life in a suburb....never stepping out of th jail-like shelter of their box to LIVE.
    I think, with all I have been through, I would rather live, love, laugh, hurt, retreat, regroup and go at it again.
    We just have so much more that way. Even hurt causes creativity---the paint, the words flow along with tears.
    I am for wringing the very most out of each day, and seeing what happens!
    And yes, I read it all! :)

    XXOO!!
    Anne

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  5. That's beautiful. And in the end, I think any deep love, no matter how it does or doesn't work out, is worth it just for the expanding of your heart. That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

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  6. Hey There Cutie Patootie!

    I used to call Renee that, whenever I talked about the wide eyed wonder she had for simple things. We laughed that both our families used that word about us.

    Love hit me that way once. Just couldn't believe it. I would try to understand it, but there was just feeling this enormous thing flowing forth. And it was limitless. That's the gift. What happens on the other end isn't up to you.

    You will always have an infinite well of love, because you can let it go. Kj, it's who you are. That kj four yeara ago is still around, ego intact.

    To feel sad that someone didn't see the gift is one step towards forgiving and moving on. And I never got to the forgiving part, which is just semantics to me. Call it having been considered and dismissed. And I moved on.

    I think you did that too, just that you are doing more considering than I did. There comes a point when you just accept there are no answers and get out of your head.

    You need your head. You have books to write.

    xoxo
    Linda

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  7. Dear KJ,

    You are a writer with heart.♥

    This is really very beautiful.

    Guess what? I read it all and I'm probably going to read it again later ;)

    And you don't need my permission to use any of my art. I'm honored.

    love you,
    xoxo
    Lo

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  8. What Anne said :-). This is so beautiful Kj, you are a writer now and your were then. Thank you for sharing and yes, I read it all.
    xoxo

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  9. mim, i get to read your amazing cartoons and you get to read 10,000 words. is that fair?! xoxo

    suki, well said. being numb is not an option for me. i would never choose it!

    you know, anne, you are a writer. do you know that? you have the ability to write with an economy of words that getsto the heart of what you are saying. not to mention that you RHYME. SOMETIME!
    thank you for 'getting; this. how blessed i am to have so damn many blog friends (and non blog friends too) who choose love.

    cs, given your story, with which i fully agree, my heart is now the width of cleveland and portland combined!

    ah cutie patootie back at you,thanks a million! the truth is my deep love project is still going strong. i learned one lesson i wish i didn't know, and i wish i could react with ecplosive relief. but my path doesn't seem to turn that way. i feel love all around me. i know i am very very lucky for that. xoxo

    lo, hey! i love you too! i thought this was the perfect image for my essay. i asked emily and she said, "just use it. you can send jellybeans if lo gets mad" but i knew you wouldn't. ♥

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  10. annie! you snuck in! i know this piece is long (thank you all for reading it all) but i have to say i like it too. i like some of the images. and i like the message. i didn't write this about one person--i hope that's obvious. i wrote it to recognize VAST love!!! ♥

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  11. I saw an imagine I know.....
    I come back tomorrow (and read) for me this is much text after being awake for 36 hours......

    ♥♥♥

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  12. I read it. I felt it. I lived it. I loved it. Truly....

    You are blessed with so many gifts, m' dear.... the biggest being your wonderful, open heart with it's limitless capacity to love.

    This is one of your most powerful posts. And Suki's comment is spot-on.

    Love to you and Stella,


    ♥ Robin ♥

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  13. So beautiful my dear one, so beautiful. LOL! I couldn't stop reading it.
    I agree with Anne. In order to feel and love so deeply, so strongly and with all of your (or my) heart, I (or you) have to feel the pain, the hurt, and the trauma of everyday exsistence, sometimes many times. How could we know one with out the other.
    It uncovers us, and leads us to know who we are again.
    As each experience comes, good or bad, it opens us like the flower. There is you (or me) as we are, our soul, but with out the trappings of should have, could have, would have.
    And sometimes it hurts, but sometimes, just sometimes, there is so much joy, love, and yes, hope!

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  14. Oh KJ, this is just ... well I was going to say perfect but that's too flippant. It moved me ... to know that you are transformed. Life has far more meaning now that you have shed so much of the things that didn't matter anyway. I see that, and it warms my heart. You are a joy to know. xx Jos

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  15. Kj, yes, it was obvious it was about love on a grand scale :-). I related to it so much. Love it and I am so glad you decided to post it, even if it did make me late this morning :-).
    Kisses to Stella, and you too.
    xoxo

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  16. We come bearing gifts. Some times they fall into empty spaces where a hand and a heart ought to be. Are they lost? no. The simple answer is no. The complex answer is: we offered them to a human being. They don't see them because they don't know how to give gifts. They don't accept them because they cannot understand the value of that gift.

    So we move on, a little sadder, a little wiser and because of the pain it caused, a little more compassionate. So the gift is not really lost. It is returned to us in time, in wisdom and in compassion. I could hardly call that a loss. (yes, I read the whole thing, couldn't you tell?)

    Keep walking in the right direction, when we look toward the sun the shadows always fall behind us.

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  17. Hi kj! I read it TWICE. I want extra-credit. Deep love. Those two words are a mouthful. I have deep love for my family, and for my close friends. The kind of love that just the thought of something happening to one of them, causes my pulse to race, and brings tears to my eyes. I am blessed to have these people in my life, and like a tigress, I want to protect them, and keep them all safe from The World. If they are safe, then I am safe. :) But there is no safe, there are no toothpicks, no real protection. If you care about someone, really care for them, and open your heart to them, then you are vulnerable. But that is just the price of admission, I think. What is the alternative? To live this life never truly caring? That's not who you are, Miss kj. :) Thank God for the ones that return that deep love. They are our touchstones. They keep us walking ahead on the days when we want to fall face-first into a ditch! :) I once saw an interview with Mia Farrow and she was asked a question (can't remember exactly the wording, but I'm sure it had to do with Woody!), and she said, "Life is all about learning how to say good-bye." xoxo Pam

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  18. kj, oh kj...this is a really, really beautifully written essay...and it should be published in a magazine or a book. It really should.

    I've come back three times to read it. I love essays. One can think about things as it is written and work out problems. And this essay is lovely and deeply moving. Deep love such as this has moved into my life, as well, and I am still filled with awe that it has. So much better than just wandering my way through life, never feeling deeply.

    Thank you for posting this...it is truly a gift!

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  19. i read it and i felt it move me, very deeply.

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  20. Yes, I most definitely read it...and not in a skimming manner. It is a work of great art, kj. Thank god someone in your life recognized your capacity for such and supported a shaky dream that was made solid by that amazing love you describe.

    We're on a wavelength of sorts once again. My latest post is a revision of one I wrote last year, and in it I too asked for patience with the length of it from my readers. Strange, yet not strange.

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  21. Dearest kj
    ...Swim i do deep into those Graceful words and float i do on the ~Love~ expressed there...
    Dearest bloggy friend You are a most Beautiful and Wise Soul
    ~i love you~
    <3

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  22. i read it and realized i'd been holding my breath. it's truly beautiful.
    life is beautiful.
    and you are one hell of a writer.
    ♥ lori

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  23. Yes, and in one go too, you had my undivided attention ...

    "Nothing ever lasts for ever, except love. Love is forever"

    a borrowed quote from the wise young daughter of a blogfriend of mine*!*

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  24. to each of you: i will respond to your loving comments. thank you so much. i'll be helping a friend move tomorrow but then i will find my way back here and again read every comment, every word.

    for the 100th time: i am a lucky duck to have friends in high places.

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