Tuning

The other night you and I broached a delicate issue: The degree to which we should want to change a person we claim to love. I've deliberately imbued that last sentence with a searing and pessimistic tone because I think it encompasses all of our fears:

Do we really love anybody for who they are, or do we fall in love with who they might become? If we claim to love someone, why do we struggle to change them? And, if we engage in that struggle, is it to help them flourish, and become what you've called, with slight irony, a 'fully actualized person'? Or is it merely to mould them, as Pygmalion did, into incarnations of our own suspect fantasies?

The answers, if there are any, are both slippery and unsatisfying.

At some level, it seems only sensible to love your partner for who they are - to accept them completely, and to eschew any urge, as you've described it, to 'fix' or 'repair' them. After all, if you really love a person – and if that love is genuine and can withstand the most withering scrutiny – then shouldn't you find that person perfect, just as they are? And by entering into a relationship with an agenda for changing them, aren't you exposing the speciousness of your putative 'love'? Aren't you proving that this is not someone you can love completely, but merely someone who meets a few of your criteria for love, and then ultimately falls short...unless of course, they concede to the renovation of their character?

Perhaps.

But, consider this: What makes you fall in love with someone is not just the congregation of their attributes; it is also their hopes and aspirations. And, since love is empathy, then to love someone is to share their dreams. It is also to share in their agonies and frustrations. So, by this measure, it makes sense that you would want to participate in their efforts to grow, change and succeed - to break with old, destructive habits and to build new, productive ones. After all, if we didn't need help to eliminate our unwanted and recalcitrant behaviours, then we'd do it for ourselves. Isn't a relationship about helping one another become better people?

Maybe. Or maybe that's what therapy is for. After all, love is about building and reinforcing self-esteem, not about highlighting weaknesses, problems and failings. And, at some point, help and encouragement become extended exercises in negativity and character assassination. So where's the line? What's the correct balance? How to tell when you've gone too far - from supportive spouse to badgering nag?

It's a pretty hard call because, as much as it sounds like common sense to love your partner for who they are, it also seems like a recipe for failure. Why? Because we all change, and it's probably a good survival strategy to adore your lover's current 'self' while, at the same time, preparing for their subsequent incarnations. That means understanding and, I suppose, participating in their struggle to become fully actualized.

A safe guideline would seem to be: Wait for them to solicit your help, and regularly seek assurance that your help is still wanted and needed. But even that simple dictum gets muddy and vague. Take our situation, for instance.

You’ve said, “I feel all anxious in my tummy when I think of the serious personal responsibilities that I’ve been avoiding" and you've seemed to ask for help in ending that avoidance. I say seemed because, admittedly, some of your signals were pretty cryptic and liable to misinterpretation - like opening your course calendar while we were bowling, and then suggesting that it was a significant that you’d let me peruse it with you. I would have preferred a more direct request - something along the lines of, "Darling, would you help me choose my courses? I'm really procrastinating and I need your companionship and support." But, I'm used to divining your intention from the most tangential of statements and actions. And so, we made plans to fulfill both your responsibilities and mine, and to settle your anxious tummy.

But you dodged those plans all week. And yet, after each subsequent dodge, I sought your reassurance that you still wanted my help, pressure, or encouragement. You claimed that you did. And yet, each time I offered it, you rejected it by dropping out of contact.

And so I am caught in a terrible dilemma. I'd like to see you. And, if you really want to continue avoiding things - and can abide the consequences for your tummy - then I'll steer clear of serious issues. We can just have fun. On the other hand, you have plenty of playmates with whom you can do that already - and fewer with whom you can face your responsibilities and, more importantly, take steps to achieve your desired goals. So, as someone who loves you deeply, how am I to proceed?

I don't want to dampen the joy and whimsy of our relationship. Nor do I want to contribute to a pattern that has so clearly made you anxious and unhappy in the past – and continues to do so. For obvious reasons, I don't want you to have to turn to other boys for amusement. I'd like our relationship to have broad reach and resonance beyond the mere confrontation of difficult issues - but it would be a tragedy if that weren't part of it too. Is there any way for us to reconcile these desires? Can we not work on our responsibilities and go camping, be silly, and play? Might not play be even sweeter if your tummy were calmer?

You often turn the tables on me, accusing me of hypocrisy because, like you, I have so many issues of my own to address. That's true, but there's a difference. If you were to block off a day to work with me on my issues, I'd turn up...willingly. I'd love your help, and I've requested it repeatedly. I know you want my help too – in your own way - but each time you get close to accepting it, you baulk. Although, I'm also fearful that your efforts to help me with my stuff might mutate into yet another way for you to avoid your own agenda. That's why I prefer to link them together in mutual action plans! Not that this has been successful.

So, Beauty, I need your help. I need you to show me how we can be good for each other - how we can do, for one another, what no one else can do. That's the real substance of the question that I asked you long ago: Is there something that you hunger to feel – or a part of you that you yearn to express - that none of your current relationships make space for, encourage, permit, or facilitate. I know that 'effortlessness' is part of your answer - and that struggling to confront your challenges and realize your ambitions must seem like the antithesis of that. But consider this: What if all the extended metaphors around self-actualization are flawed? Maybe, by using language like 'problems', 'fixing', 'repairing', and 'changing', we are obscuring the best of what loving relationships can do.

Maybe it's better to think of tuning a precious and delicate instrument. When the instrument is out of tune, it doesn't lack integrity or value. It doesn't need to be fixed. Or repaired. Or renovated. Nor does it need one single thing beyond what it already has...except, perhaps, the dedicated, skilled and gentle hand of someone intimate with its nature, design, and potential. Because, even with the most perfect shape, resonant wood, and finest strings, an instrument can still find itself discordant and out of tune. What's needed is not repair, but a restoration of balance - more tension on some stings, more slack on others, a realignment of pressure - until the instrument begins to express its harmonious nature... and hits its grace notes with ease and with effortlessness.

You've done this for me, Beauty. Can I do it for you too?

Time

It's not very often that someone makes you think of something in a genuinely new way. But it happened just the other day. A good friend was musing about his place in the universe. He was distressed by the idea that humans are so infinitesimally small in the face of cosmic scale, and that their lives are so ephemeral. Then something occurred to him.

Amongst the earth's population of roughly 6,377,641,642 souls, the average age is about 26.5 years. That means that our collective "life experience" is something like 169 billion years. The universe, by contrast, is a mere 11.2 billion to 20 billion years old.

My friend thought it significant that, relative to the cosmos, humans occupy so little physical space, but that we hold, within our collective experience, such an overwhelming amount of time.

I thought you should know.

Raw

God, I hardly know where to begin. I hope you can handle a long post.

This is chance to tell you, in a more coherent form, some of the things I tried to tell you last night. I'm not sure they bear repeating, especially because the most grievous sin in your catalogue is to be boring and repetitive - yet here I go again. Why? Because last night our beer-fueled conversation took a slightly familiar, and unsatisfying shape. Here's a broad sketch:

You ask a serious question, but in a rather off-hand way. I try to answer seriously but you express, or possibly feign, amusement and ironic distance. I become terribly self-conscious because I am taking the conversation so seriously. And even though the foundation of both my business and personal identity is exactly this kind of passion and seriousness, it suddenly strikes me as foolish. Consequently, I lose focus and start to drift. You seem diffident, but not enough to abandon the conversation entirely. Caught in a demimonde of partial and ambiguous interest, I compensate by babbling - and the conversation becomes a monologue. That would probably be fine if the monologue were tightly and comprehensively argued but, because I am unable to assess the full degree of your sincerity and interest, my logorrhea remains half-hearted.

It's weird that this should happen to us. After all, at root, I think both of us care about our ideas in a completely straightforward and un-ironic way. And both of us prize comprehensive, intelligent, and eloquent expression. So what happens? Well, I think it's an unfortunate confluence of our respective Achilles Heels.

First, me. I am a smart, passionate, committed fellow and could probably achieve anything I desired, both personally and professionally. And, on the surface, I don't really lack either cojones or confidence. I mean, I don't hesitate to talk over people, hold to the supremacy of my ideas, give unwanted advice, or launch into monologues. But, of course, I am deeply insecure about my most cherished ideas and ideals. Consequently, I function best when I feel utterly secure: Amongst my oldest, most reliable and most loving friends; with trusting employers who repeatedly articulate and reaffirm their confidence in both my creativity and my judgment. On the other hand, in the face of stony silence, bemused irony, detachment, or disdain, I tend to fall apart. I know it's a terrible weakness, Beauty, but I can't pretend it's not mine.

Now, you. I know you are equally smart, passionate, creative and determined - possibly more so. And, on the surface, you don't seem to lack a confident sense of yourself. You walk into rooms like you own them. And you demonstrate a highly developed sense of your own charm, attraction and sexuality. You broadcast broadly and strongly - you know it and you like it. But, too often, you use that power to create distance between yourself and your companions. With a deadly combination of piercing wit and ironic detachment, you puncture their confidence, undercut their authority, and make them both awkward and self-conscious. And, oddly, the ideas that you approach with the most irony (the targets of your most consistent and withering scorn) are precisely those ideas that - I believe - you cherish most deeply: Love, Romance, Honesty, Commitment, Consistency, Devotion.

How else could one possibly explain your speech at the wedding - a sisterly gift of of grace, empathy and remarkable intuition. And why do weddings, in general, make you cry? Or, for that matter, The Notebook? And why do yearn for a ring-bearer who understands both your aesthetics and your imagination?

You hate dishonest people, avoiders, poseurs (pronounce it as you will), liars, and fair-weather friends. And yet you look at their opposite with such wry and condescending pity. I makes me want to whack you upside the head. Remember how, at camp, you hung with the punks? Everyone figured you were part of both their gang and their groove. But you thought they were idiots and I don't believe you cherished a single one of their values. So what were you doing on their side of the ethical divide?

So, last night, there we were - you and I - playing pool and drinking beer. And you asked me a serious question about love and devotion, but then undercut your own seriousness with a quiver of the usual affects. And, predictably, each of those arrows found their mark in my own Achilles Heel. I felt insecure and incredibly foolish defending the only thing I believe in - love - to the only person with whom I'd like to share it. Ouch.

I felt the same way as you scampered off last night. You made me feel as though my determination to please you, to satisfy you, to know your own heart and to have you know mine, were laughable, not laudable, goals. Please don't get me wrong, Beauty. How could I fail to be comforted by the blizzard of tender kisses, the delicate intrusion of your tongue, and your sudden and disarming embraces. And, most spectacularly, your startling willingness to ask, and to beg, for what you want and need. You were utterly magnificent. Let me repeat: utterly fucking magnificent.

But I am a sappy, romantic idiot. And I felt so foolish for wanting to keep you with me, for wanting to maintain the moment, for wanting to be sure - and for needing you to say what didn't need to be said. But, alas, I do need you to say it. I need you to tell me when I please you, and when I make you happy. I feel exposed, raw, and vulnerable -- and I need you to both protect me and reassure me. I always have.

Please don't be awkward with me. Don't retreat. Don't hide behind your beautiful hands. I become egregiously, excruciatingly, and embarrassingly awkward in response. Try treat me as though I were less foolish than I am, and our circumstances less absurd.

Be honest with me. Tell me where I stand. Teach me to be sufficient. Hold me to account. Insist that I satisfy you. Compel me to comply. Ask, beg, demand.

Last night you asked me, although not in so many exact words, why I wanted a relationship, and why I believed in both monogamy and romance. As I've explained above, last night's answers were partial, hesitant, halting and misguided. Here's a better attempt:

Completion
Because a brilliant relationship adds missing elements to my life, expanding my scope and understanding, adding surprise and grace, teaching be things I didn't even know I needed.

Support
Because it's so nice to have someone reliably and genuinely in my corner - someone who has faith in me and loves me for both who I am and what I do.

Companionship
Because, if every time I want to do something, I want to do it with the same person - and if everything is better with them - why would I spend time with someone else?

Empathy
Because if I feel their hurt and celebrate their successes as deeply as my own, then it's only smart to inspire and protect them.

Reciprocity
Because, if I want care and attention, it's only fair to provide it.

Rarity
Because I've found it very hard to find people who can, alternately, make me laugh, cry, sigh, remain still, teach me, chastise me, keep me honest, inspire me, caution me, speed me, please me, interest me, thrill me, disarm me, protect me, acknowledge me, care for me, and christen me with wonder. And when one person combines all that, I want to grapple them unto my soul with hoops of steel.

Death
Because once they're gone, I will have no recourse. Only remorse. And because, ask anyone - in the end, love is the only thing left.

Sufficiency
Because, despite how it sounds, I am comforted by the notion of finding things and people, happily, sufficient. Because I want to appreciate what I have, and know when I've found something special.

Contentment
Because this is the happiest state of all.

Joy
Because this is better than contentment.

Desire
Because, too many times in my life, whatever I've desired , once acquired, lost its appeal. Now, I look for proven, deep, respectful, and lasting, desire.

Fetish
Because love is the hardest thing to find, and the weirdest.

Heart
Because I know what it's like to feel my heart break, and it's still worth the risk.

Fuck(1)
Because what the fuck else could be more important that loving someone forever.

Fuck(2)
Because I'm a romantic, not a monk.

Whimsy
Because this is easy with romance and imossible without.

Odds
Because the odds are against it and I've always loved an underdog.

Better
Because it makes me a better person.

Intimacy
Because I find emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and physical intimacy much sexier than novelty.

Because
Just because I do.

You
Because I feel all of these things about you.

Possible

God, I hardly know where to begin. I hope you can handle a long post.

This is chance to tell you, in a more coherent form, some of the things I tried to tell you last night. I'm not sure they bear repeating, especially because the most grievous sin in your catalogue is to be boring and repetitive - yet here I go again. Why? Because last night our beer-fueled conversation took a slightly familiar, and unsatisfying shape. Here's a broad sketch:

You ask a serious question, but in a rather off-hand way. I try to answer seriously but you express, or possibly feign, amusement and ironic distance. I become terribly self-conscious because I am taking the conversation so seriously. And even though the foundation of both my business and personal identity is exactly this kind of passion and seriousness, it suddenly strikes me as foolish. Consequently, I lose focus and start to drift. You seem diffident, but not enough to abandon the conversation entirely. Caught in a demimonde of partial and ambiguous interest, I compensate by babbling - and the conversation becomes a monologue. That would probably be fine if the monologue were tightly and comprehensively argued but, because I am unable to assess the full degree of your sincerity and interest, my logorrhea remains half-hearted.

It's weird that this should happen to us. After all, at root, I think both of us care about our ideas in a completely straightforward and un-ironic way. And both of us prize comprehensive, intelligent, and eloquent expression. So what happens? Well, I think it's an unfortunate confluence of our respective Achilles Heels.

First, me. I am a smart, passionate, committed fellow and could probably achieve anything I desired, both personally and professionally. And, on the surface, I don't really lack either cojones or confidence. I mean, I don't hesitate to talk over people, hold to the supremacy of my ideas, give unwanted advice, or launch into monologues. But, of course, I am deeply insecure about my most cherished ideas and ideals. Consequently, I function best when I feel utterly secure: Amongst my oldest, most reliable and most loving friends; with trusting employers who repeatedly articulate and reaffirm their confidence in both my creativity and my judgment. On the other hand, in the face of stony silence, bemused irony, detachment, or disdain, I tend to fall apart. I know it's a terrible weakness, Beauty, but I can't pretend it's not mine.

Now, you. I know you are equally smart, passionate, creative and determined - possibly more so. And, on the surface, you don't seem to lack a confident sense of yourself. You walk into rooms like you own them. And you demonstrate a highly developed sense of your own charm, attraction and sexuality. You broadcast broadly and strongly - you know it and you like it. But, too often, you use that power to create distance between yourself and your companions. With a deadly combination of piercing wit and ironic detachment, you puncture their confidence, undercut their authority, and make them both awkward and self-conscious. And, oddly, the ideas that you approach with the most irony (the targets of your most consistent and withering scorn) are precisely those ideas that - I believe - you cherish most deeply: Love, Romance, Honesty, Commitment, Consistency, Devotion.

How else could one possibly explain your speech at the wedding - a sisterly gift of of grace, empathy and remarkable intuition. And why do weddings, in general, make you cry? Or, for that matter, The Notebook? And why do yearn for a ring-bearer who understands both your aesthetics and your imagination?

You hate dishonest people, avoiders, poseurs (pronounce it as you will), liars, and fair-weather friends. And yet you look at their opposite with such wry and condescending pity. I makes me want to whack you upside the head. Remember how, at camp, you hung with the punks? Everyone figured you were part of both their gang and their groove. But you thought they were idiots and I don't believe you cherished a single one of their values. So what were you doing on their side of the ethical divide?

So, last night, there we were - you and I - playing pool and drinking beer. And you asked me a serious question about love and devotion, but then undercut your own seriousness with a quiver of the usual affects. And, predictably, each of those arrows found their mark in my own Achilles Heel. I felt insecure and incredibly foolish defending the only thing I believe in - love - to the only person with whom I'd like to share it. Ouch.

I felt the same way as you scampered off last night. You made me feel as though my determination to please you, to satisfy you, to know your own heart and to have you know mine, were laughable, not laudable, goals. Please don't get me wrong, Beauty. How could I fail to be comforted by the blizzard of tender kisses, the delicate intrusion of your tongue, and your sudden and disarming embraces. And, most spectacularly, your startling willingness to ask, and to beg, for what you want and need. You were utterly magnificent. Let me repeat: utterly fucking magnificent.

But I am a sappy, romantic idiot. And I felt so foolish for wanting to keep you with me, for wanting to maintain the moment, for wanting to be sure - and for needing you to say what didn't need to be said. But, alas, I do need you to say it. I need you to tell me when I please you, and when I make you happy. I feel exposed, raw, and vulnerable -- and I need you to both protect me and reassure me. I always have.

Please don't be awkward with me. Don't retreat. Don't hide behind your beautiful hands. I become egregiously, excruciatingly, and embarrassingly awkward in response. Try treat me as though I were less foolish than I am, and our circumstances less absurd.

Be honest with me. Tell me where I stand. Teach me to be sufficient. Hold me to account. Insist that I satisfy you. Compel me to comply. Ask, beg, demand.

Last night you asked me, although not in so many exact words, why I wanted a relationship, and why I believed in both monogamy and romance. As I've explained above, last night's answers were partial, hesitant, halting and misguided. Here's a better attempt:

Completion
Because a brilliant relationship adds missing elements to my life, expanding my scope and understanding, adding surprise and grace, teaching be things I didn't even know I needed.

Support
Because it's so nice to have someone reliably and genuinely in my corner - someone who has faith in me and loves me for both who I am and what I do.

Companionship
Because, if every time I want to do something, I want to do it with the same person - and if everything is better with them - why would I spend time with someone else?

Empathy
Because if I feel their hurt and celebrate their successes as deeply as my own, then it's only smart to inspire and protect them.

Reciprocity
Because, if I want care and attention, it's only fair to provide it.

Rarity
Because I've found it very hard to find people who can, alternately, make me laugh, cry, sigh, remain still, teach me, chastise me, keep me honest, inspire me, caution me, speed me, please me, interest me, thrill me, disarm me, protect me, acknowledge me, care for me, and christen me with wonder. And when one person combines all that, I want to grapple them unto my soul with hoops of steel.

Death
Because once they're gone, I will have no recourse. Only remorse. And because, ask anyone - in the end, love is the only thing left.

Sufficiency
Because, despite how it sounds, I am comforted by the notion of finding things and people, happily, sufficient. Because I want to appreciate what I have, and know when I've found something special.

Contentment
Because this is the happiest state of all.

Joy
Because this is better than contentment.

Desire
Because, too many times in my life, whatever I've desired , once acquired, lost its appeal. Now, I look for proven, deep, respectful, and lasting, desire.

Fetish
Because love is the hardest thing to find, and the weirdest.

Heart
Because I know what it's like to feel my heart break, and it's still worth the risk.

Fuck(1)
Because what the fuck else could be more important that loving someone forever.

Fuck(2)
Because I'm a romantic, not a monk.

Whimsy
Because this is easy with romance and imossible without.

Odds
Because the odds are against it and I've always loved an underdog.

Better
Because it makes me a better person.

Intimacy
Because I find emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and physical intimacy much sexier than novelty.

Because
Just because I do.

You
Because I feel all of these things about you.

Effortlessness

This has been my couples week. Over the last seven days, I've spent time with five different couples - some long-term friends, some mere acquaintances.

As you know, I don't do this very often. Partly because I feel like a third wheel. Mostly because I squirm at the way some couples treat one another. I can't abide the cutting comments, the subtle silences and, especially, the bizarre coded cruelties. It's why I avoid dinner parties.

Of course, not every couple's like this. Amongst my friends are a few sterling examples of respectful, loving couplehood - but they are not the majority. Nor can I claim the moral high-ground; I know that I'm capable of the same egregious offenses: relentless teasing, barbed innuendo, conversational usurpation, the public settling of old scores, and a wounding abruptness, Regardless, I've become overtly allergic to these inter-spousal misbehaviours, and I resent being forced to witness them.

Remember Thanksgiving dinner at your parents' place? Remember their friends from the coast? I think you barely noticed the tension rippling beneath the surface, but I was white-knuckled by the supper's end. I was probably being overly sensitive, but their banter seemed more like open sparring, despite its smiling surface and seeming humour. My own friends can be just as bad. So can I. And, I know it's naive to expect my growing aversion to, in some way, enlighten or inoculate me. Still, it would it be nice if this were the case. After all, there's plenty to be learned just through observation, and I think that being single makes that observation easier.Actually, it's a pretty good time to take a look around, relatively unencumbered, and figure out what makes some couples' relationships seem so toxic, and others seem so...effortless.

I've been rereading Rilke lately, and what keeps coming to mind is that unlikely evocation of Love from Letter 7 of Letters To A Young Poet:

"Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other."

In a way, everything I've learned about love - from my parents, my friends, and from my own experience - is somehow bound within that single sentence...
The first lesson is the hardest to achieve, I suppose, and may have as much to do with temperament and genetics as it does with love or romance. The happiest relationships seem to be between people who at least have a slight disposition to sunny optimism. Those who are easily plunged into despair or depression seem to want to drag their spouses with them. Too often, what seems to be a 'couples' issue is actually one partner's angst injected indiscriminately into any available exchange. In a way, the security of coupledom seems to encourage partners nursing lifelong grievances to externalize their problems, projecting them onto their better half. They behave as though their spouse were the source of the worlds problems, not a soothing antidote. Part of the problem, I think, is an inability to see their partner as a 'solitude', as something legitimately separate from themselves.

I know Rilke sounds cold when he talks about 'solitude', but if you read the quote in context, or if you read his Dragon Princess, you'll see that Rilke sees solitude as the necessary state of affairs for all individuals. More importantly, he sees it as something to be embraced, not feared. By 'two solitudes', I think he means two sovereign, strong, and independent souls. But, yes, he is also suggesting the more difficult idea that, within each of us, lie vast unknown and unknowable territories. Some of these regions remain unexplored, not only by others, but often by own own hearts and minds. Surely Rilke isn't wrong here.

Think of how and when intimacy is first initiated, either sexually, emotionally, or both. Affairs, encounters, friendships, romances, engagements and marriages - even the most cautious and sensible ones - are launched on the flimsiest of pretexts, with a bare minimum of knowledge and experience. Most of our understanding evolves over time and flows out of long experience.

Go Figure

After watching The Station Agent, Bad Santa, and Austin Powers, and writing about them in Dwarves, I brought home the DVD of Big Fish, a film with a real giant, Matthew McGrory.

And, remember what I was saying about Scarlett Johansson's eyes? That they are a little offset, one straying wider than the other, and that I thought this might be the key to her captivating gaze? You can see it clearly in this pic, and in this one.

Well, I was watching Amelie again. Check out Audrey Tautou's eyes in these four pics: 1, 2, 3, 4. Go figure.

Alas

Last night, the strangest thing happened. A bunch of friends and I were having an extended dinner on the local patio (the one where, last week, they refused to serve you - and, yes, I gave the manager an earful). We'd been there for over six hours. As we were leaving, we wriggled by a table of three girls who were chatting with the owner. One of the girls, a cute little thing about five feet tall, caught my eye.

"Hey", she said, tapping my arm, "Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure," I said. I stopped abruptly and simultaneously prevented the egress of our party .
"Tell me," she said, leaning forward, "If I asked you to grab my hair, and then kiss me, would you do it?"
She had terrific hair - long, dark and silky. Perfect, really, for grabbing. Fetching lips too. Caught in the headlights of her question, I froze. Her friends giggled.
"Um, sure," I muttered. "Sure I would...yeah, of course I would. I mean, why not?"
In the ensuing and awkward silence, she flashed a knowing glance at her pals. I turned to my friends for clarification and support. And the owner watched on, expressionless.

I think the appropriate thing would've been to have bent over - or even better, to have pulled her to her feet and possibly, beyond - grabbed her lovely locks and kissed her roughly on the mouth. After all, that did seem to be the suggestion lingering in the air. But since my friend knew the owner, so did my his housemate, so did I, and since the owner clearly knew the girl...well, a bold grabbing-and-kissing gesture seemed a bit risky. So, instead of ravishing her, I sat down and settled for an extended, flirtatious talk. My friends went home. I stayed.

As it turned out, earlier that night, she'd been out on a second date with someone her cousin had introduced her to - a classic 'set-up'. Apparently both dates had been uneventful. So, well into the second one, and frustrated by her suitor's lack of response, she'd asked of him what she'd just asked of me.

And he'd demurred. When she'd asked again, a short while later, once again he'd refused. By the end of the date, she'd asked him four times and, in each instance, she'd been rebuffed. Quite honestly, I couldn't imagine it. After all, she was remarkably pretty - a spark-plug of a girl with twinkling eyes, an easy laugh, and a bouncy step.

Sitting next to her, commiserating, I wondered if she were waiting for me to go boldly where he had not. It was a strangely arousing but, nonetheless, nerve-wracking experience. In the end, I took her on a cuddle-bound tour of the van, sitting just beyond both the patio lights and the curious gaze of her friends.

Afterwards, we exchanged business cards and, as she left with her friends, I hugged her long and tenderly. She seemed both happy and grateful, her esteem re-established and her sexiness confirmed. All in all, not a bad night for a boy.

Still, on the way home, all I could think of was you. That's the reason for the sometimes snarky and impassioned post below: (Im)probability. You see, the next morning I woke up with her business card beckoning. Here was a lovely girl: single, available, close to my age (or, at least within a decade and a half), sexy as all get out, and eager to be seduced. But what to do?

You see, I can't imagine anyone quite as cool as you. Yes, I know you're unavailable... but that undeniable and non-negotiable fact doesn't make one thing easier. You are still terrific - and everybody else a bland and pale substitute. Alas.

(Im)probability

I want to write to you tonight, Beauty, but I hardly know where to start. Part of me wants to write to you seriously, creatively and intellectually - about conversations with friends, the articles I've read, films I've seen, the ideas that have insinuated themselves into my imagination. But, every time I begin, I feel dishonest.

Because I miss you. That's all I want to tell you tonight. But I fear this may be the last thing you actually wish to hear.

Why fear? Because it's been a week since we've spoken, and our last conversation seemed oddly abrupt. Yes, I know the circumstances were awkward - but still, I fear, something has changed.

It has been hard with you gone. But at least, for the first few days, I could talk to you by phone, send you a parcel, track its progress, and imagine that, as it got closer, so did I. And with each phone call you laughed so easily - responded so immediately - that I couldn't help but feel close .

But during the last call, I felt the distance growing, your discomfiture manifest. Then a week of silence. Perhaps you've been swept up in a swirl of romance. Or awash in guilt. Or been busy. Or, perhaps, distance has given you an opportunity to reflect and decide. Still, I know that, had you really wanted to, you could have stolen a moment, made a quick call, left me the briefest of messages, or fired off a email. A mere word in the subject field would have been enough.

But you haven't. And so, by not sending me a message, I suppose you are sending me a message. Am I wrong about this?

I wouldn't blame you. The truth is, I've come to count on you far, far too much - on your affection, your ideas, your companionship, your presence, your intimacy, and your sheer provocation. You've gone from being an amusing pastime on the periphery of my imagination, to being something spirited and essential at the centre of my heart.

I'm almost sure you don't want that responsibility - not from me and, maybe, not from anybody. In the past, I've seen how the full-throated devotion of a heartsick boy has made you claustrophobic, scornful and irritable. I'd hate to be part of that legion. Maybe it's too late to avoid that fate.

Or, perhaps there's another reason for your reticence. The giddy idiot within my heart wants to believe that it's something else: That I am - even in your silence - always on your mind; That you dearly wish I were with you; That you have so much to tell me that you can't even bring yourself to begin; That you love me, despite our circumstances and (almost) despite yourself.

I wish I knew. But, to be honest, the 'giddy idiot' version seems the most unlikely. Also the most romantic, don't you think?

I've always felt that love, if it's real, needs to be unlikely. Needs to requires sacrifice and struggle. And that it comes, most often, awkwardly and unbidden. After all, if were too easy, if it were to happen merely as a matter of course, how would we recognize it? How would we feel its power? And how would we know it was love?

This is distinct from your notion of effortlessness...no. That's wrong...not 'distinct from', but 'bound up with'. Relationships that are marked by both effortlessness and improbability. Those are the ones I believe in. Or want to.

That's what I'm thinking about tonight, Beauty: The probability of improbability. Because I miss you terribly, and I hope you miss me too.

Dwarves

Yesterday, I brought two DVD’s home from the video store: Bad Santa, a film recommended by an ex-girlfriend, and The Station Agent, a film I tried to drag you to on several occasions.

I watched Bad Santa first. It was occasionally funny, but mostly crude and unpleasant. It tried way too hard to be shocking.

Bad Santa is about two con-men, one of whom is a dwarf. Every Christmas, they work as ‘Santa and his Elf’ at a different department store. Then, on Christmas Eve, they rob the store’s safe by hiding the aforementioned elf/dwarf somewhere in the building and using him to disable the alarm system (and, yes, he has to do it in under 30 seconds!).

Much of the supposed humour comes from having Santa being…well, bad. He drinks, he smokes, he swears, he vomits, he pees in his jolly red suit and, when he makes love… let’s just say that he enters by the back-door rather than by the chimney. When Santa’s not doing that, he and the dwarf/elf exchange foul-mouthed insults.

I think the dwarf stuff is supposed to be funny: dwarf dressed up as tiny snow-mannequin; dwarf wriggling about in air vents; dwarf sliding down an escalator; dwarf dropping from ceiling; dwarf being kicked in the nuts; dwarf swearing. The problem is, I didn’t find the dwarf stuff amusing at all. In fact, I felt kind of sorry for Tony Cox, the little actor in question; you see, in the DVD Special Feature, The Making of Bad Santa, he laments the lack of good roles for dwarves, but praises Bad Santa by saying, “Roles like this just don’t come around, not in the 20 years I’ve been in acting.” If this is the best role in two decades, being a dwarf actor must be really depressing. Of course, the residuals probably help compensate for the frustration.

Then, I popped in The Station Agent. Now here’s the really odd thing, Beauty. Until the opening frame of the film, it had never occurred to me that, in a bizarre coincidence, I had yanked two ‘dwarf’ movies off the shelf. And to make it even odder, as I was starting The Station Agent, CityTV was playing Austin Powers The Spy Who Shagged Me; Verne Troyer, as ‘Mini-Me’ was running around doing the standard dwarf shtick (and, yes, Heather Graham reminded me of you although, I have to admit, you are considerably more attractive). The paucity of good dwarf roles is the subject of much discussion on the Internet, and is summed up rather nicely in this article in Backstage.

Well, The Station Agent is the antidote to all of this. It’s a really lovely film, Beauty. Patient, tender, unhurried, thoughtful and respectful. And the cinematography is gorgeous, especially since it was shot on Super 16 and made for a half a million dollars. I’m not sure if you are a fan of Michelle Williams, from Dawson’s Creek, but she is luminous in the film as the protagonist’s burgeoning love interest.

The film is about Finn, an anti-social and diffident loner whose dwarfism only adds to his self-consciousness and isolation. A railway aficionado, he works at the local model-train store until his friend, the store's aging proprietor, dies. In his will, the old man leaves Finn an abandoned railway station in Newfoundland, New Jersey, an isolated and bucolic part of the state. There, to his initial consternation, Finn attracts the attention, and affection, of a group of fellow loners: a garrulous Cuban-American who has taken over his sick father’s hot-dog truck; a scatter-brained artist who has separated from her husband and is still coping with death of her son; the local librarian whose boorish boyfriend has left her pregnant and alienated; and a local child who is both charming and alarmingly direct.

Although The Station Agent is partly about the detachment triggered by Finn’s dwarfism, it is also about the slow process by which friendships are forged, about finding love in the most unlikely of places and, I think, about what you have called effortlessness. I’d like to see it again, but this time with you.

Wishing

Maybe it’s a measure of my insecurity, or merely a predictable response to love, but I often find myself wishing that I were more: more attractive, more youthful, more accomplished. Then, as my thinking goes, you would find me more compelling.

And, horribly - if I am to be totally honest with myself and with you - there have been times that I’ve wished you were more, too: more mature, more focused, more self-directed. Then, according to my flawed logic, the barriers between us would evaporate, you’d be self-actualized and more fully yourself and…well, yes, you’d find me more compelling.

However, here is a hard and beautiful fact: If any of the above were true – if they had ever been true, I wouldn’t know you at all. Given the circumstances by which we met, if I had been at any other stage in my life, or my career, then our paths would never have crossed. And if you had been any of the things that I’ve occasionally wished you were, you would have had no need of me. And so, the long, slow arc of our friendship would never have been drawn.

Of course, I’m ruling out random encounters like a traffic accident which, given your driving record, is not beyond the realm of possibility. Or that we might have met at the crossroads of our shared passions: at a movie perhaps, or cruising Indigo, or reading beside one another at Moonbeam.

But I don’t really believe that.

If I have any faith at all, it is a deep and abiding belief that everything must happen exactly as it does, that nothing is wasted or random or meaningless - not even the most sweetly coincidental or brutally tragic. That is not an easy thing for me to accept, given my experience. But, in the end, I think that’s what makes our individual experience so lush and precious. It’s the inarguable fact that we can’t be anything other than what we are, and our experience nothing but what it has been.

I’m not saying that I might not suddenly become more successful, or that I might not harden my physique with some new training regimen (although getting younger seems unlikely, barring unforeseen medical advances). And, I’m not suggesting that your self-confidence won’t blossom, or that you won’t ultimately find your groove. On the contrary, I know you will and, in the meantime, I’ll do everything I can to help.

I just mean that my childish instinct - to wish that things were other than they are - is just that: a foolish immaturity that’s blind to the breathtaking beauty of what is, and what must be.

If I am, alternately, content and happy, stunned and thrilled, moved and motivated, by the mere fact of you – by your presence, your friendship and your love – then it behooves me to embrace all of the circumstances that led us to this point.

So, if I have a wish, let it not be a desire to be something other than what I am. Let me wish to be even more fully myself – and a good, loving, accepting friend to you.

Slow

Lately, I've been concerned about the increasingly 'virtual' nature of my communication, especially with my friends. I'm not just afraid of becoming housebound or idle. Rather, I feel as though, in the process of becoming more accessible, I've lost something ill-defined and precious.

Increasingly, my exchanges are partial and incomplete, uncommitted and half-hearted: iChats amongst competing Buddies, conversations curtailed by cellphones. Communions interrupted. Confessions disturbed. Depth sacrificed for breadth. It's an insidious slide into attention-deficit dialogue - one in which no thought is fully developed, no conversational thread completely unspooled. No subtlety realized, no patience applied. Talking with the tilt of a the head. Talking while walking away. Lingering, but with one foot across the technological transom. Cocktail chatter... but without charm, booze and decolletage. Graceless grunting to a toneless ear. ttyl. lol. btw. brb. ic. omg. And I don't know why they dubbed it 'call waiting'; the 'call' never waits...I do.

I play along - churlish not to. After all, it's the new idiom, and look at the benefits! Eternal connectedness, and companionship. Yet it leaves me cold and unsatisfied. More than anything, I am disturbed by my own irritation when, in the flush of multiple MSN , one of my Messengers asks a meditative question - something serious or heartfelt. I feel anger, impatience and resentment. Do they expect me to ignore the bratty bouncing of the icon?

I hate my mental laziness, Beauty - and I hate how I've acquiesced to a distracted notion of intimacy. That's why camping holds such appeal. Or gardening with you. Or Pablum shopping with best friend. There's a 'slow food' movement and a 'slow school' movement. Maybe I need a 'slow friend' movement.

Maybe this explains the rise of blogs. Is it possible that blogs compensate for our lost, unhurried conversations?

Momentum

I feel an odd momentum building, and I'm not sure if it's just in me, or in the world in general. Maybe it's just the intoxicating effect of summer, and blessed reappearance of low-rise everything. Or, maybe something more serious is afoot. As Joni sang:

And I feel myself a cog
In something turning
And maybe it's the time of year
Yes, and maybe it's the time of man
And I don't know who I am
But life is for learning

That's pretty much how I feel these days. Must be a hormonal imbalance.

Still, it's hard to avoid the signs of impending...well, I'm not sure what. Let's just say that I feel like a seedpod - ready to burst and scatter. Okay, that didn't come out exactly as I'd intended. Take a moment to purge that absurd image from your imagination, and let me try again.

You see, my brain is burning - so much so that I'm having a hard time keeping track of the shimmering creative and personal threads I want to pursue. I know you're aware of it - I have a sneaking suspicion that I've been an intense little companion these last few weeks (although you do run with an nominally intense crowd, so maybe you're inured to it). I have used you as my primary outlet, and that's probably unfair. Hard cheese for you, my dear. You just happen to be the only person I care about that isn't living far away, having babies, or writing books. So don't start now, okay?

Maybe that's why I began this blog. To spare you the necessity of listening to me buzzing with endlessly enthusiasm about whatever particular bee might have found its way into my bonnet. I just dump my thoughts in here, comforted by the quaint conceit that you'll rush home to read the most recent installment. Then, when get together, you politely pretend that you've perused and appreciated my scribblings. It works for me if it works for you.

But don't kid yourself that this turbulent emotional typhoon is somehow an anomaly, and that it will simply exhaust itself in time. The truth is, the last few years have been the anomaly. In fact, if I'm to be completely honest, the anomaly has lasted for over a decade. But I think it is finally coming to an end. And if I'm not headed for a shattering nervous breakdown, the storm could be kind of fun…for me at least.

Once upon a time, I burned this brightly on a daily basis. I think it was pretty hard on the people close to me. I'm sure it cost me at least one potential wife; Liz married someone whose emotional arcs weren't quite so steep, or so precipitous. She found it exhausting to be dragged around by every new passion I'd hysterically adopted. Julie handled me much better - beautifully, really - but she did it my anchoring my heart to her solid sense of ease and contentment. When she died, I externalized everything within me and fled to South America: A perfect place for a soul that was determined to make manifest the most extreme elements of its imagination. There, I became Gato Gringo Loco, the crazy gringo cat - a perfect avatar for both my tempo and my time.

But, in eventually, I had to return - at least, I believed I did. Once back in Canada, my imagination calcified and my passion withered. Grief will do that. Once, I’d been filled with such hope, with the wild conviction that everything would work out, despite destiny's twists and turns. But the hard smack of tragedy knocked me from my optimistic perch. And it seemed pointless to climb back up. I suppose you could say I lost my faith: in love, in destiny, in romance, and in dreams.

Since then, I’ve settled for something so meagre - a less risky, less passionate, less emotionally ambitious life. Instead of trusting in grace and coincidence, I let myself be guided by the predictable, and the safely conventional. In retrospect, maybe that’s what I needed to hold myself together. Or maybe I was simply a coward. Maybe I was mistaken. Regardless, it’s the path I followed. And in the end, I barely recognized myself.

You know what they say about frogs? That if you put one in a pot of boiling water, it’ll jump out; but if you place it in tepid water, and slowly raise the temperature, the poor creature will sit there oblivious - until it boils to death. Well, I was the opposite case. A frog put in tepid water, the temperature slowly and inexorably reduced, until it found itself bound and immobile, its heart frozen and unresponsive.

Recently, however, I have begun to thaw. To stretch the metaphor to the breaking point, can a frozen frog be reheated and come back to life? Maybe the metaphor’s not so farfetched after all.

I’m not sure what's responsible for the thawing. Maybe the imminent death of a friend. Maybe the birth of my best friend’s child. Maybe you. Maybe all of those things.

But now, for the first time in a long time, I feel coincidence afoot and hope in my heart. After I wrote you (below, in Breath) about my struggle to remain honest and open and raw, I found this article in the Globe. And minutes later, I received an email from a friend overseas. He always signs his missives with three quotations, but I had never bothered to read them before. This time, I did:

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy,now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
-Talmud

It is only by following your deepest instincts that you can lead a rich life and if you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct then your life will be safe, expedient and thin.
- Katherine Butler Hathaway

To be a warrior
Is to be genuine
In every moment of your life.
- Chogyam Trungpa

I’m not sure where the momentum is coming from, Beauty, nor how long it will last. But for now, at least, it's here. And so are you.

Breath

It was cool and sunny this morn, so I got up early and zipped down to Bloor St. for breakfast. I stumbled across lots of lovely stuff in the Globe And Mail, and wished you'd been there to hand the paper to (as a distraction while I stole and ate your toast). I suppose this is the next best thing (after a yawning gulf).

The Globe article was about Tony Hendra, a satirical writer whose work I grew up with; he has written a book dedicated to a monk.

Here's the part that struck me:

The book takes you by the hand and shows you, gently and clearly, what it means to love. Which is just what Father Joe did for Hendra. "Father Joe never taught me; that's too easy," says Hendra. "Rather, he always led me to an understanding of the core sin, the only sin, the sin before all the things we call sin, and that is selfishness, the self-centredness that keeps you being so deeply with yourself that you hate people: You want revenge. You want pleasure. You want to commit adultery. You have road rage, greed, whatever. It all comes from being trapped in this prison of self. It's not a difficult message to hear, but to understand it, to act it, that's really difficult. But he did." Adds Hendra, "To him, loving, which was the only way out of this prison, was not some mushy, hippy, lank-haired kind of feeling. It's a conscious effort to reach over those walls, to listen to people, to reach into other persons' selfishness. That's when good starts to happen."

I've been thinking a lot lately about Hendra's "core sin". Not that it isn't always at the back of my mind. I feel it moving in me constantly. I suppose that's why, every couple of years, I go through some kind of renewed interest in Buddhism. And why I still wander into churches despite my staus as a confirmed agnostic. How to cope with the distortions of ego: the eternal question, I suppose.

But why am I thinking about it more than usual? Hard to say. Part of it has to do with the documentary ideas I've been bandying about. I'm interested in Magic Hour - because of the incredible effect that time of day has on our perception, and on our inner life. And in trying to understand why certain qualities of light offer the promise of such grace, I started to enumerate all the things that had that effect on me. One, obviously, was light. But there were others...

Wait, you know, I'm wrong. I just checked. Yes, I'm wrong. (I hope you don't mind an emergent thought process)

As with many other things, this obsession with the 'sin of egotism' began, at least in its most recent form, with you.

You see, up above, before I broke off the sentence, I was about to list all the other things that moved me beyond ego, washed it away, and left me feeling vulnerable, open, honest, and awestruck - the antidote to selfishness. I was about to type "art", "wind", and "sex". Then I realized that I'd typed this exact same sentiment once before. So I went hunting, and there in my Sent Messages, was the following...in my answer to your DC email:

Nothing is about the visible, and the present. It's all about the past and the future. I've never had a single conversation with you that wasn't fraught with those complications (at least for me). I think that's why sex, and the post-coital state are so important (and maybe communing with nature {and maybe great art})...the few moments that are, through their sheer power, unencumbered by subtext. They are all text, in such big type, that's there's no room for 'sub'.

Not as eloquent as I might have liked - and I left out 'wind', 'large bodies of water', 'pets' (although they might fall under the 'communing with nature') and, of course, the hard fact of death - but I think the sentiment is on the mark. The point, and not an original one by any means (even to me) is that the distortions of ego are so powerful and omnipresent that they prevent us from seeing the world, our companions and - most egregiously - ourselves, except through the lens of our own selfishness. And then, every so often, in a flash, something corrects our vision, and we get a sudden glimpse of our place in the world, and the unspeakable grace of the things that surround us, of the people we only think we've known and understood.

The experiences that do this sometimes make us feel small (the startling scale of Newfoundland's geography, the sweep of a strong wind, the relentlessness of pounding surf, the uneasy horizon of the open sea, the fecund smell of emergent Spring, the tremulous fragility of late Autumn). Often, they remind us of our own mortality (the faces of the dead, especially the ones we've loved). Occasionally, they involve physical exhaustion (good sex and runner's high) and move us outside of time (sex and running again, and good art too). But, taken together, they have something else in common.

All of them, in their fullest expression and experience, require a complete loss of sovereignty. They demand an acknowledgment that the most precious things in life are, irrefutably, beyond our control - that our ego, for all its frenetic activity, can't secure, manipulate, control, or contain the things we most desire. These things are bigger than our imagination. And that's the source of both their beauty and their power.

So, if you hadn't figured it out already, that's where you come in. Not as an email interlocutor, but as an object of desire, a force of nature, an implacable corrective to my ego. Don't get me wrong. It's not that I relish your dismissiveness, welcome your erratic behaviour, or am masochistically attracted to your unattainablility (after all, these all might be 'sins of the ego' in their own right). On the contrary, I am have always been most moved by your generosity, your secret stillness, and your gentleness. You've disarmed me, utterly, with your fierce intelligence, irrepressible sparkle, breathtaking beauty, and surprising grace.

That's why I first called you 'Beauty' all those years ago. Because of that line from the Spirit of the West song. (By the way, did I ever tell you that I tracked down the statue they refer to?)

We made love upon a bed
That sagged down to the floor
In a room that had a postcard on the door
Of Marini's Little Man
With an erection on a horse
It always leaves me laughing
Leaves me feeling that of course if
Venice is sinking
I'm going under
'Cause beauty's religion
And it's Christened me with wonder.

I always loved those lines. I loved them before I met you. They summed up everything I believed in.

Then we met. And after that, each time I heard the song, you were beauty.

You have, always, Christened me with wonder.

When you gave me the song - when you remembered to give me the song - it shook me. Since then, I have struggled to find a place for you in my heart, to contain the idea of you, to hold you at arm's length, or to draw you close. But, of course, if Venice is sinking, I'm going under...

So, in a messy, confusing way, you are part of my larger exploration of the 'core sin' of selfishness. You've also led me to see, in Magic Hour, a universal expression of grace. Or to believe that a filmic meditation on the exact moment when stories move us to tears might, somehow, reveal our secret soul, stripped of ego. You were there, at that moment of inspiration, weren't you? And it was you who noticed what was written on the walls.

My father, deathly sick in the hospital, helpless and intubated, had an 'Inspiration Therapist'. Her job was to slide the tube down his damaged throat, remove it, clean it, adjust it, and then guide it down again. She kept him breathing. She was responsible for his 'inspiration'. She kept him alive.

Inspiration - c.1303, "immediate influence of God or a god," especially that under which the holy books were written, from O.Fr. inspiration, from L.L. inspirationem (nom. inspiratio), from L. inspiratus, pp. of inspirare "inspire, inflame, blow into," from in-"in" + spirare "breathe." Inspire in this sense is c.1340, from O.Fr. enspirer, from L. inspirare, a loan-transl. of Gk. pnein in the Bible. General sense of "influence or animate with an idea or purpose" is from 1390. Inspirational is 1839 as "influenced by inspiration;" 1884 as "tending to inspire."

Inspiration. Beauty. Muse. Your lovely breath.

Somehow, you've have taught me that the sin of selfishness hasn't just caused me to treat people badly, or to betray the principles around which I'd hoped to organize my life. More than that, you've helped me discover that my selfishness - what Hendra calls "the self-centredness that keeps you being so deeply with yourself" - has held me back from any genuine expression of myself, both artistically and personally.

If I've achieved less than I've wanted in life, it's because of an arrogant assumption that, for me, this could be possible without loss of control, without risk, without humility, and without fear. I'd come to believe that I'd already risked - and lost - enough.

For a long time, I've congratulated myself on my openness and honesty. But, really, I've just made a fetish of that pose. And if you didn't see this yourself (and I believe you did), at least you made me see it - and in such excruciating detail and clarity. I've often felt foolish in your presence, but not for any of the seemingly predictable reasons. Only because you've made me so keenly aware of my dishonesty, my reserve, my dissembling, my avoidance, my pride, my desire, and my fear.

"Father Joe never taught me; that's too easy," says Hendra. "Rather, he always led me to an understanding of the core sin, the only sin, the sin before all the things we call sin, and that is selfishness, the self-centredness that keeps you being so deeply with yourself that you hate people: You want revenge. You want pleasure. You want to commit adultery. You have road rage, greed, whatever. It all comes from being trapped in this prison of self. It's not a difficult message to hear, but to understand it, to act it, that's really difficult."

And you never 'taught' me, either, in any overt, or condescending way - the way I have, too often, tried to teach you. Instead, you've 'led' me, inadvertently or not, to a deeper realization. As Hendra says, "It's not a difficult message to hear, but to understand it, to act it, that's really difficult."

He's right about that. It is difficult. And I'll probably need help.

I'd love to have yours.

Yoga

Well, it had to happen eventually. I hurt my back doing hot yoga. It's my own fault. I twisted myself into a pretzel and I knew, even as I was doing it, that I was going to far. I was frustrated, and should have found some zen-like way of purging instead of snapping my back out.

Last time I went, the teacher was remarkably kind and patient - kind of loving, actually. She spoke slowly, demonstrated the moves, described them clearly, and then left lovely silent pauses while we adopted them. Then she'd encourage and correct in the most gentle of tones. She's the one who quoted Rilke, and the one to whom I promised the Dragon Princess.

By contrast, today's teacher was a Nazi. She barked out the moves, chattered incessantly while I struggled to keep up, and constantly corrected everybody, and in the snarkiest, most hectoring of tones. It was like being in a Grade 4 spelling test: "Hold the pose! Keep your eyes to yourself! Don't fidget! Don't drink your water. Focus on yourself, not on other people."

So there I am, in this 105 degree heat, no room left except at the front where, not only can I not see anyone to use as a guide to the poses, but my shakey, stumbling, falling, sweating, wriggling performance is blocking the other, more adept practitioners from examining themselves in the mirror - a key component of the process.

In fact, several times I wobbled out of control and stumbled, breaking the pose and landing flat-footed with a 'clump'. Worse, this seemed to set off a domino effect, destabilizing those behind me, one at a time, until even the most experienced students (one, a teacher herself) stumbled too. My uncoordination was infectious. And if I hadn't been flushed and sweating already, I might have blushed.

So, when it came to the seated, pretzel-bending poses - the one thing I can do better than even the teacher by virtue of my double-jointedness - I puffed up my chest, grinned stupidly at the teacher, bent myself in half, and felt a ripping pain drive itself through my entire upper body.

And I couldn't move. Not at all. Shit, I could barely breath, it hurt so much. So there I sat, holding this incredibly awkward, and now painful pose, while everybody moved on to the next one. I slowly, gruntingly, unfolded myself and rolled, defeatedly, onto my back. That's the pose I held for the rest of the session.

The poses all have names: The Eagle, Warrior, Warrior Two. And now, Awkward Asshole Injured In His Arrogance.

But, to yoga's credit. I'm still up and walking around. That's not normally the case with one of these events. So maybe, before I damaged myself, the yoga had begun to have a salutary effect. To be honest, other than the bleeding spine, I feel really good. Considering that I've only been twice, the yoga seems to be having a remarkable effect, on my energy level, on my weight, and on how I feel merely walking about.

Remember the Pilades classes at the university that we talked about attending together? Maybe I should have made a real effort to go. The new cute Barista at Starbucks noticed that I was wet from head to toe, a soaking so complete that my grey shirt appeared, not wet, but a darker, heavier version of itself. She asked about it - probably afraid that I was in the midst of a heart attack, and hardly needed a jolt of caffeine to speed my imminent demise - and so we got talking (something I have been trying to engineer, without success, for a couple of weeks). She's at the university too, and took the Pilades classes. She recommends it highly, and suggested it might be a bit easier on my back. Lower impact which, right now, seems like a good idea.

Still, if my back heals a bit on the weekend, I'm still going to try the yoga thing again. I want to see if I can make any progress at all during the week that I've paid for. Ripping my back open was not the kind of progress I was hoping for.

Now, as for you, my dear...I am still floored by our conversation last night. I spent a good part of the day feeling bad because I hadn't given you credit for your intelligence but, upon reflection, I don't think it's entirely my fault. For a couple of reasons.

Reason #1:
How was I supposed to know you could write like that? Years ago, you pretty much refused to write, and would often do so only after I'd left - and then hand in your work before I had a chance to see what you'd done. Besides, you never really tried too hard, so what I've read has never really been your finest effort.

And then there's the email dilemma. Every so often, I get foolishly optimistic and write you a long, detailed email and not only do you almost never respond in kind but, mostly, you never even mention having received one. (yes, there was the long one from your sister’s, and it was fabulous, but you were drunk at the time and your writing talent was a bit hard to assess). So, maybe, if you had ever written me a string of coherent thoughts in an email, I might have had an inkling. Or, if you had ever let me read your blog.

Reason #2:
How was I supposed to know you were that smart? I get this weird sense that you have the most ferocious intelligence - genuine brilliance - and that you mask it entirely with silliness and distraction. You see, when I first met you, despite being quite captivating, pretty and funny, you seemed pretty superficial and giddy. A bit lacking in substance. Cute enough, and obviously smart, in a manipulative kind of way, but nothing completely out of the ordinary. And then, over time, these little comments slipped out. Little perceptions, sudden insights. All of which intimated that you might be a lot smarter than you'd seemed.

But still, I figured, surely if you were smart - really smart - eventually you'd show your hand. Surely you'd get tired of being treated like a child, and failing at things you could do in your sleep. But nope. No big reveal. Just a slow unfolding of your intellectual depth. Interest in an uncharacteristically serious film. A surprising political insight. A sudden, unguarded, penetrating comment. And with each of these, a revision of my assessment, and a deepening of my affection and respect.

But I still had no idea. How could I? When you allow your searing intelligence to show, it either manifests itself in flashes of anger and impatience (and is too easy to dismiss as 'bitchiness' and cruelty), or it's tossed of in a tangential, dismissive way, bound on either side by text messaging,cell-phoning, crushes on bois, Converse envy, and iPod covetousness. Not that any of these things are out of place in the character of a young woman but, I swear, you use them, as you do your 'like'-peppered conversational affectation, your flirtatiousness, and your angry avoidance of everything smacking of commitment, seriousness, and ambition (like slapping me verbally in the LCBO that time) to deliberately mask your grace and brilliance. Why, for god's sake. I gave you credit for lots of intelligence, and a kind of natural creative aesthetic, but I gave you no credit for competency because you never let me see any. Other than an ability to figure out computers and (occasionally, when you aren't deliberately trying to crash) driving. And, although you haven't let me see it, flying and scuba. But you dismissed even those.

And so, in some corrosively subliminal and unconscious way, maybe I came believe that at least part of your intelligence was pose. That maybe you were playing at being smart and creative, using brief flashes because that was all you had. And maybe I stopped expecting more from you, not because there wasn't an ever increasing flow of intelligence from you, but because it was so fitful, so inconsistent and so unreliable.

Sure, I encouraged you, claimed faith in you, and tried to stand by you in any endeavour to decided you might actually apply yourself. But, and I hate to admit it, I now realize that I had capped your potential in my own heart. How foolish of me. I should have known better. I am sorry, Beauty.

And that leads me to...

Reason #3:
For the moment, let's leave my best friend out of it, cause he's in a case by himself.

I've met a lot of smart people. I went to school with the people who have become Canada's novelists, filmmakers, pundits, journalists, poets, radio and television personalities, researchers, etc. They were all smart. And I've dated smart girls: a teacher, a book editor, an author and professor. (Julie was smart, maybe the smartest, but not in that easily visible way.) And they could all write. Kind of.

Here's the embarrassing thing for me to admit, especially given that I haven't written very much and have published even less: I am not that impressed by their writing. Arrogant, I know, but true. But when I read their stuff, I'm always surprised that, despite being bright people, they can't write any better than they do. This is very hard to admit. In fact, if I have an overarching flaw, it's probably this arrogance, and if I am destined to be reincarnated as a meal-worm, this is probably why. Nevertheless, it is how I feel, and have felt, my entire life.

So, I have less experience with competence than you might expect. And I don't, despite my arrogance, have a very good impression of my own. I am very needy and insecure. To give you just one example, I've always figured that you didn't respond to my blogs because they were so bad and so boring. (hmmm, if you haven't made it this far, I'm in trouble)

So how could I possibly have credited you with the kind of intelligence and competence you've so often, and angrily demanded? I've never credited anyone else with it, not even myself. And what right did you have to demand it when you've worked so assiduously to mask it, deny it, undercut it, and sabotage it.

Fuck you, Beauty. You could have given more than the barest of hints, you know. It would have saved a lot of time, doubt, and heartache.

You could have talked to me like an adult (me, not you!) more than a couple of times, at least. You could have let your intelligence fly unimpeded. You could have focused on a conversation as though you valued ideas as much as food and clothing. You could have....

You could have revealed yourself, is what you could have done.

Not in little dribs and drabs, but in the occasional shining burst. I mean, at some level, how can I complain? There's no one I'd rather do things with, share with, appreciate with, enjoy with. But, shit, now I have this awful feeling that there has always been so much more. And how do I access it? I've tried just shutting up and waiting. But that doesn't exactly provoke you to expand on your ideas. More likely, you text message, jump on the internet, or make idle chitchat. Not that every conversation has to be serious and exhausting, but don't I deserve to know what you think, and who you are? And if I don't, doesn't someone? Which leads me to...

Reason #4:
Which isn't really a reason at all. It's a question. It might be rhetorical, but I don't whether it is or not. Cause its rhetoricalness depends entirely on the nature of your answer. The question is this:

Does anyone know?

Is there a single person on God's green earth who actually knows how intelligent you are. Do your folks? Does your boyfriend? Do your friends? Does anyone?

Please say yes. Tell me that it's just the nature of our relationship that leads you to hold back so much, to hide yourself behind affectation and distraction. Promise me that you have someplace to go where your competency is merely assumed. Where you can express yourself to the full depth of your ability. And where it would not come as a shock to someone who had heretofore, foolishly, thought they'd you figured out.

I'm sorry, Beauty. I won't make this mistake twice. But, to be honest, I don't know how to talk to you any more. I don't know how to NOT be impatient with you now. Lord knows, I was already impatient before. What to do now? What to fucking do now? How do I get you to talk to me like I know you can, and like you should?

I know you probably think I'm making to much off this. That I'm projecting.

You're wrong, and I think you know it.

That's why you are so angry so much of the time, isn't it? Cause you know you are smarter than everyone you talk to. And it exhausts you. Maybe that's why you distract yourself with a passing parade of flirtees. Because you've given up being regarded in the way you'd like. Maybe that's why you consistently invest your unresolved crushes with such power - in the hope that they might actually turn out to be your intellectual and creative equal. And when they fail, you merely adopt another hapless victim. Maybe that's why you suffer fools so gladly.

If I am wrong about this, you should really let me know. And if I'm right, you should let me know too. Or, do whatever the hell you please. Cause, despite how much I'd love to help you, it's clear that you don't need my help. Your Queen street journal laid it out pretty clearly last night. And with such clarity, grace and insight. You know already.

I had a dream last night. I was lying on my bed. You were on top of me. I wasn't moving. It was like a game. You made me stay perfectly still. You were breathtakingly gentle and tender. You kissed me, and held me, and slowly intertwined your arms and legs and fingers with mine. You didn't speak, but somehow you let me know, without it seeming ridiculous at all, that this was an kind of yoga - and that it was important for me to remain absolutely immobile, relaxed, open, and calm. And, as a reward, slowly and miraculously, you wound yourself around me, bound yourself to me, drew me in towards you, and pulled me tight until our limbs locked, knot-tight. And I could no longer move, even if I'd wanted to. And with your nose pressed against mine, your eyelashes fluttering against my lids, you opened your mouth and exhaled into mine, and I felt your body collapse against mine, into mine. And just like that, with nothing more - just the taste and feel of your breath - the dream went on and on. And then I woke, as slowly and carefully as I ever have.

Beauty, in some way that I can barely express and barely understand, you have pitted me against myself, disabled my ego, exposed my illusions, and directed my soul.

And you have taught me, rather belated, what respect in a relationship means. I love you for that, and I love you for yourself.

Rilke's Dragon Princess

This essay, by R. M. Rilke, is the most beautiful and inspiring prose I have ever read:

To speak of solitude again, it becomes always clearer that this is at bottom not something that one can take or leave. We are solitary. We may delude ourselves and act as thought this were not so. That is all. But delude ourselves and act as thought this were not so. That is all. But how much better it is to realize that we are so, yes, even to begin by assuming it. We shall indeed turn dizzy, then; for all points upon which our eye has been accustomed to rest are taken from us, there is nothing near any more and everything far is infinitely far. A person removed from his own room, almost without preparation and transition, and set upon the height of a great mountain range, would feel something of the sort: an unparalleled insecurity, an abandonment to something inexpressible would almost annihilate him. He would think himself falling or hurled out into space, or exploded into a thousand pieces: what a monstruous lie his brain would have to invent to catch up with and explain the state of his sense!

So for him who becomes solitary all distances, all measures change; of these changes many take place suddenly, and then, as with the man on the mountaintop, extraordinary imaginings and singular sensations arise that may seem to grow out beyond all bearing. But it is necessary for us to experience that too. We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible in it. That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular, and the most inexplicable that we may encounter. That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done life endless harm; the experiences that are called "visions", the whole so-called "spirit-world", death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have by daily parrying been so crowded out of life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied. To say nothing of God.

But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished the existence of the individual; the relationship between one human being and another has also been cramped by it, as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed; it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experiance with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident that most people learn to know only a corner of a room, a place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode.

We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set bout us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are set down in life as in the element to which we correspond, and over and above this, we have through thousands of years of accomodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

Power

You say that you often feel 'powerless'. The irony is that you are exceedingly powerful (smart, funny, sexy, talented, loved, reasonably rich, and gifted with a broadband personality), and it's not that you don't use that power. You do. But you use it to attract things, and then to hold them in stasis (men, opportunity, jobs, attention). This stasis serves only to irritate you because, as you continue to attract these things, they collect around you and demand ever more of your attention. It exhausts you just to hold them in position. Your acquisitions become agitations. Men become problems, opportunities become pressures, attention becomes bother...And then, every so often, you remember to use your power transformatively, to pull in only what you want and need. And then to transform it, or use to it to transform yourself.

You remain the most startling woman I know, Beauty. Too smart to oscillate between egotism and powerlessness. Stop using your power like a child - indiscriminately and unwittingly. Use it like the confident adult you have now become.

Diffidence

             FRIEND
So, why are you in such a mood?
          
               ME
What's that supposed to mean?
          
               FRIEND
Don't be coy; you know exactly what I'm 
talking about.
         
               ME
And what's that, pray tell.

               FRIEND
You've been in a stinky mood for a couple 
of days now, you've been leaving oddly 
abrupt messages for Beauty, and you dropped 
off that CD at 6:30 this morning, before she
and her family were even awake.

                ME
So, what's wrong with dropping of the CD? 
She asked for it. I obliged. And promptly too.

                FRIEND
Yeah, it in't what you did, it's what you 
didn't do.

                ME
Like what?

                FRIEND
Like asking her to call you. Like waiting until 
she was awake, so you could drop be and see 
her...like using the CD as bait so she might even
come to see you.

                 ME
Everything you just mentioned seems 
manipulative and selfish...

                 FRIEND
And much more like you than any of the 
things you've done over the last day or so.

                 ME
Thanks.

                 FRIEND
No, I'm serious. A week ago, you would have 
used any excuse to call Beauty, to talk to her, 
to get together with her. Now, you act like you're 
Federal Express.

                 ME
What the hell was I supposed to do? She 
phoned and asked for a copy.

                 FRIEND
So you had to run out the same day, pick it up, 
and deliver it the next morning before anyone 
could catch you? 

                  ME
I thought it would be nice...

                  FRIEND
That's bullshit. You thought nothing of the kind.
You're busy paring down your interactions with 
Beauty.

                  ME
What do you mean by that?

                  FRIEND
I mean that you've excised all intimacy from 
your interaction. 
                 (pause)
Your voice-mails are perfunctory and polite. 
No requests, no longing, no desire, no humour 
no curiosity...

                  ME
And you blame me?

                  FRIEND
I'm not talking about blame...

                  ME
Yes, you are. You are blaming me for 
changing something, but it isn't me...

                  FRIEND
There.

                  ME
What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

                  FRIEND
It means I've touched the tender spot...

                  ME
It's not a fucking 'tender spot', you asshole. 
It's just that I'm hardly the one who has set this 
fucking tone, am I?

                  FRIEND
I didn't say you were...

                  ME
She's the one who set it...

                  FRIEND
I didn't say she wasn't.

                  ME
Then why are you giving me such a hard time.

                  FRIEND
Maybe because the tone suits her better than 
it suits you...

                  ME
Fucking right.

                  FRIEND
And I'm surprised that you'd betray your own 
principles...

                  ME
Oh, fuck off...

                  FRIEND
And buckle like that.

                  ME
Buckle?

                  FRIEND
Yeah, 'buckle'.

                  ME
I haven't buckled.

                  FRIEND
What have you done, then?
 
                  ME
Hmmm. Let's see...Woken up? Stopped being 
stupid? Grown a spine? Pick one.

                  FRIEND
How is 'ignoring' Beauty any of those things?

                  ME
Look, first, let's get something straight. I'm 
not ignoring her...

                  FRIEND
Play semantics, then.

                  ME
She left me the fucking message: "Um, my Dad 
says he wants a copy of the CD..."

                  FRIEND
So?

                  ME
So, not, "Hi, how are you?" Or "Let's do something 
tonight...And, oh, by the way, my Dad wants a copy 
of the CD"...or even, "Can you pick up a copy of the 
CD, and I'll buy you dinner in exchange?"...

                  FRIEND
You don't think you might be reading a bit too 
much into this message?

                  ME
No, actually, I don't. I don't at all.
                 (pause)
The message before was exactly the same. "I went 
out with my friend, and then I felt so cozy in my 
bed..."
                 (pause)
What a bunch of crap. You know what that means?

                  FRIEND
No, what?

                  ME
It means, "I couldn't be bothered finishing a 
fucking MSN chat with you, I didn't care enough 
to make a 30 second call, and in the morning, 
I couldn't bring myself to lift my fucking head 
off the pillow to be bothered to even call you."

                  FRIEND
What are you talking about?
 
                  ME
Okay, you win. You want to know, I'll tell you.

                  FRIEND
Want to know what?

                  ME
All that shit before. Don't play games with me. 
You wanna know? Okay fine. I hate the way she 
treats me. That's it. I really hate it.

                  FRIEND
How does she treat you?

                  ME
You know, this is why I don't even start.

                  FRIEND
What do you mean?

                  ME
Cause it's just a bunch of fucking whining...

                  FRIEND
It is whining...

                  ME
Yes, it is...

                  FRIEND
But at least it's honest.
                (pause)
More honest than that stupid 'diffidence' thing 
you've been pulling for the last couple of days.

                  ME
So, what am I supposed to say?

                  FRIEND
I don't know?
                 (pause)
The truth?

                  ME
                 (laughs)
Yeah, cause that's served me so propitiously 
in the past...

                  FRIEND
It may not have 'served you propitiously', but 
you don't play the other game very well either.

                  ME
No, I don't.
       
                  FRIEND
And so, you're caught.
                 (pause)
And you don't know what to do.

                  ME
No.
                 (pause)
I don't.

                  FRIEND
You could always be honest with her.

                  ME
No, it's too complicated.
                (pause)
And I have no right.

                 FRIEND
No right?

                 ME
No right to impose my morality on her. 
My illusions. My myth, you know?

                 FRIEND
But you do have the right to tell her how you feel.

                 ME
Yeah, and that will do exactly one of two things...
maybe both.

                 FRIEND
And those are?

                 ME
Piss her off...drive her away...

                FRIEND
If you hate the way she treats you, would that be 
so bad?

                ME
The other's worse.

                FRIEND
And what's that?
 
                ME
Hurt her. Depress her. Wound her.

                FRIEND
Maybe that's what you really want - to hurt her back...

                ME
No, it's not.

                FRIEND
Then why not tell her?

                ME
Cause...
              (pause)

                FRIEND
Cause?

                ME
Cause I don't think it would make any difference.

                FRIEND
You don't think she'd agree, or you don't think she'd care?

                ME
Either...both...it doesn't matter.

                FRIEND
Why not?

                ME
Cause even if she did agree, even if she understood?... 
I don't think she could do a thing about it.

                FRIEND
               (pause)
Cause you think that's just who she is?

                ME
Yes.

                FRIEND
And that calls into question your feelings for her.

                ME
              (pause)
Yes.

               FRIEND
              (pause)
Can we go back a bit?

               ME
I suppose. But we're in it now, aren't we?

               FRIEND
Yes. We're in it now.