Phoenix
by Dale J. Sprague
Reveries
3.1997 A love mantra is strong..as strong as youth's love of adventure. In age, as strong as fine bourbon seasoned long. Once, a woman exhibiting any major aspects of my love mantra..I would almost spontaneously fill'in the rest. Assuming, as it were, what I wanted to believe..the rest ignore. And with a great capacity to ignore, I was ever'ready to suspend any disbelief as necessary! Or was it youth's impatience? Yet, it seems more that I was not ready for what my love mantra envisioned, and fiction would do, or fiction must do..since fantasy was all I had, and perhaps through it, the only means I had for a dream of love to see me.
I have a sense of a woman who might be called a "soulmate," but I related to her as my "love mantra." It focused on the woman in my future. She loves and needs to be loved the way I do, the way one loves and views the world. A meeting of lifestyles, as it were; they need not be twins; siblings will do. So envisioned, we are mutually affecting, soul to soul, as it were then, as it is now, as it would forever be with two needing to be loved the same way.
Our vision evolves. A man and woman together serves that evolution, more than keeping tally sheets of pleasure and pain. Soulmates meet, and in that meeting and successive encounters, a falling becomes apparent..a vorticy consuming fathoms beyond the comprehension of one's mind and the apprehension of one's heart. Together, each may feel a'kin as they dance and jive, a passion in the night, a brief eternity, but inevitably each with a different destiny. I was not aware of this. All I knew was my love mantra. In youth, I knew not that love is but a guide to different worlds, and that from world to world, we evolve until we can see the vista a new world offers.
The first suspension of disbelief was a limited affair that brought a beautiful being into the world. We did not marry. My proposal was refused. The second suspension, I did marry for a brief time, but divorcing after I became painfully aware that I was considerably more suspended than she, and assumed most of the responsibility for the error. Suspension of disbelief was brief here. And then, in the night of the 'Last Exit' cafe on Brooklyn, with her I suddenly felt deep, I felt swallowed by all and everything around me. She and I...could there have been two more fated for one another at the time?..such that, after meeting, our lives almost spontaneously intertwined. I became deeply impassioned by her desperate demeanor and sleepy sleaze. Completely intoxicated, I felt sure who she was, my love mantra radiating, feeling all the wonderful expectations that goes with being freely spontaneous with one's bosom companion..all the existential metaphysical dialogue and all..a partner and intellectual playmate for life. Three children later, it was apparent that I was suspended about her as well..more than ever before. From this did I have a great fall, and to own it, some aspect of my soul had to awaken in order to reconstruct from the bones of my spirit, a rebuilt heart, and altogether new mind.
It became clear to me that encounters between soulmates means that the encounter has affected at least one soul. She was all soul, un'negotiated, and mine..previously negotiated this Earthly world with Earthly heart and mind. And one's soul can most assuredly be affected by another and meet more than one in a lifetime.
My course as a man, a'side a woman..I felt the spirit of great expectations, and drawing from its vitality, I was willing to visit the same roadside attractions with her for as long as they last. But with two so mutually affecting, such change can become the terrain between diverging paths. With the demands of raising three people in their youth, it was soon evident that we were on separating paths; inevitable separate paths to survive the depth of intimacy we experienced. As distant now I am from my soulmate, if we relate, it is usually brief, blithe, and sincerely kind.
Though wiser than whatever I could have imagined myself to be, or wanted to be, my love mantra was still strong. What I sought was to be needed...heart, soul, and mind, in any order. Out of necessity, I have achieved a certain wisdom. I have always regarded gnosis, innerspace wisdom, as a fine treasure one could accumulate, as well as the most I could offer to my children as they grow. In love, I knew...how could I lose?
While I still have my love mantra, I no longer relate to it with such high impassioned resonance, which is more suitable for high adventure upon troubled seas. Upon a calmer sea, my love mantra is my guide, and the prospect of a journey is the force of my muse. My love mantra involves more than a mysterious woman...it involves my love of life, and all that is in it..its variety, enriching and exciting rather than impoverishing and threatening. It involves the sublime pleasure of accumulating gnosis, and it is gnosis that intensifies color, sound..all my senses.
I have been blowing into my sails for so long, I feel more than a little tired. I no longer have the energy to suspend disbelief. Fiction is not good enough. To survive, I have climbed the highest peaks, sailed troubled seas, and now, I just want peace. I write bits and pieces. I write pittlely, even prettily here and there. Nothing soul'obsessed and consuming. Mind, absorbing, some. Heart, none. Not now. Not yet, anyway.