From time to time a poem

(345-346) Help me out of ever-after …

(351-352) Lead me out of this Samsara7...

(357-358) Help me break these chains that bind me …

(363-364) To ambition that confines me/defines me …

(369-370) Help me to find my Pleroma9...

(375-376) Lift me out of ever-after …

1 “Why ?” has been referred to as the quintessential existential question
2 Sanskrit : 'blissful place'
3 Storytelling, Christian Salmon, Ed. La Découverte, Paris 2007
4 In reference to Queen Dido de Carthage
5 Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
6 In Buddhism, the assaults of Mara ; in Christianity, the temptations of Christ as revealed in the Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark & St. Luke
7 Sanskrit : of that which circulates, the states of existence under the influence of suffering, from attachment to ignorance. These are the states conditioned by "karma".
8 Hindu god of war, storms and rain -- Rig-Veda
9 Greek : πλήρωμα – the totality of divine power, spiritual fulfilment
10 Proverbs, 16:18
11 Genesis Ch. 3 & Platon, The Republic, Book VII
12 e.g. the Promethean myth
13 the myth of Jason of Argos
14 Shakespeare, Macbeth, Acte I, Scène I

What Is becomes Was one grain at a Time,
Love and Fear dance this macabre pantomime,
Tears of the Dagger, Blood stains on the Cloak,
And screams heard in Heaven through Rising Smoke ~

You wake into the comfortable blackness of nowhere. The perception has no name, and the obscurity is not observed as such. You look in every sense, and this with all of your senses ; in this great nothingness all is bright, the absence of light illuminating all in which you have ever wanted to believe yet just simply could not. The total vacuum is totally breathable, the absolute zero is absolutely ardent and the deafening silence, a symphony of varying rhythms, of crescendo and soft melody. With the same sight, you witness atoms and entire galaxies, and from it all comes the most profound and complete experience of Love that you have always forgotten ...



***



Love is as prolific in the universe as is Life. Every form of life is fully endowed with it. Yet, curiously, it is the gift with which you hurt yourself the most grievously ...



He is there, sitting in front of you. You do not know one another. In of all his expressions however, as in all of his gestures, there is a familiar element. Sometimes you know what he will say before he says it, and sometimes you know what he wanted to say although he didn't anything. It is reciprocal. You find this disconcerting, even troublesome. There's nothing that you want to call attraction – only wonder. You ask yourself : “From what is he made, this strange creature ?”



As every time that this mysterious sentiment intervenes in life, it is toward a person completely ordinary to the eyes of others, but magnificent to yours. Typically, it is for a being who does absolutely nothing to be noticed, who has nothing extraordinary in his behaviour. Nevertheless, there is something singular, unique and incomparably fabulous.



Your friends, with whom you speak of these emerging sentiments, offer you diverse counsel, saying that you should certainly talk to him about your feelings, or, on the contrary, that you should definitely not. Yet none of them believe that it would be a good relationship. He is too old or too young. He's gay or he's straight. He's not of your social class or he's not of your educational or economic level. Sometimes it's that he's too introverted or too extroverted. It's a futile endeavour as he's this or not that … And still, you love him. You did not decide to fall in Love. You very bitterly discovered that you were.



“Love is difficult,” you tell yourself. This is completely untrue. Love is the simplest of all enterprises. So-called love relationships, on the other hand, are the hardest of affairs. When Love settles into a life, you cannot say that it is because of or by the grace of one or the other. You do not love for any particular reason. Reason has no effect on Love, nor has it any consequence. Moreover, Reason has been the mortal enemy of Love for millennia. She most often wins their battles…



You try to be, or to remain, reasonable. You remind yourself that your friends are trustworthy, logical, intelligent and experienced and that they are looking out for your best interest. You try to think of other things, to occupy yourself differently until such a time as this foolishness passes, until it withers away and dies. You go for relaxing week-ends in the countryside with your friends, and go out to pass time having cocktails on sunny terraces. You cannot however stop thinking of that cursed One you adore. All of the songs they play in the pub or broadcast on the radio serenade him. Somehow absent, he's always there. You talk to him throughout light-years ...



You try and rationalise it, reflecting on all of the inconvenience that a relationship with this person would present. You find that you can do nothing about it. You think of him from the second you open your eyes in the morning to the very moment you go to sleep at night, if you can sleep at all. Even your dreams he invades, raising them to paradises from which you wish to never return or plunging them into nightmares from which you cannot break free. “How much time have I already lived without him, after all ?, you scream inwardly, This should not be like this ...”



But it is.



Your intuition comes to the rescue. “How many times have I already lived with this Soul ?” Such strong sentiments do not flow out of dried up springs. Where is the source ? When Love fixes itself into a heart, this proves to be a most resistant installation, and dislodging it is as arduous a task as any of the Herculean labours. Could it be that there's another phenomenon operating herein ? What is there to fear in the state of Love ?



Feelings need no action. They are not events which require response or recompense. They are only feelings. To feel Love for someone is one of the strongest. It is magical and marvellous. To love someone for no reason, no particular attraction, no hope of specific or personal gain is a godly exploit. In this manner, you touch the divine. But this is also why Love hurts so badly ...



Perfection is hardly lovable. You love what is imperfect. You imagine Life with the One you cherish, according to all the conventions of romantic Love, and you attach these images to your sentiment. Thus bound, Love, the most abundant, creative lightness of this universe, becomes a heavy and painful burden. You drag it about everywhere, and with every song, every image, you load it down more and more. You weep, you complain, you brood and then the One you love comes near and all that affliction disappears. It only takes a word, a message, for all your fear to transform into joy. You are in Love and everything is fine.



From one second to the following, everything has changed, everything has become brilliant. You desire nothing more than to be with him, to talk with him, to take nourishment and to breath with him. All of Life is connected to him. You lose yourself adoringly in his simplest, briefest glance. Every syllable he pronounces is nothing other than an angelic orchestra propelling you toward castles in the clouds. And regardless of the opinions of others, your only wish is to blend your soul with his, now and forever.



***



As you are walking in one of the streets of the city, you cross along your path an elderly couple of a nearby neighbourhood. They are holding hands. They are speaking as they slowly make their way home. They laugh. As they come close to you, you recognise the youth in the regard of one to the other, the consideration and the respect which have survived through decades of bitter-sweet togetherness – and the Love they have shared for all of a human lifetime. You feel your desire to live that with the One you love, to grow old in the company of he who you cherish so very much.



Then, as is the sight of the guillotine in the eyes of the condemned, you recall the most morbid truth which has always confronted such a beautiful image : your immortality. You will never be able to grow old with one you love in that way without having to see, by the force of fleeting years, the flower of his youth plucked, withered and dried up of all organic Life. You will never be able to share the castles so shiningly sung into being before he comes up to them by his own evolution. You cannot blend your soul with his without causing him unspeakable harm, your tyranny of Heaven, his blissful Hell. He is too old, or too young or just simply not on the same level of existence. But still you love him ...



... and so you lament. You empty all your essence by exhalations of long and salty sighs convulsing from the very foundation of your eternal being. With every eruption of your tears and blood and the primaeval waters spattering down into the dirty street where you weep in the most pathetic isolation, a star burns out, a world collapses and ubiquitous, imperishable Life envelopes you in her arms of infinite renewal. You can only love him from afar, and the farther away the better. Forever he will feel your beneficence and your protection, and this until he can come to you in another Life. And with this promise, your heart willingly whispers its final murmur and the World around you disappears.



***


You wake into the comfortable pure white of everywhere. The perception has no name, and the nebulosity is no great mystery. You look in every sense, and this with all of your senses ; in this great Evermore, all is light, the absence of shadow explaining all in which you have ever believed yet just simply could not clarify. This totality is tangible, the living warmth absolute and comforting & the symphony of variant rhythms, by crescendo and soft melody, has forever and always been your castles in the clouds. With the same sight, you see atoms and entire galaxies, and from it all comes the most profound and complete experience of Love that you will never, never forget ...

Where the Hell is Paradise, when Heaven goes to Hell ?
Drinking doesn't stop my thinking, I just don't think very well ;
Every train's a prison and every bar's a cell,
When all you've got is freedom, the heart's an empty shell.