Do Not Love Half Lovers, or, How to Bask in True Love: A Guide for Firefighters, Managers and Exiles

Do not love half lovers.

Do not entertain half friends.

If you accept then accept it bluntly: Do not mask it.

If you refuse, then be clear about it:  For an ambiguous refusal is but a weak acceptance.



-excerpts from, Do Not Love Half Lovers, by John Siddque

I can't get over the amount of love I have seen in the past four days.  I would act as if it is luck, and one part of it is.  The rest of it, however, is years of cultivation of love that has taken so many forms over the years.  I can't get over how many loved ones I will get to see, how, where, and why. 

 Currently at the airport.  The soundtrack?  Is this. 


Also to be filed under "fuck yes" poems:  The Guest House


This being human is a guest house. 
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

 The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-Rumi


I will have more to say, and soon.  For now, I will say that it has to do with the love and compassion of what Bessel Van der Kolk refers to as Firefighters, Managers, and Exiles. Holy healing hell of love.


Be well; be loved.

I will see you soon and, perhaps, you'll let me touch your heart and I'll let you touch mine.


k.

(title: the title of a poem by John Siddque.  First two lines are from this bad ass poem.)
(image: from the beginning of this week with beautiful people and in celebration)

Scattered Pins

Objectification is both tiring and boring.

People tend to try and objectify me in a particular way, often.

Not in a bikini and hot cha cha cha way, but in the way that always leaves me feeling like they would like to keep me in a glass jar.

I've talked about this before.

It's like a child running around with a strange bug in a jar. He feels proud of finding it, of temporarily trapping it (in conversation,  in "friendship", etc). That somehow having some interesting bug in a jar elevates his/her own value.

Meanwhile, the bug is being knocked around on glass as the child runs. The bug has no food, no water, and not a lot of air.

In short: The bug, unless it manages to escape or is let go, will die of lack of nutrients or simply, of suffocation.

Nowadays it's more like this:

I see a friendly face.

I have a friendly face.

As the person comes closer, I notice their arms behind their backs.

I know this routine.

Slowly, their arms come around towards me: In one hand, a lid of metal punctured with scattered holes. In the other, a glass jar.

So I turn and walk away.

But it's still boring.

I want to ask (and sometimes do):

Why not be amazed by your own internal and entire beauty?

People are endlessly interesting and strange and wise and beautiful in their stories and secrets and lives and interests and skills.

This is true.

You are.

We are.

All of us.

To see beautiful patterns upon the words and thoughts and hearts of other people, we have to be able to see that same kind of beauty shimmering and reflecting within ourselves.

There is no other way.

Walking around trying to capture other people. Like butterflies. To pin them inside some grotesque shadowbox and hang upon your wall.

It just doesn't work.

"Look how pretty. How interesting. How delicate. How complex..."


The company you are saying this to


blinks in return.

They don't really care

for all of this.

Neither

do I.




-k.


In the royal words of Ru: "And remember: If you can't love yourself-  How the hell you gonna love somebody else?"

Operating Table

Back on track.

It's 6:45am and my heart is pounding from the run to catch the bus. It's packed.  People are freshly showered, or at least freshly nicotined. Some, both.

I'm sitting now.  Being shimmied from left to right with the travel- in the back of the bus where the staring crew sit.  May as well join them: I always prefer honesty and crassness to held breath and niceties.

(pause)

Last night I had my favorite kind of conversation: At night, on the phone, underneath my covers, with someone I care about who is far away.

He called me on his break from the place he used to call me from when we were dating and we laughed about the déjà vu.  He is working there again.

(pause)

A bit of time before my destination.  I'm sitting in the cafe that a dear friend used to work in, now, reading a letter from her that has been sent from states away. The morning is still just beginning to move.

I am fortunate to have such love in my life.  To have letters and phone calls and people who are brilliant and gruff and funny.

I feel proud and giddy and throb-hearted to be a part of a hodgepodge of people who all, still, recognize the importance of, and inject sincerity in, those words we add to the end of conversations from time to time:

Call me if you need to talk to someone.

(pause)

For now, I wrap all of this around me.  There is a thick fog I have been watching from the windows of this cafe that the buses periodically cut through.

It's time to go out and enjoy it.


Be well; be loved,

k.