What a difference a year makes,
Looking back at a poem posted a year ago June and how
strange it seems in retrospect or perhaps not strange at all.
Like later poems which talk about her being an accidental
thief or perhaps more fitting her life living in the shell of other lives, she
seems to see her life as one of impermanence, flirting in and out of lives like
a census check, touching upon being touched without the possibility of anything
permanent
No long term relationship to cushion her against the
troubles of the world.
The impression I got when I first read this poem is that she
liked her life to be like that.
Now, a whole year later after the parade of love poems to a
man who she clearly wants and needs as a permanent cushion, I realize even then
she wanted something more but just could not find it among the limited choices.
She seems to understand that it is better to be lonely alone
than lonely and trapped in a relationship that she does not want or need.
She lived most of her life in the chaos and unpredictability
of days, never certain as to what to expect next, unscheduled scheduled becoming
routine, a daily dive into the unknown, raising the fundamental question as to
what she has to surrender to find a permanent figure to love in her life,
perhaps learning over the course of years how painful it becomes to see what
she most desires and not able to finally get it or if she gets it, hold on to
it
And her life then is about being true to herself, if only by
default, as she says
Only in the middle of this mess, when offered to be part of “we”
rather than simply “I” she hesitated, and this may have caused her to lose her
opportunity to find some measure of permanence
Yet at what cost?
In one of my poetry notebook entries, I talked about the
genie in the jar and how letting the genie out comes with unintended and
unwanted consequences and how impossible it is to push the genie back into the
jar, damage done, love let loose, raising those questions as to whether she
felt better off with the impermanence than in the throes of love she cannot
control or for that matter cannot keep.
What is worse: not finding someone to provide the cushion of
a long term relationship or not being able to hold on to it once she found it
Or worse having the one she wants not want her, and perhaps
in the end, she may be better off wearing out appointment books with temporary
relationships able to control when they start and more importantly when they
end
Sometimes I suspect she might be happier if she could simply
have someone spend the night with her and worry less about someone with whom to
spend a lifetime.
But as the old cliche goes, that's water under the bridge
and what she concluded a year ago as the routine of impermanence may well have
vanished leaving her with the unyielding chain on her heart`.
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