We keep coming back to the concept of redemption, and this
sense that there may still be hope for her (i.e. glimmer of hope), raising the
question of why she feels the need to be redeemed.
What has she done that would warrant forgiveness – I mean forgiveness
in the large sense, not merely the toss off she gave me two summer’s ago when
all she wanted was for me to go away.
I think my cyber nanny (west coast poet) may be right when
she described our poet in need to be in control, and that over the last year,
she may have been control waning, and she feels unable to steer her life in the
direction she wants.
For the most part, those who love her are the ones who eventually
spiral out of control. I remember how little control I felt back in May 2012,
struggling, knowing that at some points she could have made me do anything she
wanted, and how scared that made me feel. I remember when she kept texting me to
join her for a restaurant review in Hometown, and how like a puppet on a string
I complied, even when eventually she made it clear she thought she had been texting
her brother not me.
(I still believe she knew what she was doing and how I would
respond –an effect she apparently has on a number of men (sometimes women, and
something I need to be cognizant of because I’m still not immune, and need to
keep my distance so as not to fall under that spell again).
But roles have been reversed over the last year. She fell in
love.
I’m not sure if she intended when this started simply to
have control over the man she eventually fell in love with only to have the
game ruined by her own need for love. Down deep, she really is that little girl
who loves to be loved, someone who yearns for arms to hold her and a kindly pair
of hands to pick her up with she falls down).
But it seems she has lost control of the situation and is
adrift.
Redemption is also more than just forgiveness, it is the
implication of guilt, of having sone something she or society believes is wrong
or not acceptable. Several times over the course of the last two years she’s
talked about being wanton, and struggles with concepts of right and wrong, fair
and unfair and such.
While I still ponder the meaning of her priority poem from
2003, she clearly believes she has done something or many things that warrant her
need for redemption – self-judgement that may not be deserved.
Ultimately, we have only one life to live, and must somehow
find joy in a world in which most people suffer, so that whatever nuggets we
can find we need to treasure, even if at times their acquisition may seem
tainted.
Short of murder, there is little that she could have done
that would have required such self-deprecation.
The true blame (if there is blame to be had) falls on fools
like myself, who let ourselves be consumed by our passions, and the thrill of
being used (and abused), sexually or emotionally.
Adam did not have to eat of the fruit Eve offered him, even
if the inspiration for it came from the serpant (implying something sexual). We
devour the fruit she offers because we ache to taste it, and later pass
judgement on her because we refuse to blame ourselves.
What brought her to this point of self accusation I don’t
know. I can imagine a host of things she might blame herself for, from wild orgies,
blackmail, political shanagans, and such, and yet in the end, Eve is still Eve,
and still innocent until that point in which Adam takes his bit of the fruit.
Over the last two years, I have gone from judging her to
feeling sorry for her – and eventually realizing that I am as culpable as Adam,
because even now, even knowing what I know and feeling the way I do, I would
likely still take a bite of the dangling fruit if offered – which is why I keep
my distance.
“Thou knew’st too well, my heart was to her rudder tied by
the string and thou shouldst tow me after,” as Shakespeare put it.
Seeing her in the flesh twice in a month after a year of absence
made me realize I’ll always feel the same way.
Whatever guilt there is to be had is on my shoulders, not
hers, as it is on the shoulders of all those others who might be tempted by her
– She might be Cleopatra, but it was the lust of Mark Antony and Caesar that are
to blame. They had the power. She did what she did in order to survive, and if
there is blame to be had, it shouldn’t be on her shoulders, but on those of us
who misused our power, who knowingly take a bite of the apple because we can’t
resist our own lusts.
I can’t say where all this will end up, whether she will get
passed this recent demise, but I hope she does.
“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety,”
said Antony.
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