Lysergic Bliss

u.make.me.happy

There’s a ten­der­ness that reaches deep within me, and bur­geons forth to paint the world an intox­i­cat­ing spectrum.

It’s a world where every song is a jour­ney, every chord is more dul­cet than the last, and I don’t want to, I need to dance.

It’s not a sim­ple feel­ing. There’s so much to con­sider — new real­iza­tions, unfa­mil­iar ter­ri­tory, ques­tions of fate, unre­solved pro­pri­eties, inevitable change — that it’s all a mix of emo­tions unlike any­thing I’ve ever expe­ri­enced. But who says that life has to be sim­ple? All I know for sure is that I love her, even if she doesn’t love me the same way.

And for now, I’ll wear this smile like my heart on my sleeve.

A Bittersweet Indulgence

Our bod­ies burn like flames in an oven, so we kick off the cov­ers. I slip my arm around her waist and press her body close to mine. She holds my hand to her chest, fin­gers wrapped around fin­gers, legs wrapped around legs.

The morn­ing light comes in blue and soft and sub­tle through the win­dow, and the stars begin to fade.

I want to hold her like this under a tree in the sum­mer and pass the time in her com­pany, alive to every moment we’re together. I want to hold her like this when the cars and streets are buried under snow out­side, so we may truly know what it is to be warm and com­fort­able. I want to run my fin­ger along the soft­ness of her face, so I may learn every land­mark and fea­ture, and never for­get. I want to read to her my favourite books on lazy Sunday after­noons, so I can take her to where they’ve taken me. I want to feel her breath against my skin, the breath that gives her life, and me joy. I want to wake up to find she’s not away in another bed, but next to me, lost in slum­ber, for there can be no other such sim­ple happiness.

This is where I’m per­fectly con­tent, lost in a moment when time has stopped and noth­ing else matters.

But I know it won’t last for­ever. She’ll soon be gone. I won’t be the one to do these things with her, the one to love her the way she was meant to be loved, the one to love her as deeply as she deserves. There’s no use in think­ing about it now.

I’ve fallen for this muse in my arms, totale­ment, ten­drement, trag­ique­ment.

The one who inspires me to cre­ate won­der­ful things, to make beauty as I see it in her, so that oth­ers may share in this feel­ing. If I had a mil­lion words to describe her grace, it still wouldn’t be enough.

I could be sad, but I’d rather be happy instead.

So as the sun begins to rise, I indulge myself a lit­tle longer, and hold her closer before drift­ing off to sleep.

The Idea of Love

While my mother always made it a point to stay involved in my life (to a fault), it was never because she loved me. She’s not some­one who’s emo­tion­ally intel­li­gent enough to under­stand what love is.

She just loved the idea of a son, some­thing “nor­mal” peo­ple have.

Which is why she tries to cling to me so des­per­ately, even when I try so vehe­mently to avoid her. It’s the same way that some men or women only love the idea of mar­riage, instead of their spouses. They’re rela­tion­ships based on all the wrong reasons.

Realizing this has made me won­der; did I ever actu­ally love my girl­friends, or did I just love the idea of love?

Love is a Bohemian Child

Quand je vous aimerai?
ma foi, je ne sais pas,
peut-être jamais, peut-être demain,
mais pas aujourd’hui, c’est certain.

One day, he dis­cov­ered that she loved him just as much as the day she left, and that every new man she sought for com­fort was just another attempt to replace him; he was unlike any­one she had ever met before. But there was noth­ing that could be done; the pain had left him cold and unmoved.

So enough about love, he said, for love is often fickle and unrequited.

And it’s only being on both sides of such an idea that allows him to accept this.

Love is a Rebellious Bird

L’amour est un oiseau rebelle
que nul ne peut apprivoiser,
et c’est bien en vain qu’on l’appelle,
s’il lui con­vient de refuser

Suddenly, he came upon the real­iza­tion that her beauty unin­ten­tion­ally entraps men, who are then led to their down­fall by their own mis­guided ideas of love, and that he was sim­ply another one of many. Not that it mat­tered any­way; to force such things is futile.

So enough about love, he said, for love is often fickle and unrequited.

Tu ne l’attends plus, il est là!

A Thousand Kisses Deep

I can gather all the news I need on the weather report.
Hey, I’ve got noth­ing to do today but smile.
Da-n-da-da-n-da-da-n-da-da and here I am
The only liv­ing boy in New York

Half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where,
And we don’t know here.

—Simon and Garfunkle, The Only Living Boy in New York

Every day, we get caught up in our lives.

We adopt pets to give us a sense of fam­ily. We eat break­fast at work or in the car to save our­selves time so we can work some more. We scorn those who express emo­tion, we avoid eye con­tact with strangers on the street.

Everything we do — the food we eat, the movies we watch, the home team we cheer for, our cof­fee shop romances — they’re just try­ing to fill that hole, that gap that’s miss­ing, the only way we feel alive.

We don’t slow down, we don’t fig­ure things out. We don’t reflect and appre­ci­ate what we have.

Like straw­berry cheese­cake ice cream with a thick gra­ham cracker swirl. Like the seren­ity of the snow that falls around us, when heaven decides to bless the earth.

Life gets in the way of liv­ing.

And now I real­ize just how guilty I’ve been of this. I’ve been look­ing for love, but never rec­og­nized it when I found it. All I ever wanted to do was lie in bed, look into your eyes, and go through my favourite albums with you. But I never did. And now I won­der. Why can’t we just live? We can’t we just love?

Sometimes you have to stop. You can’t cap­ture every­thing. You need to throw your­self in.

A thou­sand kisses deep.

Mute And Muse

Assume as necessary.

Why is it so polit­i­cally incor­rect to show your feel­ings? Would it be inap­pro­pri­ate to tell you that I’m in love?

That your dim­ples are like hinges that purse your lips in the most adorable way, and I want to kiss them. That I want to have you here next to me, to feel the weight of your body press­ing against mine. That I want to smell you on my fin­gers, I want to fold my sheets around you, I want to feel your curls under my hands as I lather and rinse.

Because I’m sick of being polite and I’m tired of propriety.

So let’s deal with this attrac­tion. Let’s not ignore what’s between us.

The Honeymoon Is Over

Angel I can see myself in your eyes
Angel won’t you feel for me from your heart
Do return my heart to me
No don’t insist I’m already hurt

— Blonde Redhead, Elephant Woman

Yep. It’s over. Although she still doesn’t know.

Maybe it was just a phase. Maybe I’ve accepted the fact that she’s taken. Maybe we’re too sim­i­lar. Maybe I’ve real­ized it would never work. Maybe I just love her less, the more I know her.

Or maybe it was just a phase. One of the many things cured by time.

It makes me won­der if I cling to such feel­ings sim­ply because I love being in love, unre­quited or oth­er­wise. It’s like when you’re in a purely phys­i­cal rela­tion­ship with some­one, and you start get­ting feel­ings for them. You won­der if you’re really in love with the per­son, or in love with the idea that you have some­one with whom to go to bed, some­one to kiss and kiss you back. It’s a blurry line, some­thing you don’t fig­ure out until you remove your­self from the situation.

Not that it mat­ters. I’m over her.

And I’ve lost my inspiration.

A Difference of Love

Love doesn’t end, just because we don’t see each other.”, she told him

Doesn’t it?”, he asked.

People go on lov­ing God, don’t they? All their lives. Without see­ing Him.”

That’s not my kind of love.”


I real­ize that on days like this — when the wind is cut­ting through the seams of my jacket, when my stom­ach is so cramped that it twitches, when I’m uncon­trol­lably nod­ding off to sleep on the bus, when my trans­fer expires before I can use it, when incom­pe­tence isn’t keep­ing my appoint­ments — that I can’t call you. It just wouldn’t help.

You aban­doned me when I needed you the most. I’ll never trust you with any­thing impor­tant again. Including me.

You may say you love me, but I don’t love you. Not anymore.

This is how I real­ize that love is defined dif­fer­ently by dif­fer­ent people.

My love is (was) boundless.

Yours is of convenience.

Revealing Vulnerability

In my book tonight, I was reminded of the time I was sit­ting on the floor of my room and you were lying on the bed when I felt the foun­da­tion shud­der beneath me. I mapped the escape route in my head, thought of the coats cause it was the end of win­ter, and was about to grab your hand to lead us out­side if the earth shook again, threat­en­ing to bury us in three sto­ries of wood and con­crete. I told you to be ready to run upstairs on my word. How I loved you then.

And I real­ized that I can write about it until my fin­gers are sore, I can think about it into the early hours of the morn­ing, but I can’t tell you how much you hurt me.

For in doing so, I reveal my vulnerability.

A Test Of Love

So I deleted your num­bers off my speed dial. I took down your pic­tures. It was an in-the-moment thing.

I’m calm now, see­ing things objec­tively, yet still undecided.

Part of me wants to believe we can still be friends. That we can still hang out with­out me depend­ing on you for any­thing. But I’m not like that, and I don’t stay friends with those on whom I can’t depend.

I put aside my issues for my friends, and I needed you to do the same for me.

I cried, not only because you weren’t there when I needed you, not only because you had a respon­si­bil­ity to my friends as well, but because I never allow those who hurt me so much to be a part of my life. Our friend­ship may be lost, and this is what upsets me the most. Perhaps it hurts so much because you were so impor­tant to me. I don’t want to lose that, but I’ll never for­get what you did and I’ll never trust you again.

And if I can for­give you, you’ll know that I truly love you.

i love you but i don't know you

i felt dis­con­nected all day. dis­tant. dis­jointed. another bee in the hive. i don’t know why.

when i stepped out­side get­ting off work, it was grey, breezy, devoid of sunshine.

the bass in my ears moved me. dri­ving the beat of my heart. walk­ing my feet.

the sun slowly came out, mixed bit­ter­sweet with the clouds.

and then you showed up. black and white across the street.

i kept my head down as you walked by, care­ful not to ruin that per­fect image in my head. it was enough to keep me going. to make me smile when the most i could feel all day was neutral.

i love you but i don’t know you.

Turn

I haven’t been sleep­ing well lately.”

Are you in love, Jeff?”

Hah.

The Death of Romance

Romance. It dies as we get older.

I’m not talk­ing about love. Love lasts for­ever if you’re doing it right. I’m talk­ing about the time when love is still mysterious.

It’s the mys­tery that makes romance what it is. The uncer­tainty. The ner­vous­ness. The risk.

Think of high-school. Over the bra, under the blouse, hop­ing to god your parent’s don’t walk in. When you’re explor­ing someone’s body with won­der. When you’re not sure how to act, how to inter­pret things, and you’re tear­ing your heart out cause you don’t know what’s going to hap­pen next.

You lose that as you live and you learn and you grow. Confidence takes that ner­vous­ness away because you speak your mind, you share your­self, and the uncer­tainty is gone.

Maybe I’m just feel­ing old. Maybe I’m just cling­ing to the past in a fit of nos­tal­gia, to the inno­cence of my youth when love was the only thing to worry about. Romance with­out prac­ti­cal­ity, bound­aries, type, or class.

Maybe my more recent rela­tion­ships just haven’t had that ner­vous­ness. There was always that imme­di­ate con­nec­tion that leaves lit­tle room for doubt. As fiery as they were, there was no mystery.

Maybe I’m just feel­ing numb again.

John still comes to me with girl advice every now and then, when he’s los­ing sleep and he’s writ­ing ter­ri­ble, hilar­i­ous poetry. He hates the uncer­tainty, but I tell him to think of when he’s older and mar­ried to the same per­son for forty years, how much he’ll miss those feelings.

I tell him to enjoy it. To lose him­self. He should be so lucky to feel so strongly about someone.

We all should at least once in our lives, before it’s too late and the romance dies.

A Crush

I met a girl across the sea
Her hair the gold that gold can be
Are you the teacher of the heart?
Yes, but not for thee

So I asked out Jenn.

I sup­pose it shouldn’t come as a sur­prise; Jenn’s been — per­haps unwit­tingly — a source of quixotic inspi­ra­tion as of late.

It was some­thing I approached del­i­cately, out of a sense of pro­pri­ety (if indeed, such a thing still exists), and the fact that Aaron and Karen are our close mutual friends. An avowal of such a nature, han­dled incor­rectly, always has the poten­tial to be a cause of awk­ward­ness at parties.

Not that I wasn’t already awk­ward enough around her.

Jenn’s pres­ence alone would make me flus­tered. When I could speak, it would often be a flour­ish of non­sen­si­cal words. Something that’s humourous in hind­sight, but rather frus­trat­ing in the moment.

To be so affected always took me by surprise.

I would tell myself, “This will pass. This is a phase, an infat­u­a­tion; time or luck will have me grow out of this.”

And it worked, for a while. I moved on, hav­ing con­vinced myself of such an idea, never telling any­one how I felt. Then one day, I real­ized that I was only fool­ing myself. It became obvi­ous when I’d think of her in the lyrics of every song. I couldn’t pre­tend I didn’t need to defend some part of myself from her. Until then, I never believed in love at first sight. I didn’t want to believe it. After all, how do you explain such an illog­i­cal, inef­fa­ble, irre­press­ible feel­ing? I grew, but not out of this, and in vain had I struggled.

She said no.

It’s funny to think that with the wis­dom I’ve gained, the expe­ri­ences I’ve had, I can still be reduced to such an ado­les­cent emo­tion. I don’t think any­one, myself included, would have imag­ined this would hap­pen to me again, not at this age, not with what I’ve been through.

I just won­der now, when we’re both at Aaron and Karen’s wed­ding, after giv­ing me her polite dec­li­na­tion, whether I’ll still feel the same. Sometimes you think you’ve moved on. You think you’re over some­one, until you do some­thing as sim­ple as see them again and your heart stops. Love, attrac­tion, infat­u­a­tion, they’re never so con­ven­tional as to be understood.

What a silly thing a crush is.