4.
In the early 6th century, Brahmagupta said, “All heavy things fall down to the earth by the law of nature, for it is the nature of the earth to attract and to keep things, as it is the nature of water to flow, that of fire to burn, and that of wind to set in motion. The earth is the only low thing, and seeds always return to it, in whatever direction you may throw them away, and never rise upwards from the earth."
As objects of mass, it is our nature to attract and be attracted. When gravity is considered or experienced as a force, a constant, there is a reciprocal and cyclical relationship the textured fabric of experience – we are always being attracted to and we are always attracting. It is the nature of mass to attract, and all things within reality have mass.
I look into the architecture of myself; I wind myself through the labyrinth of thought feeling structures, float down the halls of memories past, seeking constructed realities of pleasure and pain, pleasurable pain, and painful pleasure, pushing deep to the very bedrock of my self-constructed experience and self-constructed self to understand the forces of inner gravity that push and pull me constantly in all directions. I look into myself for answers of love and understanding. I wander on a journey of wonder; deeply curious I find myself weighing the impact of each thought and feeling and noticing the affect it has on my locomotion. With each act, there are centuries of memories being fulfilled and infinite chains of bondage being linked. The force of inner gravity drives my experience, and it has nothing to do with me.
“Philos?” My exploration ends. The fabric of reality snaps me back into the heart of its womb. I turn. She stands.
“Annie?” Stomach drops – pit infinitum - throat suspended in time. Quick sand: a slow, torturous, grating death that ends with liquid sand in your mouth, nose, and ears collapsing senses, and absorbing life.
I have always loved people I cannot have. I have not seen the woman I cannot have for almost 11 months.
Seeing her is a revelatory experience. A myriad of images, visions and feelings arise simultaneously, much like Krishna’s divine revelation in the Bhagavad Gita. In me there is a merry-go-round of impulses, feelings, and thoughts.
I want to throw myself at her feet and beg her to love me; I want to backhand her like a French pimp; I want to crawl inside of her and hear her heart beat; I want to hug her close and smell her hair; I want to throw her on the floor, strip her clothes off, and rape her; I want to turn around without saying anything and resume my place in the coffee line; I want to punch her as hard as I can; I want her to love me; I want to never see her again; I want to climb into a time machine, dive back three years past, and warm myself of the intolerable fate before me.
We were never supposed to see each other again.
My bow, a phantom limb, strokes in time to enact a dreamy reality. I spin a land of yellow and gold, notes streaking across the sky; children playfully wade through this spring pond, mud not clinging – their white linen is still pure. Down they fall with a hard draw on the bottom string, they are sent into space, flying, freefalling in gravity. In my daytime night dream, my music spins forms, realities, places that will live forever unknown. Step across and through these beating missiles of warring action; I am driven to stroke this song.
Through my fantasy, my pleasurable drift, his eyes peer at me densely. In his mind, realities also unfold. He spoke his love, numerous times, and in wine and weakness I gave myself to him. And now, relentlessly he follows me. I sometimes give in, when I am lonely, when I need to feel pretty, when I want a body near me or in me. But I do not love him like he loves me. He loves me, selflessly in his assumption, but he hardly knows me. He loves his ideas about me. He loves my sex. He loves my form. He loves my playing. He loves the person I am when I am with him. But he does not know me, for I have not let him yet see me, and I never will, because I do not love him.
Love allows for truth, for true seeing, and he will never see me clearly. But, the problem is, he thinks he does.
He sits next to me. We play in the strings together. He plays the violin, and he, like the violin, is beautiful but cannot make me sing.
We sit in a drifting halo of resin – clouded by our own efforts. By the way he continues to touch me with is energy and wanting, he plans to fondle me again tonight. There is conflict now. I only have eyes and heart for Philo, who still rests on my lips and, perhaps, in my bed.
“We were never supposed to see each other again,” I said, echoing the storm within my oceanic interior.
“I can’t help it if we bump into each other at Starbucks, Philos. Philos…”
“No, I suppose you can’t. But you can go away, far away, like you said you would.”
“It’s been almost a year. I came back. Listen, I’ve been thinking about you, I want to talk to you. Can we meet tonight? Meet me at Mixville for a drink. You like it there.”
No. Fuck you. “Okay.”
Love can make you free, light, and weightless. Love can tie you, suffocating you with weight and oppression. Love may have more mass than anything in this universe. But the paradox of love is that it both sets you free, weightlessly drifting through story, and it binds you relentlessly to the earth. Right now, I am bound, and Annie will not set me free. No one can set me free and no one can bind me, for love itself, is bondage and freedom. Sadly, though, I only experience bondage now.
She was flawless. She was not perfect, but her imperfections were invisible to me, and I liked it this way. After she betrayed and left me naked, cold and alone, I tried to establish her imperfections, but they could not be present. Love makes all things shine, and the shine does not, sadly, wear off.
When love is placed on an object; when I placed loved on Annie, I gave myself to bondage. I am bond, not because she is no gone, but because I placed love in her lap. I gave it to her and left it with her, and in giving it to her I bound myself to her. I am bond. Love will not set me free.
Her smile was poised, open. Her lips were soft, light pink, disappearing into her skin. Her eyes flashed. Her big brown eyes shined on me. I was lit, carefully, like a director lights his subject, by her. Brown, indie locks whipped lightly as she nodded her head. “Good. Thank you. How’s 8?” she asked.
“8 works.”
“Good.” Her lips, wet with her language, held my gaze. I drift slowly now, but soon the drift accelerates, and the gravity of pulsar collapse draws me into its black mystery.
“Let me buy you dinner tonight,” he said while placing his hand on my shoulder. I hurried. I gathered my gear. I walked to my car with intention and hast. I was ineffective in liberating myself from him.
“I don’t know Trevor, I have a lot to do. And I had a late night last night. I’m tired.” When a human eye beholds a form that is stimulating, the pupil expands so that more light and form can be absorbed in the brain. While the eye imbibes this pleasurable form, the brain and neural system fire pathways of pleasure, and glands pump chemicals: elation. In response to these chemicals of pleasure, the mind and heart begin to weave stories of futures yet realized. In a glance, I have lived lifetimes. Right now, though, my pupils were not dilating or expanding. Neither were they contracting with disgust and distain. They remained neutral, in the in between.
Most of life seems to happen in the in between, in neutral spaces that are neither here nor there. Most of life unfolds, flows in the covers and folds of mediocre confusion and uncertainty, never gaining resonance or dissonance. This is why I will probably sleep with Trevor, again, sometime; if not tonight then a night in the future. Because I fail to make a decision right now, my decisions will be made for me. I suppose this is why, in my wake, suffering of heart and mind grasp at my achilles with open hand.
I wish I could simply despise him. I wish I could simply love him. But there was something between his mind, his heart, and his cock that I could neither let loose or completely let in.
Philos, on the other hand, was someone I could drink forever.
“Just dinner. Nothing else,” he said. I doubted that.
“You assume there might be something else?” I said, laughing, not at him, but at me.
“I want to talk with you. I feel so good when we play together.”
“You call that play? You must have had a very oppressed and perverted childhood”
“Sophia… to witty for your own good.”
“I don’t know, Trevor.”
“We’ll do something close to you, and you’ll be home by 9.”
“Just dinner?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
“Yes, Sophia, I promise.” A promise one never intends to keep is nothing but a fear being greatly avoided. I promise not to hurt you, he said, once. And he did. Not a great hurt. You can’t hurt someone that doesn’t care that much, but it still hurt, some. Like the nurse says, “just a prick.” It’s more than a prick though, because beyond the prick, with the injection, there is pain, and then residual pain. The pain of one act carries over into a lifetime of ripples, waves, and drifting motions. You can’t promise something that goes completely against every impulse in your body and mind, and his impulses and intentions were clear tonight. He was going to bed me if it was the last thing he did.
I reached for my phone. No missed call. No voicemail. No text message. Where was Philos?
“I doubt it. But okay.” Okay, for now, drifting in the in between.
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