The History of Gravity - Ch. 7

7.

Piecing together the complexity of my internal experience is a complex and tedious task. Like an artist with thousands of broken plates, cups, and various other shapes of ceramic death spilled out on the floor, a universe of possibility waits ready to take form and express meaning. I run towards this with abandon diving into the ocean of chaotic possibility. Slowly a mosaic takes form and a reality takes shape. Each shard geometrically falls in place, and a puzzle once undone takes form.

Piecing together love. Mixing and matching a relationship, a connection, a reality stepping towards a future is nearly impossible. Lost in the face of blank canvas, an empty page, a flashing curser I am now suspended, confused, and lost between countless perspectives and feelings. Floating in a drift in my oceanic ceramic flow: icebergs at sea. Piece by piece, I put her together. Gravity cementing our mosaic relating.

I remember a winter night in Big Bear. Roaring fire, 5000 piece jigsaw spilled on the floor, grandparents with grandparents in the kitchen playing cards and drinking whiskey, children unpuzzling.

Unpuzzling: the process of putting a puzzle together.

The humility and elation of puzzling towards an answer, a final picture, a solidified image drove us, on the floor in our pajamas with build in socks, to continue long into the night.

First the frame. This was always a solid strategy, as there were then fewer variables. Once the frame was finished we moved on to the interior. Piece by piece, constructing. Reality falling into place.

I feel this way now. Sophia falling into place. Each moment with her another piece fills the frame of our relationship. What was chaos becomes concrete. What is concrete becomes chaos. And the reality of love becomes some a variable, an uncertain relationship between the both of us.

A massive leap in gravitational thinking occurred with Einstein. In fact, an entirely new universe was created by his thinking and observation. Newton gave us concrete gravity and reality: objects, subjects, and forces. To Newton, gravity was a force that could be measured and predicted; it was something that was concrete, something that would construct laws, meaning was drawn inward from the outside, and reality shared quietly her mysteries and secrets.

Meeting Sophia, I tried to sculpt her towards certainty. I wanted an easeful, Biblical like six-day creation, followed by a day to rest. The universe is done. I wanted a Newtonian relationship. But this isn’t reality. Certainty is for the feeble of mind and heart.

For Einstein reality was soft, subjective, and bendable. Gravity was no longer an independent force, but something that is perceived, thus relative to the frame of one’s own perception.

Sofia isn’t a solid being. She bends as I bend. We unfold together, in relationship.

Einstein observed that the perception of gravity is the result of space/time curvature. Both space and time changes in relationship to other objects. Space/time is patterned and affected by objects of mass.

To mimic an example given frequently by Einstein: a minute on a hot stove seems like an hour and an hour with Sophia seems like a minute.

Our relationship falls towards a specific outcome in each moment. However, in each moment a mass, object, feeling, thought, want, desire, or observation reframes the track.

The mass of the objects in my interior influence the nature of our free-falling love.

The direction of our experience, our relationship, is effected by the influence of objects within. Annie was an object of considerable mass. Such mass, in fact, she was at times a black hole, pulling everything in my interior towards her. Sometimes it was fear, sometimes it was sadness, and sometimes it was her wanting and wondering of what might have been.

As Sophia and I fell, mosaic taking shape and our geodesic direction ever shifting, we ping ponged through a puzzle of infinity pieces – once a puzzle was solved, constructed and complete, a new chaotic potential arose, begging more for construction and definition.

Sitting here now in the warm Mexican sand, seven months after I dialed the phone and she picked it up, I longed for definition, understanding, and a release into the mystical and ecstatic state of unobstructed free fall. The free fall the sages of past and lovers of the present proclaimed to be their experience.

Could such a reality exist? Is there any experience without the influencing push of objects with mass?

Her music stopped. Her sweet, nectarous music froze in its honey drip. I released my gaze from the shifting Pacific flow and shoreline froth, and slowly turned my head. Panoramic slide, eyes shift slowly from center to the left, my body turned to accommodate my neck: I gazed towards the beach cottage we shared. On hiatus from the Philharmonic, we retreated to the Mexican coast. She could play to the sound of crashing waves and the sweet smell of salt, and I could think and write to the harmonics of her strings. Together we could drink and fuck. Together, we slowly, carefully, with the attention of a six-year-old, piece together our puzzle of infinite pieces.

She stood in the door, her curves black, framed by the backlight. “Do you want to walk down the beach to get something to eat, babe? I’m starved.” I am starved too, in this moment. Let me eat you, please.

“Yes. Let’s walk.”

From the dark cavern of our shared space, our cottage, she emerged like a mythic creature. Mystery and beauty danced across the sand; everything I know about her only reveals the infinitude that I do not know. Though, with each step, breath, look of penetration, word, and memory, a part of her is revealed and lost. In piecing together the mosaic of my interior, I also piece together hers.

She stepped towards me walking with the sentience and presence of a Zen monk on pilgrimage; each grain of sand felt and loved with each rolling footstep. Her walk mesmerized me and sent me into a spiritual silence – suspended in the center of the universe. She gained my side, and I stood.

Arm in arm we walked down the beach, with the feeling of going somewhere and the appearance of going nowhere. We moved in silence, rounding bends and traversing tropical coves, some housing the ancient ruins of 80s cocaine and marijuana lords. Now off-season squatter houses and on season bed and breakfasts owned by Euro trash hippies and burnt out executives. We moved in silence and the world moved in stereo.

An old man appeared in front of us. Likely a local fisherman, judging by his bare feet, cut off jeans, and ripped tee shirt – he could have been Hemmingway’s Old Man. He slowly moved towards us.

He stopped directly in front of us, took a deep breath, and said, “En silencio usted ambos es uno,” and continued down the beach.

“What did he just say?” Sophia asked.

“I don’t really know. Something about silence and one, I think. You know my Spanish sucks.”

“Nah, it’s just you that sucks.” With a laugh and a slap to my shoulder, she took off running down the beach, and I chased her. Forever chasing her.

The History of Gravity - Ch. 6

6.

Waiting, on the surface, appears to be inactive. It seems passive, filled with contentment, Zen like posturing, resting in the face of uncertain fate and action. My wait, the waiting of my heart, does not feel resigned to present-moment rest and relaxed joy. My waiting is one of expectation and desire. There is a great need and great patience, and a subtle background of pleasure and excitement. I am in anticipation of love, of someone, someone I do not know. When I consider the feelings, hopes, fears, and pleasures Philos has generated in my interior, my gorgeous, soft and open insides, where veins stream into heart and heart feeds into soul, I remind myself that I barely know him. Other than tasting his skin, feeling his lips against my body, sensing the expression of his soul, sourcing the movements of his mind through the subtle contraction of his eyes and face muscles, I know nothing about him. I know gravity. I know sensitivity. I know hesitation. I know hurt. I know his attraction for me. I know continuous, gorgeous attention.

I don’t know him, and I do know him. I love him for both his mystery and his revelation. I love him for his fantasy and his reality. I wait for his reach, his reach out, his reach forward, his response to my longing; yet, in waiting, I want and love him more. My heart softens in anticipation of him.

Waiting is both love and the anticipation of love. Memories in unsaturated video loops: the day I waited for mom to return. In almost cinematic memory form, the morning of her nonreturn sits in my soul, forever reeling nostalgic 70’s loss. She didn’t return. I waited, in anticipation for her, and she didn’t return. I recall sitting on the couch, alone, feet and shoes dangling in joyful excitement - life was only exciting when mom was there. In a burst of energy I flipped in the other direction standing on my knees looking out the window beyond the couch towards the front yard. In memory color dissolves into grey, white, and black – color dissolving towards the absence of color.

I waited, and she did not return. My dad finally pulled into the driveway. In exiting the car, my father, through his slouched and painful stagger to the house, shared with me everything my four-year old mind, and ageless soul, needed to know: my mother, my sweet, gorgeous mother, the namer of my body/mind, would never be coming home. He walked in the door, his black raincoat mimicking despair.

He sat on the couch next to me.

With his sigh, he affirmed my fear, a fear that I did not understand, but a fear I still knew. He placed his hand on my knee. Tears rolled down his face. I had never seen my father cry. To that point in my life, I didn’t know my father could cry; I didn’t know men could cry. With his tears, he created a brave new world for me. “You’re mother won’t be coming home,” he said. Where did she go? Why isn’t she coming home? Can’t we go see her? She’s my mother. What do you mean she won’t be coming home?

He reached over and pulled me on to his lap. He wrapped both of his strong, hairy, construction-man father arms around me. He cried, and I cried too. Mom was not coming home, and my father, who never cried, was crying.

Waiting, in desperate beautiful waiting, people sometimes die and people sometimes wrap their arms around you. In waiting for Philos, there was both death and sweat embrace.


There is great vulnerability in stepping forward. Most associate agency with arrogance, over-bearing pompous decisiveness not becoming of a 21st century man, that is to be the epitome of all idealized-testosterone-propelled super-cock, emotionally-intelligent Hercules, and expressing the most realized and idolized aspects of the modern woman, both empowered and submissive: this is what men must be. The most important thing about this modern man is he knows, or should know, in each moment which person he’s suppose to be: Dirk Diggler, Joan of Arc, Mr. Smith of Washington, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Betty Crocker, or Sandra Day O’Conner. The sad thing is, if he ever makes a mistake, if he ever miscalculates this almost impossible formula of heterosexual interaction, he will undoubtfully be stripped, hung, castrated and paraded in front of his beloved’s closest hundred female friends as an example of all that is wrong with the modern world.

In stepping forward, one steps onto the ledge of self-decapitation or worse. Agency is seen as a power play, and I suppose I can understand this, but in many ways, agency bears greater vulnerability than passivity. There is safety in passivity.

I sat, alone and sad, holding my phone, contemplating the great pull I felt. In my mind, Sophia twirled. Her dancing flow through my mind and heart, touching and punctuating every aspect of my current experience. Her sweeping, flowing, fluid motion stretched into every cavity of my reality and with her sensual soul I was filled. It wasn’t an overbearing experience, but one of subtle misting and dusted layering. It was the opulent dew gemming spring blossoms – so very subtle while simultaneously causing great affect.

Text messaging is a non-committed form of communication. For whatever reason, there is less liability on texting than on emailing or calling. Things can be said in text that cannot be said in any other form of communication. Text messaging breaks the ice and tests the waters. Text messaging, in its gloriously safe and pathetic augur of uncertainty, is the bedrock of the modern affair, without which the safety of commitment and dedication would be preserved. Text messaging is for pussies, the infidelitous, those lacking faith, discernment, and commitment. In conversation, what is said must be committed to. In text messaging, all that is said may as well end with a question mark.

I dialed the phone.

Many years ago, when I was young, I worked in a warehouse in Glendale. During one of our many cigarette breaks, we found an injured bird. I worked with Mexicans, mostly, and others that came from Central America. I liked this. At the time, I was profoundly committed to socialism, and the honest camaraderie of our honest labor felt like something close to this. My rejection of white-collar management and endorsement of labor: viva la revolución. My friends, in their jeans and dirty tee shirts, shared in this pride.

We felt a kinship for this bird, this dirty pigeon, this injured fowl. We stood in a circle, hovering over it and around it. Cigarette ashes flicked, we agreed the bird could be saved. We wrapped a dirty rag around the dirty injured bird, and snuck it inside, without anyone discovering it.

We named him (we assumed the pigeon male) Che.

Hid in a box with papers and rags, nested, we cared for him carefully for two weeks. Every day, it became a little less responsive, a little more puss soaked, and a little more sharp and pungent. After two weeks, Che would no longer eat what we brought for him from home.

One sad day, we took it outside in a cloth bag, and dropped a large rock on it. With a shrugging defeated stroll, walked back into the warehouse – so much for revolutionary defiance.

The phone pulsed back the sound of ringing, her ring. This is where our love story begins. Love stories are, in each moment, beginning and ending. And began again.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” I replied.

“I’ve waited for you to call.”

“I know. I was waiting for me too.”


This is where our love story begins. The impact of an evening, moment, glance, or taste, the moment when potent and nagging desire and love rise to surface, and is followed down destiny’s highway to sights and sounds unknown, is not the beginning of a love story, but the end of one. True beginnings, beginnings that alter lives and hearts, are made in the follow through, the choice to continue. Now, just now, Philos was continuing, writing, breathing our story – our love story.

I have loved thousands of times, perhaps, having made that choice to give myself a little more and offer myself a little further. I have also, perhaps, never loved at all – never having carried the love to the end, all the way, to where one dissolves, completely annihilated, not into the other, but into all things. Lost! is the cry of love’s victory, in her march for complete surrender. In her rhymatic step, she moves me forward, forever seeking her obliteration in the infinite.

“I like that, Philos, I was waiting for me too… Can I see you?””

“Probably not.”

“Okay, well,” I hesitated.

“I’m sorry. I suspect we were just talking about two very different things. I would really like to share a moment with you too.”

“Great, good,” I said. Thank you. Thank you, Philos.

“I want to see you.”

“I want to see you too.”

“I suspect you will soon.”


I sometimes think about the death of the people I love. That’s not entirely accurate – I don’t think about their death; I think about them dying or receiving the word of death. To think about death acutely is impossible, because we the living do not know death, at least death as the absence of life. Many things die, we know this, but I am considering the death of a human, a being, the passage from being into non-being. To think about death is to imagine in abstraction, and this generates no emotion or impact, and this is why I think about dying or the notification of death. It gives me something to hold on to, and allows for the generation and crystallization of an emotional field to be explored and harvested for all of its potent human content.

Parents are great death fodder, if they haven’t passed already, and thankful mine were still present in body. In the realm of conjuring loss related emotions, the death of a living parent works miracles. I think about my father’s passing more than my mothers. I think perhaps, in my mind, my mother lives forever. It is my father that must constantly die, but don’t misunderstand, not because I do not like him, but because I love him dearly. Sometimes they die together – this always happens in the reception of a phone call. They normally die in a plane crash; they travel a lot, so it makes the most sense.

It’s ashamed that we, that I, often measure someone’s value in relationship to their absence. Value in loss seems to mold a consistent pattern of human experience. In Sophia’s sort absence of the last few days, and in the absence of her prior to our meeting, her value was unquantifiable. She was priceless to me, in her further orbit, and it was in the consideration of loosing her that I wished to draw her close. It was in the recognition of her possible loss that allowed me to engage in her. In Galileo’s cosmic discovery, objects accelerate at the same rate, regardless. Aristotle’s assumption was different – he thought that objects of greater mass would accelerate faster. Galileo, in dropping balls from the Tower of Pisa and then rolling them down inclines discovered that all balls, no matter what their weight was, moved at the same speed. This set the stage for Newton’s laws.

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rules. And though Newton dominated the gravitational world for over three hundred years, before the idea of space/time, chaos and uncertainty became prevalent in the human mind there is really no clear idea what gravity is and why it happens.

We still don’t know why things fall.

Against all gravitional logic, two of the Pioneer spacecrafts in deep space are now slowing down, without any clear cause, in their fall of terminal velocity. Terminal velocity is now in question, even more than before. Like the Pioneers, my fall towards Sophia, which was accelerated in her absence, now began to decline – the force being, the possibility of her absence now reduced.

We still don’t know why things are attracted to other things.

“Is tonight too soon?” She asked.

“No, tonight is perfect.” I said.

The History of Gravity - Ch. 5

5.

I find myself perpetually in circumstances of compromise: self and values lost; situations that I create, allow, continue, resist with what seems like everything within, but are impossible to avoid. There are gravities in me that control my life that I am not aware of, strings pulling me like a puppet, yanked and tugged and tossed about through the universe like Andy, brother of Raggedy Anne. I sit, eyes resting on Annie in front of me, across the table. My nostrils are saturated with her, her scent, potent and rich, gathering and overwhelming the soft inner ear of my nose.

Everything inside me hates her. Everything inside me, right now, screams for me to get up and walk away. But I don’t. I sit. I sit across from her, following the movements of her lips, acknowledging with the movements of my head: my head, nodded by the puppet master, moved against my conscious will. There was some deeper will, deeper desire, deeper value that compromised and trumped all of my conscious self. My life is lived in compromise and shadow, and lived by something I cannot see and do not know, for here I sit against my consciousness will, but I continue to sit.

My fingers clasp a cold glass with a whisky soul. I twirl ice. I drink. Whiskey is stale against the tongue. In its southerly throat slide a pungent rush floods my nostrils, temporary relief from her lingering olfactory presence, and then the final, perfect, expansion of warmth and happiness opens from my belly towards the rest of my body.

“You’re drinking fast,” she said. I was drinking fast. I had been drinking fast for a year.

“I’ve been drinking fast for a year.”

There are moments of light, ease, fluidity and grace. Moments when life effortlessly unfolds and nothing matters much less the quality of light, the honest kiss of air on skin, and sweet indulgent assimilation of each breath. Moments of love, complete satisfaction, when all desires, wants and needs have been satiated, and all that remains is freedom and flow: this is when I am most myself; this is freedom.

Sitting here, across from Annie, freedom lost, I desperately long for my natural state, and resent her, Annie, for evaporating my perfect stasis. With her words, her movements, her gestures, with her, drunk through my senses, I am bound.

All lovers, all people, establish their own rules for the game of love. We walk around with these rules, and they guide our actions – the puppet master divorced from the appearance of the show. Most of us are unconscious of these rules. We don’t know what they are, and we only know their existence by the affect they have on our lives. Annie built her set of rules, and I built mine, and at a certain point our rules raged against each other.

In the fourth century, Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, believed that there was no effect without a cause, and thus no motion without specific force. It’s in prejudice that gravity and science in the west are often attributed to western thought, but it has conceptually existed much longer in the Indian mind. Aristotle, much like Kanada and Brahmagupta, theorized that objects moved in attraction based on weight.

Paradoxically it was the westerner, Aristotle, not an easterner that saw gravity holding relevance outside of the physical world. He also hypothesized that everything moved towards its proper place in the heavens – that is: up. Aristotle saw gravity as two things. First, a physical attraction based on mass moving towards the earth, and a spiritual attraction based on perfection moving away from the earth.

The simple, clear, but pathetic truth between Annie and me was that we actually understood each other’s rules, though we, ourselves, did not even understand our personal preferences. There was an inexplicable relational gravity that bound us together, while there was an ideal of perfection that drove us apart. We walk around the world storying ourselves through relationships assuming we’re understood and that we are understanding. I walked with Annie like this, and though we walked side-by-side, we stood miles apart.

I now sat directly in front of her, and we were still miles apart. Another long draw of whiskey: stale against the tongue, like the lingering taste of a love now lost.

“You need to know I’m sorry, Philos. I am very, very sorry for everything. I made so many mistakes, and though you weren’t the easiest person in the world to be with…”

“You’re not going to make this about me, again, are you?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” I didn’t mean it like that. The words echoed through my head.

Images and feelings collided with each neuron. A small reality of memories unfolds. A beaming sunlit Sunday morning; we were in bed, sleepy in soft, gold, Southern California light. Between covers, sheets, and pillows; between lust and satisfaction, we rested sweetly. She whispered in my ear, “We’re going to be together forever, just like this, forever, aren’t we? Tell me we’re going to be together forever.” She stroked my face and hair. Her gaze penetrated and held. She kissed my face. “You mean marriage? Kids? House? Forever, forever?” I asked. “No, darling, no. I didn’t mean it like that.” I didn’t mean it like that. (She never meant it like that.) “I mean just like this, forever, just like this.” She took me into her mouth.

My groins harden and my pelvis lifts: thighbones are pulled forward and up. My head fell back. I let go in her mouth, with the sunlight pressing warm into my face. “I’m going to drink you forever,” she said, “just like this.”

“You never mean it like that,” I said. Twirl of ice, drink of whiskey. “Tell me, then, Annie, how do you mean it?”

“I love you, Philos, and I’m sorry. I want you.”

“There is nothing left of me for you to have. I am done.”


I woke up slow and fuzzy. I could smell liquor before all else cognized. I knew by the feeling of the sheets that I was not in my bed. With my next breath, a lightning spring of pain geysered trough my mind. The taste of alcohol and sex was in my mouth and soul. Another lost fuck, gratifying to my body, glands, pussy, but sad for my heart and puncturing to my soul. I’ve always thought myself a modern woman, free and sexually liberated, but for whatever reason, deep down, I rejected my liberated actions. These were not free. A one-night stand or a casual fuck is a sadistic jihad against the sweet beauty and divine affirmation of love well made. Without emotion, feeling, connection, care, sex is simply masturbating with a body that I can’t feel from the inside out. I, for one, am tired of fingering myself.

He rolled and bumped me. I opened my eyes. His room was cavernous, dark, and dusty. Another eruption of pain in my head: what did I drink? Whiskey. Always whiskey. Only whiskey. Your mom drank whiskey straight; she could catch a room on fire, is what dad used to tell me. I drank whiskey straight. I doubt I catch rooms on fire.

I rolled out of bed. Silently. I walked and felt for my clothes in the grey, dark room. Dad said that he knew from the first time she handed him a whiskey + rocks and clinked her glass of whiskey + rocks against mine that she was the woman he needed in his life: dad imprinted whiskey and my mother on my soul. I felt around in the dark actions mirroring mind. Pants, bra, shirt, one shoe, the other shoe. No panties. Where are the panties? The panties will be left, with a piece of my soul.

Pulling up my paints, I hopped quietly to the door. Bra, shirt. Hopping on one foot, right shoe. Hopping no on the other, left shoe. I open the bedroom door. More grey light and tired dust wedged into the room.

“Are you leaving?” A voice echoes from the deep – creation!

“Yes. I’ll see you at rehearsal.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll see you later.” Hallway. Living room. Purse. Phone. No missed call. No message. No text. No Philos.

I walked through the eastside towards my car. East Los Angeles: a graveyard of masturbatory experiences, a garden of relics past, and a reminder of the dissatisfaction of disconnection. It is my nature to move towards union sweet, and it is away from connection my life continually spins. “Ennui, ennui,” the love-bird sang. And it was within these notes and its’ song that my thoughts twirled.

With the shining light of wisdom, my love casts soft shadows, but now wisdom was dry and absent like moister in Los Angeles’ fall Santa Ana winds. Dust to bone, ashes to ashes. Contractions and dullness in the body reflect visionary disassociation. Patterns in the brain repeat forever with revised content, but sadly most believe the nature of content to be self. I believe my content to be me and I know this is wrong, but I do not know another way.

Through the graveyard of the eastside, and through the graveyard of my mind, I step my walk of shame: the shameless shame of a liberated woman.


Annie fucked it up for me again. I fucked it for myself again. Patterns within nature constantly repeat. Annie, for whatever reason, had the power to remove everything of virtue and importance:

Dreams
Vision
Low cost fuel
Love
Post consumer recycled products
Sex
Luck
Art (especially good art)
Faith in Humanity
Faith in Divinity
Rocking out
Non-Violent international relations
Community
Joy
Gut splitting laughter
Eco systems
Good posture
Tasteful fashion
Chance
Long holiday weekends
Vocabulary

With one sweep of the hand and tongue, realities, suspended by belief and disbelief, are dismantled, imploded, and destroyed: Death Star in Return of the Jedi ad infinitum. I do not know why she places me in such meandering confusion, resentment, and disconnect. One moment, I know everything, lifted by the promise of new and considerate love, and then she, as if magically, reappears. The universe flies apart and Bastian on the back of Falcor cannot save The Empress, and reality, my reality, flies effortlessly apart.

The pain of confusion is different than any other pain. It’s not sharp and demanding. It doesn’t force immediate change, like a hand on the stove, the ache of loss in the heart or the punch-in-the-gut of betrayal. The pain of confusion rests solely within one’s self, but affects all those around them. Dulled by the gauze of confusion, the senses are confined to their egoic prison of indecision waiting and wanting someone to decide fate. Pull me forward and from this pathetic experience! is their war cry.

Annie now, again, wanted me and loved me. She had returned, from indecision to decision, and now left me in indecision. To be loved by her again would not heal the wound the absence of her love tore in my soul. And there was Sophia, in her perfect mystery; she allowed herself to be sung by me, forever celebrating the sunrise and continuously singing of daisies. Consider the sparrows, consider the lilies; never having spun or stored, they are provided for. Unfortunately, lilies and sparrows aren’t capable of human emotion and complexity.

The History of Gravity - Chapter 4

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.

The History of Gravity - Chapter 3

3.

Standing in the dingy glow of my door light his shadow cast warmly almost touching me. His confidence and vulnerability were both, simultaneously, concerning and endearing. I wanted him and I feared him; and I think that all relationships of textured and rich meaning evoke these feelings in me. Love is to want and to fear. It’s heralded as something selfless, divine. But those that have loved me, truly just loved themselves, and those that I have loved, well, it was also a loving of myself.

Selfless acts of love end with selfish acquisitions. Christ’s selfless act of love, proclaimed as the greatest act of love in the western world, ended with the acquisition of divinity. To truly love selflessly is something humans and divinity will never know. One day, though, perhaps, I will love selflessly. One day, perhaps, there will only be love, completely removed from any gain I could possibly hope for. But for now, I wanted him, and there was something to be gained.

“Coming in?” He nodded: yes. He was coming in.

He stepped inside. Close to him, I am both big and small.

The paradox of offering love, of giving one’s self fully is clear; in giving love, one also receives. In giving myself to Philos, now, something becomes clear in me. Something, myself, is now held in greater definition. To say that Philos only means wisdom is ridiculous, for it can also mean love. To say that I, Sophia, only means love is a lie, for I also mean wisdom.

Disambiguation is a direct meaning of Philos, and I can’t help but think that both love and wisdom is cause for clarity. In love, we became clear and we know what matters. In wisdom, we became uncluttered, in orbit of the essential. As I entered into Philos’ magnetism, I became defined.

“This is my home,” I said.

“Yes, it is,” he replied. He had become shy, sliding and rolling in between complete assured existence and uncertain porousness. His soul was open and his heart was filled with holes. Holes I could never fill myself, but perhaps he would let me hold them – and perhaps in holding them, they would begin, themselves, to fill in.

Though premature, one thing was certainly true; I knew I loved him, without hesitation.


The way she held me with her eyes was almost uncomfortable. I recall, once, looking into the eyes of a supposed enlightened guru, guru something-or-another, and though I thought his whole thing was complete shit: the room, the decorations, his hippy bullshit devotees, the music, incense, and roaming turtle doves, there was something about the meeting of our eyes that was completely safe and completely fear evoking. The alluring power of her pull was of a Jupitarian nature, and I was slowly, consciously and unconsciously, giving myself to her.

I had the impulse to give her a high-five. Do people still high-five? Do lovers, before enacting love, high-five? I doubt it. And if it was to occur, I think that it would not lead to the foreshadowed act of love we both seemed to anticipate.

“Do people still high-five?” I asked. Silence broken.

“Yes, I think they do.” She held up her hand and cocked her applesque head to the side. My hand collided with hers. We high-fived. Her head dropped in a playful giggle. Her body wiggle and then shook, and she let out a little laugh while covering her mouth like a Japanese teenager. “We need a drink, Philos, don’t you think.”

“Yes. Yes.” Yes, please, anything to tame these butterflies.

“I think I only have whisky.”

“Bless your heart. That should tame them.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The butterflies; they’re a bit unruly right now.”

“Passive aggressive…”

“Aggressive aggressive.” She poured. Classic, vintage glasses, in her vintage guesthouse, in her vintage neighborhood, with its’ vintage street lamps. Her house, simple and elegant, in its classic-Hollywoodness-ness; it had a soul, and that was the most pronounced decoration. The soul, accessorized by ceiling moldings, large French windows, door tiles, in a large studio, with a separate walk in closet, kitchen and bathroom, like all soul-established Hollywood guesthouses.

Like her home, it was her soul, accessorized by her body, heart and mind that held me. Though it was dark, we sat together in the light.

It was a simple room with a glowing wood floor. A bed, a chase, a book shelf which would be thoroughly explored later, stacks of music, a violin, a cello, and a music stand placed in front of a stool, all supported by the warm glowing floor, all held to earth by the mystery of gravity.

“You play?” I asked. Stupid question. Stupid fucking question. She giggled. Stupid fucking question.

The significant thing about gravity in the Newtonian perspective is that all objects, in a vacuum, fall at the same speed eventually reaching what is called terminal velocity, which is the fastest speed at which anything can fall.

“Yes. For the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It’s my job.”

“Really? That’s gorgeous.” What she did had not yet occurred to me or concerned me. Who she was: now that was important! “I played once, for a short time. For just two years I think.”

“The cello or the violin?”

Outside of a vacuum, within an atmosphere, things theoretically fall at the same rate, except the variable of atmospheric resistance. An object with more mass has greater gravity available to it, and thus has a greater effect on space/time.

“Violin.”

Through my body, a bird chases a butterfly.

“The violin was my first love, but the cello sings me.”

Here’s the really interesting thing though: a vacuum is space, or that’s to say, empty of almost all gravity, yet mass cannot exist without gravity and gravity cannot exist without mass; they are simultaneous arising phenomenon.

They are perhaps one and the same.

“I like that – sings me.” She sings me, I think.

The gravity of Sophia was directly equal to the mass amounting as her. I create those I am with, with my thoughts and feelings for them. Sophia was become a galaxy, in my universe, and galaxy of great mass.

“I do too. That’s when I really learned to play – when I let myself be sung. The cello was the first instrument to sing me, and because of that I’ve never left it.”

“My first and only teacher was a grumpy, old German man. He played in the German national orchestra for years, before moving to the states and slapping young students on the wrist with his dusty old bow.”

“Typical German,” she said.

“I didn’t count. And that was my demise.”

“Yes, you can’t play if you don’t count.”

“You can’t play if you don’t count. That’s what he said,” I spoke and nodded in agreement with her. “You can’t play if you don’t count,” I said in my worst German accent while wiggling my finger


He sat. There was beauty organized beneath his outer rough, unshaven features. His green eyes sparkled; there was great vision in his heart, and yet a shadow of pain. He was afraid, but challenging his fear. Heart both open and closed, he desired me. I could feel the pull of his body, of his gut. The attraction between us was instinctual, raw, and organic. His hair fell in his face, like Kurt Cobain; but not so much that his strong jaw was concealed. His pain covered him too, but not so much that his heart was concealed.


“What do you do?” she asked.

“I write and I work in a coffee shop.”

She giggled. “You and everyone else at the Drawing Room.”

“No, I think a few, at least, sell bud.”

“Yeah, that’s for sure. What do you write?”

“I’ve been researching and writing about gravity for the last year.”

“You write scientifically?”

“No, philosophically. Gravity, though based in science, is really philosophical in nature. It’s still a theory, see.”

“Not really, babe.”

“We take gravity for granted because things fall and we walk upon the earth, but ultimately gravity is just a theory – it can’t be proved. There are consistencies, at least, in the Newtonian perspective, but by the time we get to Einstein, the universe is an organized clusterfuck, and gravity is a flexible variable, at best.”

“Why did you start reading and writing about gravity?”

“Moments like this – moments like you.”

“A girl?’

“Yes.”

“Her name?”

“Annie.”

“She betrayed you?”

“Yes, but I still loved her, for a long time. I still perhaps do.”

“I suppose you will forever.”

“I suppose I will too.”


In a sun drenched garden a butterfly floats, from nowhere, in hovering descent. The monarch twirls; a juvenile dancer among bleached flowers and leaves, singing of daisies with movement driven by sunbursts and carefree indifference. Defying gravity, her wings flap visionary speeches of great human potential. She softly, gently comes to rest on a petal. Fanning her wings cool, she imbibes, held by gravity.


Eyes closed. Warm and soft sun light slowly pulled me from the drunk, intoxicated depths of sleep. There were new smells and different feelings; I wasn’t at home. And then the night of last rushed forward, a new universe created. I rested for a moment, with warmth on my face, and light streams cascading behind my eyelids – and then, open!

I was in bed alone. She was gone. A note:

darling –

you’re beautiful. i had to go to practice and couldn’t
think to wake you. see you soon, i hope? no need
to lock the door. it’s always open. help yourself to
coffee, and stay as long as you like.

you were amazing last nigh. thanks for the gravity.

xo – Sophia
323.356.4472

The History of Gravity: Chapter 2

2.

The impact of elevated heels against cement sidewalk squares clapped a grated friction. Though her step was pronounced, she walked with me softly, in the bright glowing Los Angeles night. The ancient palms, costing hundreds of thousands, waved themselves in the night sky. We were walking, Sophia and me, back to her apartment.

It happened fast. It seemed almost impulsive. We were talking of things small, foundational and meaningless – casual conversation – which we would later refer to and laugh at, dissecting meaning, nervousness, and our internal experiences, as we rest in bed many years from now. We were talking of things small and she leaned into me, falling forever, and whispered, “I want you to take me home now.” But we still talk of things small, I thought. And I said that to her. She smiled, closed her eyes and took a breath, and said, “Yes, but the feeling is big.”

We walk now, to her home, speaking still of things small, but sharing in a feeling continuously growing – a feeling that was big. Rounding up Hilhurst, a right on Ambrose, more palms, and the continuous click click of her heels. There have been other walks like this. Late night, alcohol stained strolls through Los Angeles. Other women, other times, same nervousness, similar expectations.

“Our names together…” I began to say.

“Philosophia – I know: philosophy.”

“The love of wisdom.”

“Or the wisdom of love.”

Conversation was no longer small, and this walk was no longer the same. She put her hand in mine, and with cautious breathlessness she wrapped her calloused fingertips around mine. We now, walked in silence.

We were bordered by the Griffith Park hills to our left. Dark and empty in their unlit majesty, those hills were the black patches of daylight play space that consumed the summers of my youth. The afternoons were split between the community pool, Griffith Park, and classes at Barnsdale Art Park, where a bigger white kid ounce pinned me down and held an Exacto knife to my throat because I said that I thought his photography sucked. I was white too. We were actually the only white kids in the class, and it now seems ironic that we should be on the floor holding knives to each other’s throats. East Los Angeles, in the 80s, was rough. But perhaps not as rough as the white people like to believe. I am now pinned to the floor in a different way, by a different white person.

“It’s not too much further,” she said as we turned left onto Commonwealth and crossed the street.

“I’m in no rush,” I said. It was true. I was in no rush. I hadn’t been with a woman since Annie left me. It at first seemed natural to morn like this, and then natural became routine, and routine became habit, and I suppose it’s been almost a year now. The thought of being inside of her apartment frightened me. The thought of being inside her was almost paralyzing. But like Del Close said, “follow the fear,” so I chased her lead.

Crossing the street we turned onto Cedarhurst Drive. Cedarhurst accessorized itself with the classic, grooved cement light posts. Relics, artifacts of ancient Hollywood, telling stories of mythical proportion. Los Angeles’ charm, like a woman’s, is found in her details, her complexities, and her secrets. Her light posts tell stories, just like the stars and planets in the night sky, donned with gravity, tell their stories; or perhaps it’s us projecting our stories onto them.

There was a slight upgrade to the street. In the rhythm of the click, click of her perfectly timed steps, she reach out and held my arm. I followed the fear. We swept left and walked up Cedarhurst Circle. In a car Cedarhurst Circle is a one-way street; walking, we were permitted to roam in whatever direction we pleased.

Newton’s theory of gravity: there is a constant universal gravitational pull in relationship to an object’s mass that attracts other objects.

Newton reasoned if a canon were shot from a mountaintop with enough speed it would constantly, perpetually fall towards the earth, but never reach the surface because of the planet’s curve. The canon ball would constantly fall around the earth, like the moon fell around the earth.

I looked up at the moon, bright yellow autumn orb. We stopped. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked. I looked at her, and she, clasping my arm looked at me.

“Yes,” I said, “but unfulfilled.”

“The moon is unfulfilled?”

“Yes. She constantly falls, attracted by the pull and force of the Earth, but because of her velocity, she will never unite with the object of her attraction. She will constantly wander the night sky, dreaming of her projected reunion, never to find it.”

“That’s awfully sad. What will she have to do?” Her eyes felt me.

“Slow down, I suppose.”

“She will, I think.”


I wanted him to kiss me there in the middle of the street in the middle of the night in the middle of Los Angeles. We stood together, in silence, eyes talking. I was telling him my secrets, the dark corners of my soul, and the yearning I felt for him in that moment. My eyes pleaded for the taste of his lips. He didn’t hear their cry, though; he didn’t get the message. Boys never know when to kiss girls.

An airplane has never survived an aquatic crash. And yet, blow-up life vest makers and floating seat manufactures produce and ship thousands a year to airline manufactures each year to install in airplanes. Stewards and stewardesses spent thousands of minutes each year explaining how to remove the floating seat cushions and inflate the little yellow vests. They will never be used though. It’s a psychological tool. These devices help people feel safe. However, an airplane crashing into the sea at 600 miles an hour is torn to shreds instantly.

His arm was my life vest, and soon I will be torn to shreads.

I turned and returned to my velocity. I think we’ll need to slow down even more in the future.

I liked the way he let me guide him, and I liked the way his arm held my hand. There was a potent strength about and a yielding sensitivity, sans the missed invitation, that pleased me: I liked the way he felt and I liked the feelings he produced. When I was at Julliard, I was driven towards perfection and personality. The Cello wasn’t only supposed to sing perfectly, but I was supposed to sing me perfectly. That’s the difference between me, a philharmonic player, and anyone that simply plays an instrument: the instrument sings me.

I began when I was five with the violin. I remember seeing a painting of a woman playing the violin, and there was something about her, an open soft power, that inspired me to play. I began with the violin. I was flawless with the violin, and I still am, but the violin does not sing me. I switched, when I was 14, to the cello. With the first movement of the bow across the cello’s deep strings, before the resin, the dust, settled on her open belly, the cello began singing me, and that was when my life began.

For whatever reason, tonight felt like that, like my life was again beginning. Philos began to sing me.

“Just through here, Philos. I live in the guest house in back.” We walked around the side of the larger house, my landlord’s house, an adult version of my miniature dollhouse.


She stood at the front door, smiling, eyes flashing, almost dancing.

“I want you to come inside, but I am not going to sleep with you tonight. Is that okay?”

“That’s okay.” Following the fear, I stepped inside.

The History of Gravity: Chapter 1

1.

Over her shoulder she glanced. Her smile flashed; she was looking at someone she knew. Her dark hair brushed her shoulders, moved by a breeze that was not present. She leaned against the dark red bar talking with two friends, who did not interest me. I watched her and I was drawn to her.

She turned back towards her friends, and again her hair splashed on her shoulders. I felt something that I hadn’t felt in a very long time. It was the feeling of being pulled to something, to someone potently and powerfully. It was gravity. Gravity had been my obsession for more than a year now. I first became interested in it because of moments like this; moments when objects are inevitably drawn together so strongly they must collide. The world of gravity is huge and vast. It includes everything: philosophy, science, theory, relationships, society, and, well, just about everything.

She turned again, and this time she looked right at me. I looked back at her. We saw each other. She smiled. I was caught completely off guard, and attempted a recovery with a pathetic sort of grin that only assisted in revealing how uncomfortable, how scared, I really was. Surprisingly, her smile flashed brighter, and with her head and her dancing hair she asked me to come.

The bar was crowed. The Drawing Room is always crowded now. There was a time, not too long ago, when it was old drunks and east side geeks, but it was now a part of the hipster bar circuit, always in search of cheap drinks and more historical, seemingly authentic odors. Despite the crowd, I floated through the bar. Twisting, turning, rolling and gliding, I moved towards her.

Gravity began as an idea, a philosophy, in a time when anything scientific was philosophical. The world was something that was thought about, and proofs were simply good arguments. The first historical and written observation of gravity is found in ancient India. Kanada, a philosopher and teacher, noted that things with mass attracted things with less mass. Kanada, pronounced like Canada (which isn’t a real country, but retains more patriotism than most countries – compensate much?), was the founder of a school of thought known as Vaisheshika. It was a logic system and most of the work of its philosophers was to understand the phenomenal world through observation and inference.

Kanada said, “Weight causes falling; it is imperceptible and known by inference.” Inference is based on historical observation. Kanada observed, much like Newton, that things always fell down – or at least down in our point of reference. More accurately, things always fell to earth, and the earth was always much bigger than what fell towards it.

Through inference, Kanada reasoned that the object with the biggest mass had the most weight and weight was the primary motivator for gravity, which he called gurutva. Interestingly, gurutva was later used to explain the attractive quality a guru had over a student – the almost heavenly and otherworldly pull a guru has on those that are devoted.

I walked across the bar in a devotional trance, mesmerized by her every movement.

I became interested in gravity because of this – moments when I was pulled across a bar, through a massive crowd of loud, drunk, twirling people. Why were things, both physically and energetically, drawn to each other? I had been studying and writing for over a year, and yet I could still not explain what pulled me across the room and why I was pulled. Like Kanada said, “Weight causes falling; it is imperceptible and known by inference.” What drew me to her was imperceptible. There were the obvious things: her beauty, her smile, her soft radiance.

I was now just a few steps from her. The chaos of the bar that drank too much had slowed to a stand still. The almost deafening shouting of conversation became complete silence, and the oceanic lean and rolling of the crowd became motionless, still. Again, she turned. Our eyes again met. She smiled. My heart stopped. I swallowed. I stood before her.

If you call an operator, you can talk for hours with someone listening. According to law, they are not allowed to hang up. It’s best when you find someone more conversational, but in the least it’s nice to have an ear on the other end listening.

“Hi,” I said. Her smile grew and spread across her face. I felt warm and scared. I felt the fear that only such penetrating warmth could produce – what if I never felt it again?

“Hi,” she said.

“Philos. My name is Philos.” I used to despise my name. It seemed lame. I spent most of my life introducing myself as Phil, which also seemed lame. I am not sure if the encompassing sense of lameness came first, and produced my feelings about the name, or if it came as a result of the lameness of the name, but I have spent most of my life feeling lame. I suppose most do, or feel, in the least, ordinary. That’s how I felt now, graduating from lame to ordinary, which is not much progress.

“Wisdom. Your name means wisdom, in Greek. It’s beautiful.” She thinks my name is beautiful? “Sophia. My name is Sophia.” Her name means love in Greek!

“You’re name means love in Greek.”

“Yes, I know. Philos?”

“Yes?”

“You’re still holding my hand.”


He stood there holding my hand, Philos. I could feel the warmth of his skin, the moister of this nervousness, and the beat of his insecure heart in the clench of his palm, pressed against mine. He held on for fear of letting go. I let him hold me, my hand, for fear of reaching out again. I feign confidence. It’s something I am not.

“Your name is sometimes translated as love, though, Philos.”

“Yes, of course. Depending on the context.

“And my name is sometimes translated as wisdom, of course, depending on the context.”

He released my hand slowly with caution, as if doing so would disturb the balance of our micro-universe to the point of causing collapse, chaos. He still held me with his gaze, pulling my closer. The space between us was rich with stories – stories that reach back and forward a thousand years. Stories forever. And it’s with these stories our relationship began. Stories, weaving themselves in silence, are the genesis of all relationships.

With his gaze, he held me. There was a magnetism; a palpable, undeniable magnetism between us. One the reached well beyond a pretty face or a fuckable body. It was the magnetism of penetrating desire that rarely showed itself between two people – at least rare in my small life. With Philos, I felt something, and Philos and me have only known each other for a minute now.

“You’re not too bright, are you?” I questioned him. I smiled. Something in me flirted.

“Probably not. No. But there is light in me, nonetheless, and I think that’s what is important.”

“I feel that I need to know you,” I said. He makes me feel porous and gitty. I also feel slightly intoxicated.

“Yes. I think so too. When I saw you across the room, just a moment ago, I was compelled towards proximity. I needed to be closer to you.”

“I feel slightly intoxicated.”

“Have a glass of water.”

“I’m not sure it’s the liquor.”

I wasn’t sure if it was the liquor, though Jennifer was being luxurious and decadent in her pouring. Philos was now something I needed.

“Well, Philos, will you be wisdom or love, in this context?”

“I suppose we’ll see.”

“I suppose we will.”

“It’s not the liquor?”

“No.”


Sixty-three miles above the Earth’s surface weightlessness begins. I am in Los Feliz, California, approximately 460 feet above sea level, feeling completely raptured: spinning, floating, rolling, gliding, ducking and twisting – arrogantly defying Newton’s laws of motion. There is no up or down. There is open, free, liberated space. It is in space that our celestial bodies collided in heavenly embrace. In observation, it would have been as insignificant as a fly landing on an orange or an airplane touching down on the tarmac, but to me it was the most significant connection of my life.

And then reality continues.

“What is it then?” I asked.

“I think I like you,” she said.

“You barely know me.” Maybe I should not talk her out of this. Who cares if she barely knows me – fuck, that’s probably why she likes me.

The bar was loud. I normally didn’t like this. The constant inner-ear pin pricks of glasses, jukebox tunes, voices, conversation, all spinning, reeling, and working towards the creation of experience and meaning: an insane orgasmic symphony of distraction. Tonight, it is welcomed. For tonight, so that I can hear her, she presses her body into mine. Her breath and voice tickle my ear and my inner stomach, somehow, as she leans in.

“I don’t need to know you. I can feel you. That’s all I need, Philos.”

“In perhaps loving you, I will know you,” I said, and I don’t know why I said it. Those words didn’t really make sense to me. For no more than five minutes, we’d talked. I already spoke of love – it felt reckless and wreaked of juvenile arrogance.

“In perhaps knowing you, I will love you,” she said.