Posts tagged separation

It’s Easter, the day of resurrection, marking a full year since my best friend of forty years died, and so I find myself both celebrating the risen and mourning the fallen, from this opened empty tomb of love.

LI FU-JEN

The sound of her silk skirt has stopped.

On the marble pavement dust grows.

                      Her empty room is cold and still.

Fallen leaves are piled against the doors.

                      Longing for that lovely lady

How can I bring my aching heart to rest?

’

Friends share words of light in mutual exploration, and soon passion may tease them into ever deeper intimacies and hurry, until the mechanics of habit become dear, and then familiar, then anticipated, and then certain, then irritating, and too soon intimacy itself feels obligatory.

In the fuller light of a work day, she may then think to herself, “this guy is sweet, but he doesn’t want to change—so what makes being with him even a day longer worth the trouble of putting up with his constant demands, really?” And he thinks, “sure, she is great in bed, and she’s smart, but why should I put up with all this complaining from her all the time?” And each thinks, “There is no future in this.”

Like that lovers soon stop making love, then cut their talking to a minimum, and in a while each sleeps alone again in darkness, again silently mourning a love that was light but now has become memories of loss and hurt, ashes.

Why is that? Why do people over and over let an imagined future determine the actual present? After all, almost from the start everyone figures out passion gets you through ‘for better”, but  love gets you through ‘for worse’… 

*+*guyatree