Deep Links

Wine and Roses

Dad sent this in an email to me today. It's a quote from one of his favorite books, The Snow Leopard. 

Enjoy hard work, don't worship success.

Enjoy good friends, forget the bad ones.

Stop and smell the roses, but sit some and have a glass of wine.

Faith

Before I moved to LA in 2004, I was going through dramatic change. Moving to LA was a bold step to living life on my terms and being who I consciously wanted to be. I was leaving what society thought was a perfect life behind. I was scared. I didn't know if I was doing the right thing. One day, in my house in the Outer Mission, I felt these thoughts of self doubt. I asked the universe if I was doing the right thing. Then I put my head out the window, to look at the Sutro Tower and breath the cool San Francisco air. I started to hear some music. I recognized the song. It was Faith by George Michael. I never looked back.

Surrender to the Demons

The last few weeks have been an emotional randori. 

On the dog walk I often pass by a building that has over 50 rose bushes. They are well taken care of and are always blooming. Over the last few weeks I have watched the tight buds relax into blooms. As the dog sniffs the grass, I sniff the roses. Tight buds change day by day, opening slightly. I push my nose into their relaxing petals and deeply inhale the sweet scent. Some sweeter, some with citrus underscents, some slight astringency. 

I think about that rose phrase by Anais Nin:

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

I've watched these tight buds blossom. I've been wrapped tightly myself. I breathe to relax. I surrender. The demons keep coming. The emotional attacks continue. But my feet are not on the ground. I am in nospace. Groundlessness. My heart is the only thing I can trust, and it both breaks and expands, blood pumping through the metal filaments, lungs expanding and collapsing.

I let the demons eat. They sink their teeth into my heart. I bleed. I am not afraid to die. To die is to leave this place. To try again. My heart is stronger, lives on, even though its destruction. It has been tightly wound, it has opened, and its petals have fallen to the ground. The rose blooms again.

I stop to breathe in the beautiful scent when I pass by on the dog walk.

A Possible Relationship

I've been re-reading The Scar by China Mievelle. It's one of my favorite sci-fi/alt-world fantasy novels.

The story has artifacts throughout it - possibility machines - mostly centered around Uther Doul, a character who is an expert with these possibility machines. Uther has a strange relationship with the narrator Bellis. At one point, it seems that he and Bellis are hanging out at lot together. There is this growing tension, her attraction growing but unsure of his interests/intentions. We read the story from Bellis' point of view, and she shares her frustration with his continued interest, yet failure to act. aka a failure to collapse the possibilities into a single reality.

As I bounced around Santacon today, it occurred to me that they have a possible relationship. Until the possibility field collapses into a single present reality, there are many possible trajectories. And as each day passes, with new interactions between them, tension grows, possibilities increase!

With that insight I realized what the fuck I am doing right now "dating wise." (Because I real and truly threw away the map I previously used.) I'm cultivating possibilities.

Thinking about it this way, I'm reflecting on the seemingly many platonic relationships with men I have going on right now. Some friends, some x's, some some other possibilities. Some frustrate me, some I have come to terms with. Some, their possibilities are exhausted, some whose possibilities will never be realized.

I sit here with them, creating, experiencing a possible relationship. The grid of what could be floats around us, flickering possibilities suspended in a probability grid, where to select one, would be to collapse them all. (I've written about collapsing possibilities before.)

As a futurist, I would be thinking, analyzing, considering which future "I" "wanted". As Uther Doul, I would savor those flickering possibilities, watching them increase and decrease in probability.

My Place in the Court of the Crimson King

I fell asleep in his bed while his record player was playing In the Court of the Crimson King. It was the most beautiful music I had ever heard. We didn't have sex. We shared the pleasure of the music. In retrospect, I think I must have intimidated him, in spite of my fresh young body. He was right to not fall in love with me.

Decades later, I remember that night like it happened last week. His face, but not his name. We didn't have a long, nor necessarily passionate relationship. We walked different paths, although we shared blissful moments of music. That red lit room at night. Waking up next to his warm body to the Court of the Crimson King after the lullaby of the wind, epitaph, moonchild. 

I think to the person I was then. I smile with pleasure and knowledge. Such insight I have now. I think of who I have become. More and more aligned with the wind. A force of nature in myself. I think of the innocent. The north wind piercing my heart in the plains of the heartland. I knew then who I would become. But I was impatient to become her. I am. Today I am not impatient to transcend what I have become. I know what I will be. My breath in the Court of the Crimson King waits. It will happen in time.