Today is a strange day. There is conflict in the air. I've been battling a sore throat for a good half of the day only to admit defeat when a crescendo of sneezes heralded in a full-blown flu. Hence this post which comes in 2 parts. The parts do not only conflict with each other, the second may even conflict with yesterday's post and probably many earlier ones too.
Heck who says I know it all just 'cos I blog. I'm just as confused as the person sitting next to you right now. Anyway. Welcome to my world.
Part I:TIGERS
"Those born under the sign of the Tiger should be careful with their health this year. The Sun in the 2nd ascent and the Winter Solstice in the 3rd quaretr of their zodiac indicates that health will wane as the beloved tiger enters the second half of the year. Tigers ought to protect themselves from common ailments by placing a white mandarin duck feather near their hearts and sleep facing a southwesterly direction so that northern winds will not blow to, but instead, away, from them".
...I just made that up. I can't stop sneezing, my eyes are bloodshot, I feel like a drowning fish and my son is constantly demanding my attention. I'm trying not to breathe on him but can't because he keeps wanting to kiss me on the lips - French style - the way he sees on TV.
Screw this...it's not even funny anymore...I need a holiday...
Part II: LOVERS
You know, it's not just in the movies. For once, the digital screen is not an exaggeration of what goes on in the black and white of everyday. When you are single, everyone around you really is a couple. Half of a whole. Everyone appears to be a significant other. Suddenly, you realise you are the only single person in the room and it seems almost weird that you can still hold a conversation with people who aren't like you. For a crazy moment, you feel as if they belong to an elite club that you have been denied membership.
It dawns on you when you are in the midst of the most trivial of things. Sipping in Starbucks, digging your nose in the jam or surpressing a burp in the supermarket checkout queue. You are alone. Look into the next car and spouses are giving each other the lowdown at work. At the next table, the twenty-something couple lose themselves in each other's eyes. A boyfriend tells his girlfirend how to flag a back step.
And it's not just that. Everyone seems to be a Lover of another. There are Lovers everywhere. You can almost feel their sexual tension. It's not about sexual frustration (theirs or mine) but when you've been in 'love' before, you recognise it don't you? How it feels to stroke a hand, to push a strand out of an eye in a way that only people who intimately know each other can do.
It gets even more bizarre! They all seem happy! Where are the unhappy wives, the cheating husbands, the emotional highs and lows that you remember so clearly you can almost taste the bitterness? Now, everyone's just happily, mellowly, inebriatedly In Love!
I wonder ifI am in denial. I wonder if what I preach has been a front? Pulling the hood over my own eyes like I have been over others? Or just that now, I see happy stuff 'cos I'm no longer unhappy?
Yes and no.
I do still hold true to my declaration that I am happy single. I do still enjoy my bed, my time, my emotions to myself. But I do think that despite standing up and declaring that all is well, there are pockets of time, moments like when I have something to share, moments when I am bored, pensive, feeling good, feeling insecure, when I do feel that I wish I had what I once had. To be in love. Or at best, to be helplessly, hopelessly lost in utter infatuation. And to have that someone reciprocate my dizzy uncontrollable crazy Love. Strong arms (to carry my heavy bags), loving eyes (to tell me my fringe doesn't look spastic), a shoulder (clothed in a well tailored shirt for me to admire), a hand (to hold), a scent(of a car in which to pick me up) ...haha...
I do wonder if I will ever be in love again with someone and for someone to be in love with me. It does feel as if I've used up my quota - all lost in in earlier years of meaningless and forgettable tossing and toying.
Yes, I do miss it. There is not an iota of love going on right now. Not a wave of interest in my direction, not a drop of curiosty falling on me. I cannot even imagine a union about to happen (usually one can tell no? when something is bubbling?)
Does it really take so much out of fate for lovers to meet?
2 comments:
Candice,
I was so touched by this post, your honesty, and self awareness. I totally relate to your thoughts and hope that you will find that which you seek, and when you do, that you treasure it for the gift that it is.
Hope you enjoy this fable extracted out of the 'Symposium' by Plato which I consider to be the most elegant definition of love that I have come across.
since the link went dead, and you asked for it again. bloody long read but well worth it.
In the first place, let me treat of the nature of man and what has happened to it; for the original human nature was not like the present, but different. The sexes were not two as they are now, but originally three in number; there was man, woman, and the union of the two, having a name corresponding to this double nature, which had once a real existence, but is now lost, and the word "Androgynous" is only preserved as a term of reproach. In the second place, the primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy members, and the remainder to correspond. He could walk upright as men now do, backwards or forwards as he pleased, and he could also roll over and over at a great pace, turning on his four hands and four feet, eight in all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this was when he wanted to run fast. Now the sexes were three, and such as I have described them; because the sun, moon, and earth are three;-and the man was originally the child of the sun, the woman of the earth, and the man-woman of the moon, which is made up of sun and earth, and they were all round and moved round and round: like their parents. Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods; of them is told the tale of Otys and Ephialtes who, as Homer says, dared to scale heaven, and would have laid hands upon the gods. Doubt reigned in the celestial councils. Should they kill them and annihilate the race with thunderbolts, as they had done the giants, then there would be an end of the sacrifices and worship which men offered to them; but, on the other hand, the gods could not suffer their insolence to be unrestrained.
At last, after a good deal of reflection, Zeus discovered a way. He said: "Methinks I have a plan which will humble their pride and improve their manners; men shall continue to exist, but I will cut them in two and then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers; this will have the advantage of making them more profitable to us. They shall walk upright on two legs, and if they continue insolent and will not be quiet, I will split them again and they shall hop about on a single leg." He spoke and cut men in two, like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickling, or as you might divide an egg with a hair; and as he cut them one after another, he bade Apollo give the face and the half of the neck a turn in order that the man might contemplate the section of himself: he would thus learn a lesson of humility. Apollo was also bidden to heal their wounds and compose their forms. So he gave a turn to the face and pulled the skin from the sides all over that which in our language is called the belly, like the purses which draw in, and he made one mouth at the centre, which he fastened in a knot (the same which is called the navel); he also moulded the breast and took out most of the wrinkles, much as a shoemaker might smooth leather upon a last; he left a few, however, in the region of the belly and navel, as a memorial of the primeval state. After the division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one, they were on the point of dying from hunger and self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart; and when one of the halves died and the other survived, the survivor sought another mate, man or woman as we call them, being the sections of entire men or women, and clung to that. They were being destroyed, when Zeus in pity of them invented a new plan: he turned the parts of generation round to the front, for this had not been always their position and they sowed the seed no longer as hitherto like grasshoppers in the ground, but in one another; and after the transposition the male generated in the female in order that by the mutual embraces of man and woman they might breed, and the race might continue; or if man came to man they might be satisfied, and rest, and go their ways to the business of life: so ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and healing the state of man.
Each of us when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a man, and he is always looking for his other half. Men who are a section of that double nature which was once called Androgynous are lovers of women; adulterers are generally of this breed, and also adulterous women who lust after men: the women who are a section of the woman do not care for men, but have female attachments; the female companions are of this sort. But they who are a section of the male follow the male, and while they are young, being slices of the original man, they hang about men and embrace them, and they are themselves the best of boys and youths, because they have the most manly nature. Some indeed assert that they are shameless, but this is not true; for they do not act thus from any want of shame, but because they are valiant and manly, and have a manly countenance, and they embrace that which is like them. And these when they grow up become our statesmen, and these only, which is a great proof of the truth of what I am saving. When they reach manhood they are loves of youth, and are not naturally inclined to marry or beget children,-if at all, they do so only in obedience to the law; but they are satisfied if they may be allowed to live with one another unwedded; and such a nature is prone to love and ready to return love, always embracing that which is akin to him. And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and would not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another. For the intense yearning which each of them has towards the other does not appear to be the desire of lover's intercourse, but of something else which the soul of either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she has only a dark and doubtful presentiment. Suppose Hephaestus, with his instruments, to come to the pair who are lying side, by side and to say to them, "What do you people want of one another?" they would be unable to explain. And suppose further, that when he saw their perplexity he said: "Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night to be in one another's company? for if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt you into one and let you grow together, so that being two you shall become one, and while you live a common life as if you were a single man, and after your death in the world below still be one departed soul instead of two-I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire, and whether you are satisfied to attain this?"-there is not a man of them who when he heard the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of his ancient need. And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love.
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