Orbiting, and the runes

From the Book of Runes, by Ralph Blum:

"... In love relationships, in business matters, in partnering of everykind, you are put on notice not to collapse yourself into that union. For true partnership is achieved only by separate and whole beings who retain their separateness even as they unite. Remember to let the winds of Heaven dance between you."

I want you on repeat

"Fascination takes many forms, but all tap into instinctive triggers, such as the need to hunt, to control, to feel secure, to nurture and be nurtured. Some fascinations last only a heartbeat, while others last beyond a seventy-fifth wedding anniversary. No matter how long it lasts, or what behavior it motivates, or which trigger inspires it, every fascination binds with a singularly intense connection. We are, if only for a moment, utterly spellbound. Herein lies the power of fascination: It strips away our usual rational barriers, exposing our minds, leaving us vulnerable to influence, naked to persuasion." - from Fascinate, by Sally Hogshead

Oatmeal and one root

In Jonathan Zap's articulate oracle "No Tristans Allowed Beyond This Point - Debunking and Transforming the Western Myth of Romantic Love", he works from this quote from We by Robert Johnson:

“Romantic love is the single greatest energy system in the Western Psyche. In our culture it has supplanted religion as the arena in which men and women seek meaning, transcendence, wholeness, and ecstasy.”

... and explores all of the ways in which the myth has gone oh-so-awry. Yet it's been so wrong for so long that it lingers inexhaustibly as it exhausts us on our (endless?) search for that feeling of transcendant wholeness in another.

(What to do!?)

Zap refers to the "Western Myth of Romantic Love" as "WMRL." And these are my favorite parts of his missive that involve images of 'oatmeal' and 'one root.'

"For now, if you are WRMLholic, admit it and aim at living your life in a way that allows authentic love to supersede romantic love.

"Robert Johnson says essentially that we should replace the contrived, histrionic dramas of WMRL with “stirring the oatmeal” - a humble acceptance and appreciation of “…ordinary human life, with its obligations, its ties, its commitments, its duties, its limitations…” (p. 139) Johnson describes grounded, authentic love with an oatmeal metaphor:

“"Many years ago a wise friend gave me a name for human love. She called it ‘stirring-the-oatmeal” love… Stirring oatmeal is a humble act---not exciting or thrilling. But it symbolizes a relatedness that brings love down to earth. It represents a willingness to share ordinary human life, to find meaning in the simple, unromantic tasks: earning a living, living within a budget, putting out the garbage, feeding the baby in the middle of the night. To ‘stir the oatmeal’ means to find the relatedness, the value, even the beauty, in simple and ordinary things, not to eternally demand a cosmic drama, an entertainment, or an extraordinary intensity in everything.” (p. 195)

"Johnson points out that for many of us this: “…focus on ordinary human beings, is too earthbound, too dull and sordid for our romantic prejudices.” In other words after eight hundred years of hitting the crack pipe of WMRL the transition to oatmeal is a bit difficult."

Another luscious note Zap mentions is from Captain Corelli's Mandolin, in which Louis de Bernières describes the evolution from infatuation to authentic love with what he calls poetic eloquence involving the image of two trees becoming one-in-root:

“Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are.

“Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two."

Imaginary currency

A note about equal exchange:

Tell me, Steve, is it too much to ask (see: below)? Is it unrealistic? Do we hurl into relationships full force and call it "loving fearlessly"? Are we really just throwing ourselves at the illusion of romantic fantasy?

"Women want their love to be reciprocated in the same way they give it; they want their romantic lives to be as rewarding as they make them for their potential mates; they want the emotions that they turn on full blast to be met with the same intensity; and they expect the premium they put on commitment to be equally adhered to, valued, and respected." -Steve Harvey

fondly

"You have to be very fond of men. Very, very fond. You have to be very fond of them to love them. Otherwise they're simply unbearable." - Marguerite Duras

Remove your head

"The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating -- in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life."
-Anne Morriss

Tear down the walls

Ala Jake:

"There are no insurmountable divisions between men and women; I believe that with all my heart. We create the walls between us out of the dust of thoughts and memories, held by the mortar of our experience. And our experience is tinted with our prejudices, imagined and real, inherited and newly created."

What's holding you back

"...we have only one short life in which to love." (James Joyce to Nora, 27 October 1909)

The strumming of heartstrings

Here's a smattering of quotes (lifted from RobB's latest batch of loveliness) about my favorite subject that seem to add to each other when juxtaposed/clustered together - like the delights in a box of chocolates:

"Love sometimes wants to do us a great favor: hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out."- Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

"For a relationship to stay alive, love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining."- James Hillman

"True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self." - William Butler Yeats

"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves." - Carl Jung

"I love you between shadow and soul. I love you as the plant that hasn't bloomed yet, and carries hidden within itself the light of flowers. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. Because of you, the dense fragrance that rises from the earth lives in my body, rioting with hunger for the eternity of our victorious kisses." - Pablo Neruda, translated by Stephen Tapscott

And I love you.

This just in, from the fabulous weekly love letters of Rob Breszny:

"Your face is true and your hair is perfect and I love you. You make boats in my dreams and you speak without words and I love you. Your fears unnerve me and your questions amuse me and I love you. I love you not only for who you are, but for the interesting person I become when I'm with you. I say I love you and love you and love you until the words become the constant song of your voice in my head and the original ache of memory in my soul. I love you more than life and death, more than everything that's in between the light and the dark. Do you believe me? Try harder. Do you believe me now? I'm always with you, which is why I know you will never abandon yourself."- PRONOIA

It's not complicated

While processing the latest in field work reports and sorting through a stack of mixed messages with a colleague from PM HQ, I decided it was time to re-visit the gospel of Greg Behrendt and bask in the most simple truths of masculine actions or lackthereof.

According to Greg, he's just not that into you if:

1. he's not asking you out
2. he's not calling you
3. he's not dating you
4. he's not having sex with you
5. etc.

Because, he says, "if a (sane) guy really likes you, there ain't nothing that's going to get in his way."

"So what does normal look like?" I asked my cohort, needing a refresher about how clear these matters can indeed be.

Not wasting a second, she started the litany of testaments. "He wants to talk to you - for hours. He can't have enough of you. He thinks about you constantly. He admits all of this and tells you how wonderful you are. He can't wait to see you again - and asks when he can see you again - he shows up. He's continually asking you questions and wants to know more about you..." she paused. "Basically, he knows he wants you."

I smiled and was reminded that the heart doesn't talk logistics, doesn't rationalize, has its own schedule and perhaps isn't always fair. There's rarely any ambiguity about the heart's affections.

"The beginning of any relationship is that gooey-hot-chocolate-love that doesn't have a day-planner," she continued. "You want someone who's over the moon for you. There's so little hesitation in that."

But, oh - how often do we get so caught up in matters of head vs. heart? And how often do we let the head win?

What is the sound of settling?

"The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for." — Maureen Dowd

Endowed

"If there's one thing men fear, it's a woman who uses her critical faculties" — Maureen Dowd

Love spell

"For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words." - Isabel Allende

Simply the best

Another Jake-ism:

"Good relationships inspire each partner to the best of themselves; the best inspire both partners to create — together — something of special significance, a greater good, a union of two individuals that bears the fruit of something even more sublime than possible on their own."

Particularly

(I totally stole this from Jake)

"In that high place in the darkness, the two oddly sensitive human atoms held each other tightly and waited. In the mind of each was the same thought: “I have come to this lonely place and here is this other.”" - Sherwood Anderson - Winesburg, Ohio

to die by your side is such a heavenly way

Not typically an author applied to the workings of strictly human relationships, but a bit apropo:

"Breakdown provokes a space of possibility precisely because things don't work smoothly anymore." - Donna J. Haraway

Grandeur

"What are men compared to rocks and mountains ... and a carriage that works!" - Pride & Prejudice

The fever

"The first symptom of love in a young man is shyness; the first symptom in a woman, it's boldness." -Victor Hugo

I choose you

"He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing." - Sherman Alexie