prose at a pose

A Perfect Cup of Tea



I found a cupid lying solitary on the desk. My mother had slipped it into a valentine’s card the same year she died. every now and then one turns up in the strangest place. this one more so than usual, as a bead from the work I do was sitting as though clasped in its hands. It was a hematite heart.
How weird is that.
I spent the day, nay even the weekend, wondering of my lot in this life, the level of aloneness I find myself in, to the point of abject loneliness sometimes, and then here this thing is. I have been at that desk all day. It wasn’t there this morning when I was raging against my machine (e-mail acting up)

i have to wonder if it is my mom, from somewhere on the otherside of the Veil, trying to tell me that love is within my grasp. Or is it me searching again for that companion I just can’t seem to find.. Is it mere coincidence, or did I subconciously make it happen. Maybe someone else did.

Love is such a vague and stupid thing sometimes. I think what should be emphasized is really finding that person to share space and time with who doesn’t chap your hide as badly as the others, and who can put up with you. Goddess knows, I am no saint. Bad temper. emotional roller coaster. unpredictable, even to myself.. Brilliantly creative and scared shitless by it. Smart to the point of my brain frying with the pressure of it all. so shy it can sometimes be physically painful.
what a ridiculous mix. at least, I know from talking to some people that I am not alone in my oddities.

i read recently that children are born already wired to be happy or be unhappy. from pictures taken of me at a young age, i would have thought i was one of the happy ones, despite illness almost from birth. it is hard to figure that one out when i stop and look at my life now. i feel like i wear so many masks that i sometimes cannot decipher what’s real of me anymore. there is some piece buried deep down inside that is still no more that 5 years old that is seeking something in the way of human companionship. that’s the thing the masks are all there to protect. i wish i knew how to help it not be so bloody afraid, because as long as it is, it will go on being alone and thus unhappy.

i had a beloved teacher once, a person i MUST have trusted, because i let her into my hidden self through my poetry- a place i rarely let anyone until only last year-
Madame Rabke (goddess protect that beautiful soul) responded very gently to one of my pieces that had laid bare this aloneness of mine by pointing out that alone and lonely are not the same thing. i have never forgotten those words. the piece of paper is still in the notebook i used to collect the poems in. i sometimes wish she was still around, to see if she could give me any insight into distinguishing the difference. i am afraid i have failed to find it on my own.

i know an awful lot of people who married or got involved with another almost at a level of compromise. “ I didn’t think I would ever find anything better.” cannot say how many times i have heard those words and felt sorry, both for the sayer of them and the one they were said about. that’s pretty sad.

when i hear things like that, i know that part of me is better off. i may be alone, but i have not “settled”. i am still looking for someone to compliment my Self- a person who is an individual and yet feels like a part of me too. my best friend casey is the closest i have found. sadly, he’s gay, or it might have been perfect. ‘course, if he’d been straight, it would’ve been a totally different relationship anyway.


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a book i am readin just came out with a line from the main character that struck home with me, the poet. “Poetry is, I think, the ultimate form of self-deception.”
ouch.
that means by proxy that much of my life’s work has been in self-delusion. I cannot find any reason to be happy about that one. i have had little enough to leave behind me to remind the world i ever existed. perhaps it will someday be found that through my own self-deception, i have added to the greater good by giving some lonely, remorsing soul a mirror by which to gaze upon his/her own soul, and find salvation. whatever form that might take, i can only venture the vaguest of guesses. one can never be certain the affect one’s art can truly have on others. too much of the response is bound to stay buried inside and become mired in with all the other life experiences shaping that person.


see? there i go again. ever the poet, even in prose.

think i will go seek the perfect cup of tea.