Dear Johan,
I’m writing like a trust fall. What I’m with is:
-Sara telling me that she wasn’t enough for her baby.
-An image of myself in my mind, pointer finger outstretched like a conductor. My finger is the “subtle knife” from The Golden Compass. It cuts holes between worlds and can kill God.
-Tom’s face in my mind, smiling and blushing and explaining things to me. I like that I like him even when I don’t understand why we’re waiting to touch each other.
-I left the house on impulse today. J was grumpy. I’m learning how to walk away without making anyone wrong. I’m learning to remember how to walk forward with choice instead of decision.
“The first trust is that…”
Sara and I are finding forgiveness. When she said that she wasn’t enough for her baby I was calm but I didn’t understand. He was too big for her body. He wants more milk than she makes. We were in a flow today and everybody kept noticing where they didn’t feel like they were enough and everybody else felt close to them when they said it. We get to believe we’re connected…
“...even if nobody can tell…”
If love is a real thing, even and especially when we’re not enough…how many sentences do we not need to finish? There’s something very taxing about debugging every moment we forget that love loves underneath and before and through every sense or concept of success or failure. I tell myself I’m going to learn how to move before I’ve done the math to right-size love. That means...
“...I’ve already begun…”
Sara and I found ourselves fully committed and still not enough and somehow more than ok. When we forgive ourselves we somehow forgive each other. It’s not quite right…we evaporate sin? If it evaporates then doesn’t that mean it was never really there? I can infer, with the evaporations of all these unreal things, that I’m…
“...in a place of real things…”
I can see my brain. My brain has a lot of wiring that “Love is seeing what everybody else needs and making that my need.” Isn’t it strange that “non-neuro-divergent” is almost a synonym for codependency? Like, I’m autistic if I can’t predict how people are going to be hurt by who I am?
And then J acts grumpy and I can feel something that’s unworkable. I need my consciousness and awareness of my needs and desires BEFORE J figures out what I wish we’d figure out. Things…
“…like love...”
Here comes the subtle knife.
I can’t perceive a different world, one where I was already going to go find a coffee shop to work at before J got grumpy. It would be a world where J getting grumpy is perfect and that we need each other is permanent. It’s a world that remembers we love each other before, during, and after our needs are addressed. I can’t perceive it but I can infer it. This feels like the part of my warrior training where I learn to not consider lack of vision a problem. It’s making quite a case that faith is not just for transitions in…
“…that other world where vision is new…”
I met Tom when he got back from Barton Springs. We had one kiss as we walked out the door and down to the pub near where he was staying. He kept saying so many things to me that I didn’t understand. They seemed to be about making sure everything was ok. I can very easily tell that I feel safe moving toward him. I’m very confused when I think about “how is this going to work” and I’m grounded in my breast bone with, ”I’m gonna move toward him.” He blushes a lot and his eyes look like the eyes of my first friend, Teddy. I can’t say I understand…
“...but I can move…”
My mind shows me an image of one thing that I think is connecting us: we both don’t seem to believe in sin and we both grew up around a lot of people who do. Heaven is a place where we feel almost nothing when we decide that this game of Monopoly is done. Presence is teleporting…
“...into the present from the present, though it seems like out of the past…”
I can own the projection. I’m going toward him to get closer to the part of us, underneath the language, that existed before childhood selves thought to protect everyone from their limited beliefs about love. His innocence is beautiful to me and that means that I think that about me, too. I infer this is true about everybody but it’s a sign to me that I enjoy how much I don’t know about him. It’s so strange to constantly forget this is true about everybody. To simultaneously remember and forget is a motion…
“...to a place I’ve never been and never left…”
There’s so much ease and gratitude in myself. I’m learning that I’m entering a world where I don’t quite know how to learn. It’s nice that this new world lacks urgency. It’s nice that there’s an easy, inexorable drive that looks like learning. Counter-intuition is the new intuition…
“...and all my striving can tell that it’s time to let go…”
The tip of my finger gets warm…
“...and unfinished sentences are the first to be forgiven.”
I’d kiss you on the cheek French-style if you were close enough,
Mike
