A Word On Nostalgia, and Love As Usual

 Nathan,

I feel that pieces of me are spread out all over the world.  

And I feel nostalgic.

Nostalgia is an identity crisis.  I think about everyone I love and know that they are beautiful.  I think about how quickly the details of their lives are changing and I want to be a part of those changes.  I want to be a part of everyone I love before they get too far away from me.

And I feel that these people are not really changing.  I will know them when I greet them. I feel the pain of knowing that there are now too many too greet, and they are too far away from each other.  We will not live in a big house, all together.  I cannot spend the rest of my life with all of them.  But I like to imagine spending the rest of my life with each of them, when I am feeling nostalgic.   

   

Nostalgia is the funniest thing.  Thinking about how odd it is, how lovely and how insane makes me feel excited and upset.  That is part of the process for me...Nostalgia's finish line is the start of acceptance.   

I want to revel in beauty without any fear of missing it.  That is an incredible thing to ask of myslef.  I feel that this incredible thing is within my reach.

I live a charmed life and I am in love with it.  I have found that, for me, there is no substitute for hard work.  There is no substitute for love.  If I put them together I have made room to be free. 

I feel joy knowing that I will keep doing exactly what I need to be doing.  I feel joy with my life, the way it is.  I feel joy knowing the direction I am moving in. 

I saw a picture of you on facebook.  I almost do, but cannot fully recognize the look on your face.  I wondered how you are without having any idea; imagining you first drowning, and then finding that place where misery and joy are married.  That place is an ocean of learning (the same as something more stable).  You are probably, like you so often are, sledding up and down a spectrum of consciousness every day if not hour.  I do not imagine that you are happy.  But if you are don't let my own ignorance keep you from it in any way.  It isn't meant to.  I have seen you happy once, for months and months.....when we both happened to be very happy at the same time.  Joy is so different from sorrow; each should know the other well (if it is true joy or true sorrow) but still they seem incapable of being with one another, just being, together.  Or maybe, happiness and sadness come and go, and peace is steady underneath those changing tides.  If someone has found peace there is much less sorrow in them...sorrow seems to be mostly self created.  But that lesson is not meant for the saddest moments of people's lives.  That kind of sorrow serves a very special purposes.  It is impossible to judge what is and is not helpful to another.  I have learned to respect the space of sorrow even if I am not there.  I have learned to respect the space of joy even if I am not there.  I have learned not to worry so much if this difference keeps people apart.          

Pablo Neruda said  "Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido."  A beautiful description of love. And also not love.  You said I should not take the words in your letter too seriously.  I know:  Love is not personal:  I know love, so I do not know "relationship problems".  I do not know the wheres or whens or hows of love because there are none.  I do not know the boundaries of love because there are none.  I am not proud of you because you are nameless. 

I also know that knowing love can be effortless at times and can take effort at others.  I am not afraid of effort.  When love requires effort a person has stopped moving with the "flow" of things.  But that has nothing to do with circumstance.  Circumstance exists outside of us and our connection with "flow" is inside, only inside.  Haha, we have had this discussion before...it always appears peridoxicle on the surface...Just last night I told my neighbor "It does not matter what we do, but there is a reason that monks sit in silence among beautiful landscapes.".  So many times this has been a topic of discussion and it is very difficult to talk about indeed, especially if the person speaking does not entirely understand how these things fit together harmoniously.  As you said "things are what they are,".  There is no right way to proceed when we have lost touch with flow.  It always helps to turn inward.  It always helps to give circumstance as little credit as possible.  But on our own journey we will do what do.  And our choices cannot be the wrong ones.  I believe in the transformative power of love.  I believe that a loyalty to love helps guide us back to our "flow" and so I am not afraid of effort.          

Forgive and give space to those who cannot love you.  Be generous in this way and you will know what love really is.  And if there was a chance that the other may find love in you, it would be then.  It is a strange twist of fate that everything we desire can only be realized when we genuinely find no wanting in ourselves.  I suppose this means that we will never have what we desire....and somehow, this makes true joy possible.  I feel that you could be saying this to me.  I am saying it to you.    

Have you noticed that a story of pain grows in time with any relationship?  This consequence of being human demands presence from each of us.  Isn't it funny how that can feel tiring...how moving forward into beauty can feel like a choice that we do not wish to make?  Whenever that is the case I say we should smile and laugh, because the world is not so serious.

Jess