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April 04, 2007

2:05 p.m.

Ahoy

Poolagirl's entry today is in keeping with much that I've been thinking and reading this week. In the car yesterday I was wondering whether I had become an unromantic; let experiences and lessons and logic take precedence over the longtime "government by feeling" that was so prevalent in my 20s and even 30s. The last period during which I felt overwhelming, governing passion resulted in a frightful breakdown, and since then there has been no real passion. There hasn't even been much fanciful dreaming. I look toward our upcoming trip to England and see that all the excited, hopeful thrill I had over my first trips there (1984, 1986, even 1990) is nowhere to be found. Granted I'm older and I know more about the rigors of travel, but then I was connected to some ancient purpose and fully expected to be immersed in it. I wouldn't have been surprised to see fairies around every tree trunk. What I experienced was more about loneliness, lack of money and being homesick. I did not find the magic stone. It doesn't seem right to just leave that quest behind, but I'm no longer naive. I'm excited about the trip, being with my mates, discovering everything anew. I'm not sure, though, how to continue my quest. My Reiki teacher confirmed that I have a lives-old connection to that continent. That's good; that feels right. Short of going back in time and seeing its details, how do I reconnect -- with eyes open, heart open, not expecting unicorns but ready for the trickle-down effect of cosmic knowledge? With what kind of heart do I proceed?

Further, what does it mean if I was a romatic and am no longer? Is that a loss or just a change? Is it an opportunity to look at what being a romantic means, to be objective about something that cannot be objective about itself? Is it better to "have the sense to leave what is inexplicable unexplained" (I quote from Roberston Davies), or is there value in such nit-picky self examination?

I had a small epiphany this morning, reading Davies. The reader is privy to the thoughts of a young man madly in love with one Julia, whom the rest of his family dislikes. He sees her through the filter of his passion, singling her out above all others in that way that love does, when in fact she may be no better or worse or more or less beautiful that anyone else's object of affection. She flirts with him but won't have sex, and it throws him into despair. He thinks, "Am I crazy to see the Sphinx in a Canadian university girl? The Sphinx, nobly breasted, with the haunches of a lioness and a smile of maddening tenderness on the lips that ask the great question. But what question? That's what I shrink from. There is no question on the lips of the Julia-Sphinx. Whatever question there may be is my own; I ask it myself, and pretend it is hers. ...Like all romantics, I suppose, I stand alone, and see Julia in a light that I give off."

This suddenly made me recollect Will, and how I thought of him then. How I sometimes still do. Surely I saw him in the light that I gave off, not as he was -- and isn't that what all romantics do? Recognizing that tiny star-prick of light within, I thought there might be hope for me still. Perhaps I am not entirely extinguished, and England may be illuminating in a way that gives continuity to my earlier journeys there. Romance had to make a lot of room for Experience, these last fifteen years or so. Idealism went through the rough, but the empiricist in me still prays to the invisible. Perhaps together they make up something more approaching Mystery. It remains to be seen whether I and my passion will ever contract together again, but meanwhile, feeling movement from both sides toward center, I am just a little closer to whole.

And Poolagirl reminded me that it's important to write, because writing means thinking. Thanks, matey.


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