How Did He Know

They asked him how and why he could be so certain about a person and he said that every time they kissed he felt electric shocks go through him.

“Did you ever wonder if that was something that wouldn’t last, there is truth to things changing after the honeymoon period.”

He nodded, smiled and said there was years between the kisses and that time never changed how it felt to kiss her.

“Did it feel that way for her every time too?”

He said he thought so but he honestly didn’t know because he didn’t ask.

“Men are so dumb, you should have asked her. Girls like to talk about these things.”

He shook his head and laughed, “girls like to talk about them when they think it is safe. Some won’t ever share their thoughts with you because they don’t want to be vulnerable with you or feel like they are out of control.”

This time she shook her head and told him he should leave psychology to the doctors.

“Did you ever wonder or think she might like a more traditional approach. Women like to be pursued. We want to know you are into us and once we know that we’ll tell you what we think.

“I’ll tell you what I think. I think if she really wanted me around she could have just as easily told me that. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if she flipped flopped about what she wanted ten thousand times. Some people fight too hard to stay in control and some fight too hard to avoid getting hurt.”

“Are you talking about her or you?”

“I am not talking about either. I am just saying that those electric shocks never went away. That is good enough for me.”

Might Be Useful

“Kiss me, and you will see how important I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I’m oxygen and he’s dying to breathe.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“The mouth is made for communication, and nothing is more articulate than a kiss.”
― Jarod Kintz, It Occurred to Me

“Do not fall in love with people like me.
I will take you to museums, and parks, and monuments, and kiss you in every beautiful place, so that you can never go back to them without tasting me like blood in your mouth.
I will destroy you in the most beautiful way possible. And when I leave you will finally understand, why storms are named after people.”
― Caitlyn Siehl, Literary Sexts: A Collection of Short & Sexy Love Poems

“Make me immortal with a kiss.”
― Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus and Other Plays, Parts 1-2

“I didn’t want to kiss you goodbye — that was the trouble — I wanted to kiss you good night — and there’s a lot of difference.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“A kiss may ruin a human life”
― Oscar Wilde

“and then you stopped. And looked at me. And I knew then exactly what was going to happen. You kissed me, yes. But it was not just goodnight. Even then, I could feel the promise in it. The promise that you would kiss me just like that, forever.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Longest Ride

Push-Pull

Got that push-pull thing going on.

Push-pull, push-pull, push-pull.

Back and forth it goes but no one knows exactly how or why it does. There is no logic, no reason nor rational thought to explain or describe it.

There simply is what there is when it is there and nothing when it is not.

It is the most senseless and sensible thing but only understood by a few.

The Music In My Head

I am a lineman for the county
And I drive the main road
Searchin’ in the sun for another overload
I hear you singin’ in the wire
I can hear you through the whine
And the Wichita lineman is still on the line
Wichita Lineman

This song has been playing in my head for longer than I can remember for reasons that I can’t quite figure out or put my finger upon.

For a long while I thought it was just your typical earworm and then it became a distraction and a disruption of my day so I closed my eyes and focused on pushing it into a locked closet inside my head.

Then it went away, the song stopped playing and the silence seemed to be a glorious change of pace and my focus upon other important matters returned.

I ran unfettered and unencumbered into the sunlight and did all I wanted to do without fear, concern or regard for anything but what I needed and was required to do.

Did so for quite a long time and didn’t think twice about it because it felt like what I was supposed to do.

And then one day the music broke free of the closet I had locked it in and I heard those words again and the song that had been silent was sung aloud again.

This time around I didn’t ask why it was there or wonder if it was coincidence, a sign or something else. I just accepted it was back and figured when the time was right it would be obvious why it left and why it returned.

Of course I recognized how this confirmed I had changed because there was a time when I would have demanded to know the source and the reason, a time where my focus would have been upon learning all I could.

But that time was then and this is now.

Now I shrug my shoulders and roll with the tide instead of fighting it.

Stories That Never Die

Would it be an exaggeration to say the world is filled with a million stories about lost love and what happened to the individuals in these love stories.

I don’t think so.

It has to be one of the constants of life, something that never changes with time.

People, places and circumstances might be different but the constant that is people falling in and out of love with another will never go away.

It is why we hear tales of it in the bible, ancient Egypt, Greece and Shakespeare. Lost love is the tale that will never go away, 10,000 years from now those who walk whatever this Earth has become will know these stories.

And like the stories of the present and past those who tell them will share a mix of tales of hope realized and hope dashed…forever.

I suppose this is the time where the narrator moves seamlessly into the real meat of the tale, the time where they introduce the people the reader is supposed to root for.

Maybe if I were a better storyteller it is how it would go but I am not that guy.

Just watch me walk and you’ll a see a man who knows that he lumbers and doesn’t glide. Doesn’t mean there aren’t times where I haven’t tried to figure out how to walk softly but it never lasts because I know who and what I am.

She is not like that, she glides in and out of places.

She walks quickly but gracefully, sort of opposite of me.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a clumsy or awkward in my motions, just…heavier.  Don’t know if that makes sense or paints a good picture or bad and I don’t care.

*****

We met a thousand years ago when we were both in different places and living different lives than we live now.

Einstein says that gravity isn’t involved in love but if ever there was a case of falling ours was it. We fell hard and we fell fast.

She once asked me if I could say how long it took and I said five minutes for her and three weeks for me. I remember her eyes narrowing and knew that she expected a serious answer and just smiled at her.

I’d like to tell you I kissed her after that and she forgot be angry with me but I don’t know if that is how it happened. What I do know is that she often forgot to be angry with me just as I forgot to angry with her.

It was unusual for both of us, especially me. Piss me off the right way and it doesn’t just fade.

I remember.

The great constant of the great loves is that the shit that destroys people is often ignored, minimized or forgotten and so it was with us.

We fell hard, we fell quickly and we fell deep, so much so that we both told each other it was impossible to envision life apart.

But people plan and god laughs or something like that.

******

What is that song about fire and rain, the one that some people play when something sad has happened? You know the one that talks about some people always thought they would see each other again.

That is how I always figured it would be, we’d always see each other again. The reasons why I believed that don’t matter any more than the reasons why others would suggest it was wrong.

People do as they are going to do and believe as they are going to believe regardless of what others do or say.

Maybe that is as good a description as you’ll find for why there were times when she chased me and times when I chased her.

Times where one of us pushed the other away and how we always found our way back. Didn’t matter what happened, we had to be connected so we did what it took to stay close, even if we weren’t technically together we always were around in a way that made it possible to take that next step…if we wanted to.

And that is how it went for quite some time, moments of time when we were together followed by the periods where we were not.

You might wonder why it went this way and not another and I would say it is a reasonable question. I’d say it is smart to be direct and ask for answers to something simple but you won’t get that response from me.

No one ever said I was easy or reasonable, it is part of my charm.

What I will say is I never stopped loving her and that I never expected to be shipwrecked, sent off to war and then captured and held in an unmarked POW camp.

Nor did I expect to come back and find out she had moved and that she hadn’t left a forwarding address.

I remember the last time we kissed and the last time I held her in my arms.

I remember her scent and a bunch of other things that are just for me and not for you.

Those memories are part of why when I found out she had moved I didn’t just give up and part of why I sat on the steps of our old place and laughed.

Some people spend their lives looking backwards and trying to relive old memories and some spend all of their moments living for a future they hope to have.

I like to believe I am somewhere between those two positions.

I can look back and smile at the good times and ignore the bad. I can look forward and hope that the future is even better than I hope it will be too.

But the thing I am best at is looking at what lies in front of me today and focusing upon that.

You might wonder why there was no forwarding address and what the reason for the separation is. Those are important details and if life is all in the details then you’ll need answers to figure out how the pieces fit.

The thing is, sometimes you never get the answers to your questions because people don’t always do things for reasons that make sense.

Sometimes they just do them. Sometimes when you ask why they say ‘because’ and that is all you get.

That is the kind of response many people have gotten from me. Sometimes they accepted it and sometimes they told me they were certain I knew more.

They were probably right, I often know more but I don’t say all I think or share all I feel. There are boundaries to be held and lines that can’t be crossed.

Which I suppose is kind of funny because I have crossed many but that is me and if sometimes I live by a double standard, well remember most of us do.

It all comes back to a place where I look at the present and occasionally use a telescope to see the future that lies off in the distance.

There may be a day when she and I are we or there may not be.

There may be a day when the we refers to someone else or there may not be.

Many years ago she asked me how she would know I loved her if I never said it. I looked her in the eyes, said ‘I love you’ and promised it would be obvious.

She told me again that girls like to hear the words and I asked her how I would know and she said I was being dumb, because we were family and inextricably linked together.

For now I run with the moon and do what needs to be done to take care of the here and now. That is part of love and being in love.

Because sometimes you just go with what is and have patience to see what will become even when you don’t really know what that could be.

Because life is not something we can control, it is something we live and all you can do is walk the paths you choose and enjoy the journey you are on.

Some people glide and some people lumber.

 

It’s Madness

“Soulmates aren’t the ones who make you happiest, no. They’re instead the ones who make you feel the most. Burning edges and scars and stars. Old pangs, captivation and beauty. Strain and shadows and worry and yearning. Sweetness and madness and dreamlike surrender. They hurl you into the abyss. They taste like hope.”
― Victoria Erickson

Love isn’t based upon sane or rational choices. It is madness dressed in fine clothes and scented with sweet perfume. It is tailor made insanity that makes you forget who and what you are so that you may run towards him or her or it.

But the thing about it is that even when you recognize just how crazy it is and just how dumb it can make you act you get a double fisted injection of the secret sauce that powers the relationship you are or were in.

And the worst thing you can do is to try and make sense of feelings because they don’t operate on your normal plane of reality. They don’t act or respond to the rules and logic of the real world and trying to make them do so will only frustrate you.

So what you have to do, what you must do is stop trying to push the circle into the square and accept that in some realities 2+2=96.

But that is the rub isn’t it, all those years of formal education and socialization push you to apply those rules you learned to everything.

It’s madness to try to make that work and without point.

The best and smartest thing you can do is release yourself from that particular obligation and learn how to dance in the fire. Embrace the craziness and let the love flow fast and free through you.

You might not be able to control the beast but if straddle that sucker it will give you one hell of a ride.