I Am Poured Into This World ...

I haven't heard of anybody who wants to stop living on account of the cost.

F. McKinney Hubbard

I was, am, and will eternally be poured into this life. I am the grateful son of a wondrous woman -- my mom was the best :-) -- a woman who was an endless river of love and devotion to her three sons. Her heart was the proverbial fount of compassion for all who knew her and loved her -- there were many over the span of her life.

I am poured into life as a leaf floating in a river, through every imaginable canyon of existence; I see and feel all around as if I was a filter for life itself. I watch and commune in constant thrall to the life around me.

I was fortunate to be a child of a man who, although incapable of being a father in the traditional sense of the word, grasped in the beauty of nature a magnificent teacher in the ways of forest, hill, and stream ... and for that I will always be thankful. He taught me to see, truly see, the life beyond the back door of the constructed city. I have passed time looking under the decaying logs on a forest floor at the life teeming below them, been agog by the brutality of two stags doing battle in a forest glade, and dumbfounded by the sheer beauty in a wing of a Monarch butterfly.

For this and all other questings for the true wonder of this world I give great thanks to the man who was 'Dad'.

I have found, as I was saying to a dear friend the other night, that I have been blessed with the ability to spend much of my adult life in love with women. I have never been the type of man who seeks solace with his own gender; I've found many men I have met to be boorish and self- absorbed, and in that, not much good to the women in their lives.

I was saying to another friend (also a woman) who was questing for her "mate for life" that not many men are worth a damn till we hit at least 40, after which we tend to be more in touch with our feminine aspects; we become a little softer, less controlled by our ego, and generally more pleasant to be with.

The unfortunate side of this equation is the existence of misanthropes like George W. Bush whose characters denigrate men with decent, thoughtful and gentle qualities. Because of men of this caliber, others like myself and those whom I know to be decent, kind and loving, suffer a "clumping of kind" -- we tend to be lumped together as a group, and therefore tend not to associate with other men -- we tend to be wary of Bush-like males ...

I am eternally poured through this world in an endless quest for truth, and in this quest I find I have become mindful of the gentle sweetness of women I have been blessed to know; they have been the making (and the breaking and remaking) of me. I have found comfort in the arms of women for a day, a week, for years ... and have learned the invaluable lessons of being a man loved, hated, loved, and broken open.

Through my life I have felt that there was something that tied me to women, and I now realize what one common thread has been -- these women have been abused in one way or another. Some of the abuse was sexual, some emotional, some physical, but all of it was needless and cruel.

I remember being fourteen and helplessly in love with an "older woman" who was nineteen. S~ offered me kindness, tenderness, and understanding when I was most in need of them. I was much too young to have been involved with this poor, broken girl who had as I understand today a severe psychosis -- it became evident the day I went to her basement apartment, knocked on the door knowing she was there, and entered to find the room dark and laced with the haunting sound of a whimpering child. I found S~ and she unleashed on me a fury that I have never before or since witnessed or suffered; it was all I could do to hold onto her and scream for help. Someone in the house heard our cries and called the police, who showed up minutes later (which seemed an eternity to me). They called for an ambulance, and S~ was taken away. I was left shaken, unsure of what had happened, and crying in a crumpled mess on the floor of her room. A police officer returned and guided me home, where I immediately fell into my Mom's arms. I shook for two days, and never saw S~ again, but later heard that she had killed herself in an asylum.

This was how I began to learn and understand that we all seek out love, in whatever layered and complex form it may take, and that we all hope for the best ...

My ex-wife B~ was someone I loved deeply for a long time. She had been sexually abused by her father, who had more issues than Sports Illustrated ... He worked his evil on her to the point where it actually continued through our relationship. B~'s father abused her from early childhood into her adult life, until he killed himself; in so doing, he cheated her out of ever being able to confront him, as should have been her right. I will forever feel pain for this woman; she was badly scarred, and I truly hope that she can find peace in herself ...

And now I have my beloved Jaliya; you who have been following our blogs will understand that she has had some issues of her own to work out. Her challenges have lasted a lifetime, and she has managed to cultivate a self that is largely calm, loving, and warm. She is my other half; at the risk of sounding corny, she completes me.

It pains me greatly to see what my darling girl is going through at this juncture in her life; it's taken a toll on her, but she is an awesome little power in my life and she perseveres in her quest to find peace with her demons as we all must in some form ... This has challenged me in ways I couldn't imagine, and I find myself now on a whole new journey. Somehow I know that we will emerge on the other side of this and be smiling in rays of sunlight. Life constantly challenges us, and we are all capable of achieving the peace in life that we search for, if we remain passionately committed to the search. For some the road is longer and rockier, but if by chance we find and keep our focus, the fruit it bears truly is sweet. The secret is in staying the course ...

In ending this addition to my blog, I find myself still, as ever, being poured through life, not quite sure on the final destination, but sure in the fact that as we human beings are capable of some horrendous acts of cruelty, we are also capable of a beauty that is divine ... To touch our own lives and others' with a loving spirit is our best quest ...

We'll be seeing you again soon ... till then, many blessings on all of your sweet souls.