D I V O R C E

D I V O R C E Standing at the window of the the divorce kiosk, there’s a strange quiet in the room.. the muted shuffle of polished shoes.. the dim conversations about legalities.. the pale dirt color of the walls and carpet, stretching forever down government hallways.. the sound of “Angel’s” beaded bracelet as she shuffles parts of my life story into neat little piles. It’s like an invisible vacuum is sucking the noises from the atmosphere, and the only distinct sound is the dull thud of her stamping papers as she makes it official. I reach for my phone to fill the void. Facebook. Email. Text. I can’t do the rounds. I just listen. To Angel’s rhythmic salute to another marriage ended. There are a few people in line - a hispanic woman, a man with white hair wearing painter pants and holding a stack of files. How many marriages have officially ended in this room? What does it feel like to work in a place like this? What do they think about marriage after witnessing repeated petitions to divorce? Isn’t it kinda weird that we can just stand here at this kiosk with a few papers and put a swift end to something that was supposed to be forever? I’m confused about what marriage means, and I feel it even more standing here today. I got married with the understanding that this was the end of my search. My forever man had arrived and we were going to build a forever life together. I’m sure this is a shared sentiment with most people who get married. So when over half of marriages end in divorce, why do we continue to have a belief that this moment called marriage will last forever? Maybe it would be more reasonable to commit to doing the absolute best you can; commit to doing the work that limits your ability to love; commit to making conscious effort to supporting your beloved’s growth? And maybe that lasts forever, but at least if it doesn't, we aren't completely surprised or, worse, ashamed.. I am in complete awe and respect for couples who are married for many many years, and in all honesty, I want that too! If that’s what happens, fantastic! If not, well.. I guess that’s alright too. Because we decide from the get-go to choose every single day, not once on bended knee. Angel pauses from entering my information into her computer and asks in a Latin accent, ‘What you wanna do for your last name?’ I don’t know. What do I want to do? Have a different name from my kids? If I ever got ‘married’ again, would I then hyphenate, like a lineage of husbands? The whole thing is absurd. ‘Just keep it the same for now,’ I tell her. She continues stamping dates and labels. ‘That’s a lot of stamping you do.’ ‘Oh yes, but is no good for this,’ she bends her wrist back and forth. ‘Oh yes, I see.’ I have this terrible habit of mimicking people’s accents because I think it helps them understand me better. She hands me officially stamped divorce papers and tells me a third-party needs to give these papers to my once-husband. ‘Next?’ she calls. And just like that. It’s done. No friends and family gathered to celebrate life shared. No words exchanged between partners to commemorate this moment. Divorce happens in quiet, dull rooms like funeral homes.. and I guess that makes sense.

I’m writing this post as a prayer and a vision for what is possible in regards to relationship dynamics. We live in a time where many couples are choosing to un-couple -- either divorce, separation or an unofficial parting are commonplace. Although this is new for me, I am already experiencing the difficulty of sustaining connectivity in the midst of leading separate lives. My former partner and I have all the ingredients for this possibility – good communication, lots of love and a shared interest in creating a loving and healthy environment for our children. Even still, I see how hard it is to get past our own “stuff” to see the bigger picture. And I am witnessing many other couples’ journeys…two people who came together for one of the most important missions on the planet—parenting, bringing life into this world. Whether they consciously chose to get pregnant or not, every child is “on purpose,” soul entering flesh to carry out incredible lives filled with endless cycles of falling, learning, getting up again, falling learning, getting up…How can parents who choose to go their separate ways continue to fulfill the mission of creating positive dynamics between each other and their children? This is the question I am currently living. We don’t really know what we are doing as human beings in this new phenomenon called divorce. We’ve only had a few generations of practice, and we’ve all heard countless stories or experienced in our own lives just how destructive the process can be – children caught in the crossfire of their parent’s mishaps, custody battles and emotional violence of all kinds. So far, the positive examples are few. Now is the time to create something different, and I believe that if there’s any community of parents to try, it’s here in Ojai. What I observe is that the work doesn’t stop between two people just because they make a choice to not be together. When there are children involved, we are inextricably linked to the other person..which might sound like a death sentence to some! But in reality, this is our continued gift of evolving. If there were any unconscious agendas to get out of growing by getting out of the relationship, we are out of luck! The universal task of actualizing our soul’s greatest potential will follow us through every single interaction we have with our former partners. I also observe that doing this gracefully becomes very difficult for two people who are no longer motivated by togetherness to maintain some degree of decency between each other. What then becomes the motivation? Ultimately, we are beckoned by the internal nudging of our soul’s work to have right relations between all human beings. But we are very crafty at putting a muzzle on this voice. So if not because we are inwardly called to create peace, how about doing it for the kids? Humans stayed together for countless generations “for the kids” – how about we create something new, something revolutionary, kind and loving between former partners “for the kids”? I think we are all aware that our children absorb every energetic pulse we emit, for better and worse. And every single one of us knows what it’s like to be a child and feel unspoken tension or witness arguments, or worse…And none of us are perfect parents because none of us are perfect human beings. But I’m not going to let us off that easy. Rise up, dear mamas (and papas) and create something unheard of, something few have maybe experienced. What does this look like? To me, this looks like maintaining goodness, love and friendship between former partners – for our children, for the sake of raising the vibration of humanity, and most importantly for ourselves, to honor the eternal process of evolving as human beings. Love is eternal. How that is expressed in the outer world may change, may live in different houses, may start new relationships. But the love that was once between two people never goes away. If we think it has, then what we are calling love isn’t love. I know there are some of you who are already pioneering this process, thank you… “For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation." --Rainer Maria Rilke

love without limits

love is not possession. there is a crisis on the planet, we have forgotten how to commune with a natural way, to flow with the inevitable current of life. we have devised all manner of manipulating and controlling our environment and each other in order to avoid the utter uncertainty of life. insulation, tempered glass, life insurance, and yes, wedding rings protect us from everything and yet nature still has her way. marriage, for all its cozy security, in the end seems to be yet another way that human beings try to harness the wild unpredictability of energy. all the great sages, including jesus, have marveled at the foolishness of looking into the future when today has enough cares of its own. we cannot map the course of our lives onto a marriage certificate and sign on the dotted line in declaration of a never-ending contract with another human being. there are far too many variables for that. a most frightening aspect of the human condition is the likelihood of trying to influence and control another human spirit. the person we are on the day of marriage is not the person we become after 3 or 15 or 40 years. why the grave disappointment and anger that arises when our partners follow the only consistent law of the universe -- change? and change we must! that's our soul/sole purpose for experiencing life on our beautiful planet! and yet, one of the most common complaints marriage counsellors hear is, "i just don't know, he/she has CHANGED.." i should hope so, for when we fail to recognize and obey the holy command of change, the result is the crippled state of human relationships most people dwell in today--depressed, complacent, resentful and desperately afraid of making a change they know would deliver them, which is quite simply to BE AUTHENTIC, no matter the cost. how can the dance of love relationships survive the alchemy of change? we need to get real about the nature of human spirit, which is more like a traveling wind than a dense clay that can be shaped by others. relationships are not here to serve us, nor are we here to be completed by another. the fundamental myth about love that we've all downloaded from disney (i cannot live without my prince/ess) must be dethroned as a first step to enlightened relating. we are whole all by ourselves. the entire universe ever-expanding in infinite creative possibility is always unfolding within us. in this context, relating with other human being(s) becomes a GIFT, not a requirement for us to feel content or fulfilled. strangely, this outmoded paradigm of relationship feels very very comfortable. in fact the sensation of another person completing the fragmented parts of us could easily be called love itself. and for this reason, we are constantly let down when we realize that this enmeshed version of relationship is like stringing two magnificent birds together and hoping they can fly. conjoined wings cannot soar. we must let go, we must encourage every soul on the planet to spread its wings and ride the winds of change, especially our partners. "imagine no possession, i wonder if you can?" this is the only verse where john lennon poses a question to his imaginings, which gives us an idea of the magnitude of jealousy's force in our lives. to be free of possessing would be to uproot the tangle of emotional attachments and expectations we have on the people we claim to love. no possession would mean that we don't just tolerate the myriad of changes our loved ones experience, we encourage them to boldly embrace every aspect of themselves and proclaim the authenticity of their beings. it doesn't mean we condone their weaknesses, it means we allow life to instruct on how to transform them. it means we allow people and experiences to shape our beloveds with the omniscience and power that only LIFE can offer. our partners are not the only source of support, love, affection, compassion, instruction, and reflection our spirit requires. that we are all fundamentally connected tells us that our support system extends to every soul on the planet. let's accept the orbiting of stars and souls. let's accept that the layers of human connection cannot be adequately labeled in the black and white categories of "friend" or "lover." there are far more shades in between, merging and blending the definitions, or throwing them out all together, so that the human spirit can do what it came to do. love without limits.

Love and Marriage

i've had a lot on my mind over the past year, so much that i haven't even had the proper processing time until recently. you know what they say about hindsight. so on to marriage, or rather the divorce rate that signals the end of an institution that once belonged. of course, human beings want to couple and will find a way to relate if only procreation DNA fuels them. But this primitive drive for procreation, that hasn't changed in 10,000 years, has become an insufficient reason for men and women to get together and stay together. First of all, we obviously don't need to 'spread our seed' and multiply our numbers on the earth. The ecological imbalance on the planet testifies to that fact. So if we are still drawn to marriage by an outmoded drive to multiply, then why come together at all?

Now I say all this with two kids presently eating breakfast at the kitchen table. I experienced the drive to have children, an aching, a longing so intense, it was as if my body was demanding, "You must have children!!" And so we did. Gladly. And since then, I would say that my personal and spiritual life has multiplied tenfold. And perhaps this is the true internal voice that beckons us to procreate. It's not so much for populating an over-populated planet; it's because the breadth and depth of our beings expands so much through parenting, that the whisperings of God/Source/Spirit/Biology propel us to take on this greatest of human challenges.

A challenge that is topped only by the difficulty of maintaining the relationship through which these children emerged. Children teach us to serve through a lifelong commitment to their wellbeing, a responsibility few mothers can walk away from. In that way children are the one fool-proof way to keep humans standing in the fire of love, a fire that burns away all self-interest, all vain ambitions. Relationships we can walk away from, and we do! At least 60% of the time with divorce! But children, it's the one relationship we can't walk away from when the going gets tough. And in that way, children are supreme teachers, and parenting is a supreme catalyst for evolving. So perhaps i've answered my own question about why we continue to have children in an over-populated world....

But the marriage relationship? Is it best for facilitating this evolutionary process? And if so, what kind of marriage is flexible enough to withstand the maelstroms, the tsunami's of our internal worlds? Each of us is complete with the full spectrum of light and dark, strength and weakness. We get married in our strength, our virtues, our shimmering brightness, with no real anticipation or knowledge of the shadow that is married to our light. So we coast for a time on the dwindling fumes of romantic love, which is simply our biology at work, the chemistry that makes us have sex on every surface in the house and defeat any obstacle that would threaten the freshly formed embryo that is young marriage.

But there comes a time, inevitably like the seasons, when the embryo is full formed, enough at least to start taking its first steps. And this is when true marriage begins. The romance is like some cruel joke by the divine, an eating of the desert before dinner...These first feeble attempts at really walking in marriage, of attempting to utilize muscles have hitherto been coddled, protected by the warm embrace of romance. Now we begin to flex the muscles of our individuality, and as individuals distinct from the halo of marriage, we find our dirt, our shadow, the undressed wounds, the unconscious needs that compel us to run when we should just try our...first....steps....tenderly. "YOU fell down?! How could you fall down?" Imagine saying that to your one year old who is taking his first steps! But this is essentially what we do in relationship. We cannot comprehend the atrophy of the shadow and it's debilitating grip on our own growth, let alone our partner's! How do we stand apart from our partner's process as an impartial witness to their development, just as we do our children? Can we be whole-heartedly committed to our partners in the same way we are with our children? Our children fall down, lie to us, yell at us, stomp around, go out into the world and make lots of "mistakes"...and our love NEVER falters. Now that's love. That's marriage. On the path, growing, learning, always changing and discovering new things. We've been fooled by the size of our adult bodies into thinking that the same childhood processes no longer apply.

lonely

who would have known? in a world of too many dishes and a schedule of naps and poops and dreamless sleep...who would have known that my life would have turned out this way. i chose at each and every turn, and this overwhelmed frustration should not be misunderstood as regret. if anything, my children have added two moments of unadulterated joy for every challenge.

it's when things get, you know, strained in the marital department that nothing seems to make any sense. if the roots start to rot, the leaves and branches can only blow in the wind for so long before they give up their clinging hope, and drop noiselessly to the ground, resigned to another round of becoming nothing only to become something again. when things aren't right between us, the whole picture is lopsided, twisted, illegible and scattered.

i know of the loneliness that reaches those on the solo mission. what i'm just being introduced to is the kind of loneliness that finds you with an insignificant ring on your finger and a bed a thousand miles wide. this kind of loneliness is made of sideways kisses and hours of difficult conversations that don't bring resolve because the issue is so fundamental, so core, that it is perhaps something that won't change at all.

how many walk this line of 'is it worth fighting for?' and for how long? how does one handle the issue of loving someone so much but in that person, there's one detail that's indigestible? and what if that detail is not so insignificant, but rather colors the entire love experience? am i looking for perfection? do i have to shove this issue into the bag of 'things i just have to accept'? i don't think i can, at least that's what my heart says after months of asking. but what ill is this short-sighted love? how limited is my scope for loving! i'm no perfect specimen, i've had my share of real life dramas. and when i was haggard and broken, you were there with an unswerving love. but the answer was clear then, and i made a definite decision away from the source of that spirit destruction. if you made that decision, my love would be there too...but perhaps your soul is still sweet on seduction and until the power of love is greater than power itself, we might be better as friends. i can only petition for so long, sitting as we are as long-forsaken friends separated by the confession screen in a wooded grove of unborn consciousness. at some point, we will either close and lock the door, or open it and let new life emerge.

on the subject of infidelity

my mom brought to my attention the interconnectedness of 'infidel' and 'infidelity.' Infidel literally translates as 'one without faith,' while infidelity is the 'quality of being unfaithful.' it's striking that a similar definition of this breech of contract is 'unfaithful.' there is an element of complete faith that, if not fostered by both partners, will lead to an act of unfaithfulness. i've spent years of my life fearing betrayal, imagining its insidious glance inside every motive of my partner, living as 'one without faith'. lo and behold...

just ask and you will receive. every thought is a question raised to the universe that WILL be answered!

then there is the aspect of soul work, that tireless journey that sometimes feels like i'm being dragged through a dense mountain.


"And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,--seeking the spheres, to
connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form'd--till the ductile anchor
hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul."
--whitman

that's just it...my soul caught somewhere, and it was with you, two candles melting into each other. our work is so connected! it makes me want to barf and sing praise at the same time! almost everything about us is the mirror opposite of the other. i was comforted to read that the brain works in this kind of opposing relationship. the left brain taking care of all the things the right brain couldn't even imagine doing, and vise versa. our beings are infused and, in fact formed through, the dynamic interplay of such polarities. i pray the dark, fertile unknowing of all our unexposed characteristics can be rooted in the good faith that we are committed, not so much to each other, but to the great knowing within us all.

new frontiers

it's not so much the job as the spirit with which we do the job, the integrity that bolsters each move. steady as she goes. i've been thinking about my favorite john lennon tune 'watchin the wheels', which i first started listening to at age 4 when my ears were level with the 9 inch speakers in my dad's '65 GMC. and from my four-year-old mind i imagined a person thoroughly entertained by watching wheels, like the mesmerizing effect of a spinning windmill. then as i got a little older, i imagined john wanting to unplug from the 'merry-go-round' of the music industry. but just two nights ago, i was outside looking up at a glittering dome of stars and i heard the Voice arise, the voice of ancestors and spirits past whispering suspicious thoughts and shaking out the spare change in my belly. and then i panned out above the Voice and watched this mechanism as if separate from me, which in truth it is. i was 'watchin the wheels' of my thinking as opposed to 'riding on the merry-go-round' of my neurosis. sometimes you gotta get gospel on it and command with divine authority "get behind me satan!"

la marriage

there it is again!
like a crescent moon slice of darkness,
she appears as if from nothing at all.
i am at once her servant and slave,
a mere tress in the wind.

if i could i would devour,
leaf by leaf your naked tree
and leave you standing
with only the whisper of wind
and the ache of wanting.

riding the moon

there's something virginal about making love after my moon cycle is complete.
something so untouched and pristine, every breath feels like a new beginning.
making senses through primordial shedding,
a deep abiding surrender to that which is bigger than me.

polyisocyanurate

blank and even blanker than that is the emptiness before the virgin. all life long pouring out, 'till the gossamer thread catch somewhere, till the ductile anchor hold...' we are loosely fit puzzle pieces, linked so inextricably to the next event and yet like candles in the dark, we can only see to the canopy edge of our thinking, neglecting the infinite world beyond. when i think of someone, is that person thinking of me too? what if i'm thinking about meg ryan or shakespeare? they most likely aren't thinking about me, so this theory is obviously flawed. then why do i still believe it? i've experienced the aching, or more like gnawing, feeling in my core when i think of someone. is that sensation a validation of the reciprocation somewhere out in the ether, our spirits meeting? it gets weird and even weirder than that is knowing that there is so much more going on here.

the missing link

a james taylor record on a sunday morning, hot coffee, children in the sun...i miss my family, my parents. i want them near to enjoy the simple joys of life, to see my kids running around in footed pajamas, spinning dance circles around the living room "winter spring summer or fall, you've got a friend." oh strange world we live in, separated by the option of living apart. in the old days (and in many countries present-day), generations of families lived together for better and worse. the idea of each family member building their own independent worlds was unthinkable. oh abundant universe, hear my prayer -- bring my family near.

dream gifts

DREAM:

I'm approaching a large colosseum-style building. I'm drawn by the sound of the injunction song for RavI Shankar's 'Chants of India,' a great pulsing song, steady as a heartbeat. In the dream, all the animals I've had as pets (who have died) are with me -- I have a parrot named chico on my shoulder and another in flight beside me; my dog, shadoe, trots contentedly beside me and we all are in procession to the great event happening inside the colosseum. The feeling in my bones is that this event is for me, but as I look around and see others all streaming into the colosseum, I realize that everyone feels this is for them. Then I know the infinite Love of our true Home, each of us the subjects of our own ceremony, held in honor of the divinity we all possess.

DREAM:

I dreamt that i died and not in any horrific sense of the word, although there was that moment, suspended midair as T and I propel off the cliff in our car. T and I look at each other and without words, we communicate that this is it, our end has arrived. Then we drop and drop and drop, and when it's time to hit the bottom, instead of immense pain, I experience the most intense relief i've ever known. it's all the accumulated moments of relief i've ever experienced, combined into one joyous, sweet feeling. I am aware of the weight of my skin and my body, which i am now free of and all the work it takes to survive on this earth, eliminated once and for all.
so I do not fear death, nor do i seek it.

lobotomy for the sexes

i pulled up to their shiny black car and saw their smiling faces inside. "hey amber, where are ya headed?" jeff asked with his foster park cowboy talk. i said "just dropped off charlie at school. now i'll go home and work on that article. since i didn't work on it yesterday, i feel a little..."
at this moment both jeff and kasey interjected -- kasey said "stressed" and jeff finished the sentence with "refreshed." i laughed and said "that pretty much sums up your two personalities! and mine and ted's too!" we had a good laugh about it and went our separate ways, but it left me thinking about how different men and women are in general. at least that's what i'm hoping. i'm hoping it's not just ted and i that think so differently 99% of the time. the truth was that i felt stressed, just like a woman should. stress gets shit done. maybe it's not true for a man's brain, which when faced with stressful situations, switches off and starts receiving messages from his penis, his other head. men have sex to relieve stress; women need to be un-stressed to have sex. i'm generalizing here, and i'm sure there are plenty of women who have stress reduction sex.
but i often wonder in my marriage if i'm crazy or if we REALLY think differently most of the time. for example, i'm nursing H and talking to a friend on the phone on a bench outside the restaurant, and ted says he's going for a walk. he tosses me the keys and says he's walking down el roblar. now i have both kids at the restaurant, and H is falling asleep on me, so i no longer have free hands. i wait for over an hour, enjoying my conversation, but definitely ready to leave. when he pulls up in his friend's car and has no idea why i would wonder where the *bleep* he's been, i have to pause and ask myself, "does he really not know how i'm feeling? is it possible he truly wasn't thinking that i would want to leave?" no he doesn't think like this at all. the moment he told me he was walking on el roblar and tossed me the keys, he was communicating 'come pick me up when you're ready.'
now this is just a day in the life, and thousands of these interactions have happened in the course of our marriage. so one must concur, men are from mars and women from venus. two entirely different entities expected to cohabitate, make decisions together and attempt to decipher the other's martian subtleties. good luck! i can see why so many marriages end in divorce! it takes some serious grit to not only tolerate one another, but actually learn to appreciate the differences. i'm still in training on this one. lord knows i love that man :)

yes, i admit to a subtle feeling of imprisonment. i try to dash those thoughts that would describe my reality as such. it's not such a big deal, really. my mind has made it important, this show ted's playing tonight at zoey's cafe. that's where we met eight years ago, talking about architecture and cultural design for the city of ventura, the Avenue. anyway, we met that night at zoey's and the story from his sister is that he came home that night and told her he just met his wife. it would be a year before we would be together and another four years before we would marry after breaking each other's hearts.

so these two beautiful children, whose needs are forever number one. no babysitter or available family, so i'll be home with the kids and my mind built up this Night of Nostalgia at zoey's cafe, a rekindling of that original spark, the Big Boom of our life together. no big deal, just all the closest friends and family on a cozy november night gathering for music at the site of our true love's beginnings!!

perhaps this is my night of remembering, typing to cyberaudience in my reverie. we met at the turn of the century in a european courtyard called 'El Jardin.' ted was so mysterious in his own right. he didn't let on that he was falling in love (of course he shouldn't, what with my boyfriend of three years). until one day we were in the couch-sized kitchen of zoey's at the beginning of a shift i was working with ted, training him as it were. he announced to me that he needed to clear the air, that he didn't want it to feel weird when we worked together. i had been experiencing a few heart attacks every time we worked together from the crazy magnetism between us, but i wasn't going to let on (what with my boyfriend of three years) so i feigned indifference to the anticipation of what he would say. he wore a blue plaid cowboy shirt, his hair was damp and curly, his eyes were solid and blue, and he said "you're really pretty, and i know you have a boyfriend and all, but your presence, just affects me. so i guess i just needed to say that" he wasn't coming on to me but from that moment i was his.

zoey's is a magical place with long tendrils of trumpet vine covering aged brick buildings, art in every corner, music, tea...it was a mythical place to fall in love and tonight my stomach flutters with the remembrance.

paired up, gemini

what a strange life indeed. a film noir journey through the twisted labyrinths of man's heart. outside the jackyls hackle to the rising moon and some familiar feeling is pushing up inside me, like a wearwolf nature. i roam, i die to live on flesh and scent and taste with such sensual delight, i might just never come back.

but then i hear a little cough, my little ones sleeping through the night, strong bodies fighting colds. they sleep facing each other on our huge bed, and tonight they are my companions and i will never be happier than this.

ama

dear grandma marilyn,
just to say your name in my head immediately brings tears and that familiar ache of sadness behind my face. i remember you today because you passed on, and i'd like to think that in some way, i am carrying your memory just by being me.
when i was pregnant with hazel (who's a cancer baby like you were), i found myself cooking up a storm! i was doing wine reduction sauses and rump roasts, lots of midwestern goodness. i felt your subtle lead all through my pregnancy, even your strength which you offered through the eyes of my mother, grandmother, when i was in travail, riding the wave of contractions.
i'm proud when i see a picture of you and see myself and my mother before me. thank you for exemplifying servitude to your family and for being the strong woman i know you were.

grandmother, great northern star

sincerely,
amber dawn

ode to mom

my mom and her soft-smelling skin, which seemed always to be warm. my comforter and undying loyal defender, she gave me a safe haven to explore who i am. native american rituals, sundance, the kiva, 2nd mesa, hopi, and the wind slipping through window cracks while the steady beat of a drum lulls us to sleep. the sweat lodge, the topless days at verde river with hazel. sunday drives with tracy chapman in the rambler. more driving across the southwest to the midwest and back. we were at home, us air signs, in the constant movement of road travel. born to stretch the limits and expand boundaries.

my mom has a slight dimple on her cheek and green eyes the color of yellowstone. i inherited her mischievious humor and celebration of life. she was the wind beneath my wings and i beneath hers--two birds skimming the waterline, dipping here and there.

ti amo mama

common law

i've been getting quite the education on proper codes of conduct between the sexes within the boundaries of marriage. i come from one of those dilapidated relationship structures that i have been repairing since my first boyfriend at age 14. perhaps we all go through a process of redesigning our understanding of love, having certainly been wounded (or at least misinformed) by the relationship(s) we witnessed our parents endeavor.

because i so explicitly watched my parents' marriage dissolve with such painful and unfortunate dabblings with infidelity, i have been carrying the burden of their pain for many years. specifically my father. i was his mule as he climbed out of the deep, deep hole of mourning. i carried all sorts of goodies: mistrust, anger, fear and an overarching certainty that i would never ever get married. i eventually mistook this baggage as my own and started weilding it in my relationships like a very sharp knife that has unnecessarily accused and cut some very genuine souls.

so when i half-heartedly conquered my fear and accepted to marry the love of my life, to my surprise i discovered i was still the mule carrying around all that baggage for my parents. my poor husband! i didn't know that when i say 'i love you', i am including all the misinformation about love i have acquired. like 'love can't truly be trusted' and 'this love could end, even though it begins beautifully.'

i had to almost deceive myself in order to get married. i had to tell myself that marriage would be some kind of jedi force field that protected both partners from the wiles of attraction and seduction. marriage would be my saving...what? what is marriage? it's a moment that lasts as long as we both shall live. it's the chemical combustion of two individuals, creating an entirely new entity.

which says nothing of our bodily senses, our attractions, our very humannness. i didn't want to believe that my husband could be attracted to another woman. in order for me to trust marriage, i had to believe that was impossible. more shocking even than the truth that my man could be hot for a woman, is the truth that i can find another man attractive! what atrocity is this! what evil person could come in with their dirty boots and trample the pristine fallen snow of my marriage? but those people aren't evil at all...they just exist as i do, and they are just going about their lives as i do. and in our humanness, in the invisible sinews of energy that propel and guide us to another person, we find ourselves still as vulnerable to making grave mistakes as ever.

so...proper codes of conduct between the sexes. walking the razor's edge. eye contact for 4.5 seconds and no more. at least a six inch margin around my body at all times. choosing not to engage with the person that is obviously attracted. i understand the arab wife, eyes downcast, head covered, body engulfed in long garments.

and yet that's not the answer either. we can acknowledge another person's attractiveness. we can even enjoy their charm, their wit. to hide is to strengthen desire. stand bare-breasted in the sun. did you catch the spark in her eye? it's only god, it's just me. it's only you.