Lost Lover

A message to my lost lover:

I speak a blessing over you. I love you. I will love you when your memory ceases to acknowledge a glimmer of what we were together. I love you because you are precious. You are amazing. You found me in the depths and rescued me. You showed me my light after I was certain it was no more. You found me in my hiding place. For that I am eternally grateful. In my strength I will honor you even if I will never again find your face to kiss and your ear to remind you that you are the reason I am strong. I am desperate to sleep with you again - to feel your arms around my neck and your body with mine. I am grateful that my body remembers yours and hopes for your well-being - your return and your redemption.

Cycles of Violence

Cycles of violence color my life. Cycles of inherited pain, unwitnessed tears, silenced mourning, periods of grey. I have lost lovers. I have lost redemption. Crushed dreams and blackness...

Where do our histories take us? I've been hearing stories from my mother: gendered violence, sexual violation, unreconciled abuses. The men she married were complicit in the horror - my father was complicit. His pain is unquestionable - present in his face and in his house. I miss my father deeply.

I have been crying the past two weeks. I have witnessed the woman I love with another man and her memory of me vanish. I have wept tonight. I have driven my spirit into exile through pain. Still it persists...

Much must die. Most must die. But not all things die. Some things, some refined, very light things will not be stopped - I seek those things with all my being. It is through tears my spirit experiences the depths of lost and absence and it glories in its power to live through pain. Despite Pain. A refusal of death at the heart of its gift. Glory.

Transition

Everything changes. I've been crying more recently. Crying is intense. Crying is awesome. It feels - it is purging. A spiritual exchange of pain... I rarely witness authentic weeping in public.

Hummm...
I was about to write more about crying, but I just saw a black cat out side my door. Incredible. How much meaning can I read into this moment? A complete interruption. A miracle... So much of my experience is bound up with magic. How else to you explain such things? A synchronicity - an appeal to 'rationality'. I had a black cat when I was a boy. But this cat is much more than a reminder. This cat has followed my spirit home.
After I graduated college I returned home. I was home for a year before I moved to S.F. and during that period a cat showed up at my house. Its was young and small in stature; it seemed to be strangely familiar. It was interested in the dogs - not afraid, it was curious and loving. I couldn't help but contrast its presence with my father's cat because both cats seemed to reflect our own individual spirits. Within a month after I left for S.F. Gabby, this amazing soul, departed - it was killed in the street.
What is that? I feel deeply comfortable with the position that Gabby and I were bound to each other. She was a spiritual manifestation of my need, presence, residency, hope. Pets are profound like this - companion species. BUT, how much more profound are you. Your embodiment suggests a kinship that transgresses time. We are spiritual companions to each other. Sometimes that spirit destroys, sometimes it provokes healing - it will never be bound to simple formulas. 'We' - we speak to one another and the language is rich with depth.

This black cat - bold. Disturbingly curious, thin, and just like Gabby - it has my full attention. And during the sighting, I was listening to a song titled 'Miracle'. Further, my own body - from excessive bicycling and untimely eatting - has grown thin. Even further, my attire as of late has been bent toward black - one of my professors is always in black. Its like a perpetual mourning - wearing a history of pain, memory, and creativity. A black cat. My favorite cat was black. I've been asking for disernment - perhaps this is it...