The Other Side of Losing You

I sit meditating mind travelling between states of consciousness, dreams flickering like old news reels, watching the night become dawn through the skylight.  Shadows change in the pink light and I hear the first bird stir.  Too late and too early for the phone to ring.  Unfinished paintings glaring at me with angry primal energy.  Guitar in case silent forever now.  You still sleep curled like a foetus you drift, insulated from hurt, through my world.

‘Everything I touched became a wound’.

You say you have no interest in my dreams anymore and that you want something different.  You are tired and bored and seek secret knowledge.  To you I have become yesterdays papers – a dead end.

I watch you for a while sleeping.  How fragile we are when we sleep.  I can count your eyelashes.  How many wonderful dreams we have and how transient life is to dreamers or visionaries.

If I sit here I have infinite possibilities but if I act I need to make choices and those choices will limit possibilities.  I choose not to want or desire whatever twist of fate brought us to this crossroads I accept what will be.  I will not hold on to you if you want to go.

‘Nothing can be pinned down or fully explained’

What path should I take when I understand so little of lifes mystery.  I am just a barely conscious being in an infinite universe.

For a moment I feel so small, so insignificant, scared even to face the world outside my door.  If only I could stay here forever with you and just exist in a simple world.  All things pass and crumble into dust.  We are mortal and youth and beauty will fade and those that remember us will be gone.

I remember one of Brian Pattens poems Nothing is as Perfect as You Want it to Be.

You lose your love for her and then It is her who is lost, And then it is both who are lost, And nothing is ever as perfect as you want it to be.In a very ordinary world A most extraordinary pain mingles with the small routines, The loss seems huge and yet Nothing can be pinned down or fully explained.You are afraid. If you found the perfect love It would scald your hands, Rip the skin from your nerves, Cause havoc with a computed heart.You lose your love for her and then it is her who is lost. You tried not to hurt and yet Everything you touched became a wound. You tried to mend what cannot be mended, You tried, neither foolish nor clumsy, To rescue what cannot be rescued.You failed, And now she is elsewhere And her night and your night Are both utterly drained.How easy it would be If love could be brought home like a lost kitten Or gathered in like strawberries, How lovely it would be; But nothing is ever as perfect as you want it to be.

If  I hold you now you will feel only the arms of someone you once knew and everything I do and feel will only make you sadder to leave. Carelessly and without thinking I left you withdrawing into my own world for a while it all made sense but now you are leaving me.

Now the thought suddenly hits me that this is finally the end and even though you are here you are elsewhere.  I will follow my own path from now on alone without the comfort of knowing you were there.

What happened to all the love we once shared?  What happened to ‘love you forever and always’? Did we really mean those words?

Now I remember how hard it was to move on after those first loves and how easy and hard it was when love was everywhere.  Am I the only one left who remembers the dream we had? Did I really believe it at all?

If I could travel back in time would I do anything differently?  Would I have treated my mind the same?  I guess I would just be a different person in a familiar situation. Would I have struck a different chord to keep those who love me happy?  Would I been happier now had I gone with the crowd?

In the end I have been true to myself, however painful that has been for me, and for others too. There is no fun or satisfaction in reliving the past and it would be entirely wrong.  We both had our free will back then and went our separate ways; sink or swim.  Why should I wish to change the rules fifteen or even twenty years later?

Can we ’mend what cannot be mended’ or ‘rescue what cannot be rescued’? Can we? Would you miss me at all?  ‘Nothing is as perfect as we would like it to be’.

Dedicated to ‘Syd’ Roger Keith Barrett
January 6, 1946 – July 7, 2006