I am notoriously excessive. If i am going to have a bite of cake i am going to have four pieces of cake. If i am going for a bike ride just to ride, its three and half hours one way. Spending money usually happens in sprees, "napping" happens in 18 hour blocks, and the length of my holidays has increased with each trip to the point where i am moving temporarily to a country with a language i don't speak where i don't just eat a smear of lemon curd on toast, i just eat the whole jar of curd--uncomfortably true story…. Excessive in the form of gluttony and impulse, but also in passion, dedication, discipline, and--for the purposes of this post--love.
Any amount of excessive love i feel is of course, not as unhealthy as a whole jar of yolky-sugary-curd, quite the opposite. Love can set you free from the other excesses that stem from an insatiable desire to feel that same adrenaline, connection, elation that love offers. Love is not stoic, it is not cool, and though it is contented and trusting and at its truest at ease in the giving and receiving without keeping tabs on the exchange. It is abundant, limitless, a contagion that spreads like wild fire wherever kindling lies--and i would argue that most of our hearts are stocked with burnable, light-up-able bits. Yes love can be freeing, and oh how it once was for me.
Once? Once. I wish i could pinpoint the moment when it stopped being, when the freest part of my being became the most strangled. When i became doubtful if not afraid of love.
Perhaps when i realized the immensity of its power.
Perhaps when i thought i knew what it was and that paradigm was reconfigured.
Perhaps when it wasn't accepted in its purest form, but questioned.
Perhaps i spend too much time questioning it myself.
All i know is that this is not me. The someone that i used to know was not afraid of love, or much else for that matter. All i know is that i am now consumed by an insatiable need to know and it is tainting my experience of love. My greatest excess now is in analyzing every action i make from or toward love; every thought too, questioning which are the truest and which are the most riddled with fear and desire for something tangible. God Damn! The most beautiful parts of love are the unpredictable, catch-your-whole-being-off-guard intimate details--not to be confused with romance, but instead what that is inspired by. Lately i try far to hard to act as an enabler of Love, and it is unto nothing at all--because you can't be! You cannot create love, you have to access it from a pure heartspace and a genuine essence of self--and you taint it when you try. And though i know this, and once never tried to play with it, my mind is inhibiting the connected power of my heart. And when my mind is such a littered mess of confusion, desperately needing to control, hypothetically analyzing and reading too much into an unwritten love story, i read into something more real. I meditate. I write.
And then i eat an excessive amount of anything, as always, with a soundtrack.
(the read):
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2015/12/how-to-stop-polluting-our-relationships/
(the moving meditation):
(the writing):
I knew her before what she called
Love, was lost.
Before the paradigm shattered
and with it
all that seemed to matter to her.
Who was that girl?
A freedom being,
genius in essence;
uncompromisingly her.
She moved with light steps
on quicksand
sinking not an inch
in who and how to be
instead a tease for Temptation itself;
a Wanderess who followed not
and lead without calling.
She led those drawn to her
simplicity,
the way a patch of grass
begs one to lay and look at the stars
and be peaceful in knowing nothing.
She had no need to know--
the embodiment of trust
whose laugh cast doubt to the wind,
a heart impenetrable by fear.
She was not afraid of Love,
rather marvelled at its unfolding,
immediate in her response,
insatiable in her giving.
She was not concerned with time,
nor a victim to vicious control,
she was at ease learning--
curious yet wise,
a collector of lessons
and a creator of adventures.
She was fascinated by Life
and lived to feel and be,
to see and be seen.
She did not see it coming:
expectation steal
her from presence
and fear settle in, replacing love,
repressing. Taming.
That girl is me:
a woman fiercely piecing herself together;
remembering myself,
unstrangling my heart,
expanding in capacity for and relearning to trust in Love,
willing,
capable,
in full belief that while we lose ourselves
at times in Love,
we find it, truer still, within
--and are set free again.
(the eating):
(the song--and not the one used as a title…):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmdPKfzZMSg
And the point of all of this is that i want you and i and all the wild fire hearts to love freely. Everything and everyone and when you venture from love to in love do not do it encumbered with expectations and sick with fear. Do it with a willingness to experience every feel in life. Do it because your heart has something to say and to not is to strangle it. Love is a choice that cannot be made for you, or manipulate to fit your mind's ideals. Do not get so fixated on an imagined relationship that you do not even see the unique and immeasurable real person there for you in the only ways their love knows how to be. Do let its potency enrich your vulnerability and trust with the utmost fervour and vibrancy. Do not lose yourself in love, because that Self is all the love --the sustainable, unique expression of it-- you have to offer. Do touch skin, touch thoughts, touch souls; leave a trail of love where you go. Love is not to be taken in moderation, but to pour out in downright excessive abundance.
xx
