The Public Private Face

Love is not an electric lamp.
So many think like everyone has a socket or a bulb,
And if you've got a socket you need to find someone with a bulb,
And if you've got a bulb you need to find someone with a socket.
Then you get together, and you get "in love" and screw together and everyone can see the Light of your Love for each other,
And once you get screwed together, there's no more room for anybody else.

So many think like you're either a plug or an outlet,
And a plug and an outlet get together and get plugged together,
And then the whole thing Starts Working,
And after you've gotten plugged, you've got to get unplugged before you can make anything Work with someone different.

It's not.

We have lost our words for love, and not having words, can no longer understand the ideas.
We have let our gods and our laws and our society's disapproval take away our joy.
We have cast away our happiness for someone else's morality.
We live in darkness, because we have extinguished the bonfire of passionate consummation
And replaced it with a stand-lamp in the corner.

I have shamelessly stolenlovingly emulated the rhyme and meter of Tennyson's "The Lady of Shallot."

( And it is (comparatively) long. )

Place your arms around me, so:
A shield against the crying cold --
I feel it wait there; I must go

Deep into the piling snow
That covers that once-verdant fold.
Place your arms around me, so

They shelter from the bitter blow
My heart that shivers, shriveled, old,
I feel it. Wait there. I must go

A step alone, for none may know
These secrets listened to and told.
Place your arms around me. So

Defenseless, I must face the foe,
The fear, the frozen faceless -- BOLD
I feel it wait! THERE I must go

NOW and can you help me? NO!
But ... yes, oh Sunlight, warm and gold!
Place your arms around me, so
I FEEL it. Wait. There I must ... go.

Workload today is between four and five times normal. Busy day.

I like.

I'm going to rewrite my interest list from scratch sometime within the next two weeks. Then I'm going to revisit the "similar interests" thing to see if anyone new pops up on the radar of people I should be reading.

I gaze once again
At the spark I remember:
My salvation;
My frustration.
It burns like a coal
On the skin of my soul
As I flirt with the pain
Of the ever-glowing ember.

When I see my own reflection,
Shall I say that I don't care?
In the glass of recollection,

Was I pure in my affection?
If I lay my spirit bare
When I see my own reflection,

I could never claim perfection
Seeing true the image there
In the glass of recollection.

In the opposite direction
(Where my ego tends to err
When I see my own reflection),

My humility's objection
Says my pride is hardly fair.
In the glass of recollection,

Automatic incorrection
Makes me wonder how I dare
When I see my own reflection
In the glass of recollection.

Standing alone in the center of the dark,
Shouting just to force a reprieve from the silence,
I listen to the echoes of my half-mad bark
And cringe at the warping of my fear into violence.
Something is out there, feeding on my terror,
Tearing at my soul, and it laughs at my defiance.
I shouldn't be here. This is all an error.
This is just a nightmare. This is not reality.
Heart beating wildly, can I stand the scare, or
Will I find the truth behind the dreaming world's causality?
Will I be another inexplicable fatality?

I should have been asleep hours ago. Now it's probably too late to expect that I'll wake up in time for work if I do fall asleep. Four months my life has been ripped apart now, and I just don't seem to be healing on an emotional level at all. My appetite is intermittent at best, my nights are routine torture if I can't find some distraction (and those I do find usually don't help much), my days are mainly a constant struggle to find a mood other than bleak depression or blind lashing-out rage at the interminable and inescapable pain.

I need to get out and be around people, see new faces, make friends, but I'm imprisoned in my own home most of the time because I have the children to be a father for. I don't have the option of just taking off for a while, I don't have the money to get a babysitter from time to time, and I'm starting to collapse under the weight.

I've been able to go drumming every other week for the past few weeks, recently by imposing on the generous nature and the affection for my daughter that the landlord's family has. (They're also my next-door neighbors.) I can't really count on that lasting on a permanent basis, and I don't like doing it anyway because I can't afford to pay them.

I get to go to church on Sunday. There they have a nursery and a children's program, so I don't have to feel guilty about a couple hours of trying to take care of me. It's helping, but it just isn't enough. I don't have the time or the support to get more involved in the activities on other days, where there's socialization that I desperately need.

Tonight's one of those times I truly despair. I just can't make myself believe it'll ever get any better.