Theme Park at its Darkest

8: the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart (Continued)

I have moments where I find myself on the verge of tears. One of them was when I read the following:

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”

 Pablo Neruda,

100 Love Sonnets

That is absolutely true of how I have felt since those nights we spent together. If nothing else, meeting you and the sublime agony that followed has brought out the best in me. I keep that Corinthians quote because it tells me what to aspire to.

I must be patient. I must be kind. I must not try to get my own way; I must accept that you are doing what you have to. Nor am I angry. I strongly believe you are doing what you have to do.

If I could have one wish, I would wish that we were together on Phi Phi Island on a deserted beach, staying in a shack. I would lie beside you on the sand and read you Pablo Neruda’s 100 Love Sonnets. At night, we would make love and afterwards, you would sleep in my arms. (I have read up to seventy-odd but had to stop after last weekend because my eyes fill up with tears every time I open the damned book).

I am a little hesitant to tell you this, because I’m worried you’ll think I’m a complete fucking idiot. Nonetheless, I’m telling you because it is a true demonstration of vulnerability. I show you my heart and open myself to further rejection and ridicule and I choose to do it because after 38 years of fighting to survive, I have come to understand that to demonstrate vulnerability out of love, for someone who may hurt you in response, is the ultimate show of strength.

The truth is, I want to be vulnerable. You may remember me explaining my truthfulness when you questioned it; being truthful creates intimacy, and vulnerability is the flip side of that coin.

The essence of my persistence is this. Leo Tolstoy, in another of my favorite quotes, wrote that,

‘We are held in the world by the love that is kept for us in other people’.

No matter what there is about you, or what you think you’ve done, there is nothing – nothing – that could change my feelings for you or make me love you any less. I am always holding you, Eurydice. I will always protect you, always trust you, always hope it will work out for the best, and I will always persevere.

Always.

People are like planets and they move in and out of one another’s orbits over time. I won’t dishonour you with false promises. But you will always be in my heart. And I believe that in some way, we are fated; I hope that events will bring us back together. I also believe that reunion is far more within your sphere of influence than you realize.

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in

my heart) i am never without it (anywhere

i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear

no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want

no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

– e.e.cummings

I am carrying your heart, Eurydice. I carry it in my heart.

Love always,

Jarrod.

**

I jolted awake the next morning, animated by the electric certainty that, wherever she was, she had read it.

Shortly after, I discovered she had put word amongst our circle that I was stalking her.

                                                    **

I had believed a stalker was someone who peeped through your windows, searched through your rubbish and followed you around. According to a legal fact sheet produced by a Google search, a stalker is someone who engages in ‘a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear’.

Apparently, that conduct includes unwanted contact as infrequently as once a week. I had, in fact, been sending either a text or short email every week for two months since sending Fifty-One Jokers and an Ace.

First, I felt sick. Then, I felt humiliated.

This entry was posted on November 28, 2014 at 1:26 am and is filed under Acts of devotion, Love letters, Observation, Real Men with tags 100 Love Sonnets, Ace, Corinthians, e.e. cummings, Eurydice, google, i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart), Joker, Leo Tolstoy, Pablo Neruda, Phi Phi Island, stalker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.