Love (kinda part 2)

Contrary to popular belief most men do not get their inspiration or that moment of clarity while taking a dump. Many would love to think that the correlation between our bowel movement and cognitive functions is strong.

I was in the kitchen, like I usually am, either cooking, washing dishes or eating; all three activities are related to food. I'm seeing a pattern here, food and my thoughts (not that I'm a big eater). Anyway, I was in the kitchen washing dishes and using that alone time to reflect on life and love.

My career does not occupy my thoughts so much; there is less joy to be attained from something you spend most of your life time pursuing. The irony.

The thought of unconditional love entered my mind. There's that word again, that disturbing notion of love. Don't misunderstand me; like god I think it exists, but like god also I don't think one should place all ones stock in it. Some would call me cynical for my view on love, but life experiences have taught me much.

I once had a young lady profess such undying love for me; that even though she had joined a cult (known to most as a religion), of which the pious despot (aka pastor) had exorcised her demons, and convinced her that if she had sex with me again they would return. Writing this now, I truly question my choice of this young lady as a partner at the time; what the hell was I thinking. Ah, I wasn't thinking. She revealed this to me and said that she loved me so much that she did not want me to leave her; so I could have sex with whom ever I wanted once I stayed with her. At the time the proposal seem to be mad; I mean it was simply preposterous, no sex with her and still be dating her, still consider her my woman, how insane is that.

Suffice to say we went along our separate ways and at last check she had left the cult and found some one else to insert demons into her at will. So much for undying love.

The closest thing to unconditional love in my thirty odd years on this earth that I have experienced is the love I share with my son now; even when I feel like giving him a tap in his arse. Not even with my parents; and I know once J gets his innocence stolen by the world, my love for him will change.

And that is not a bad thing. It does not mean that I no longer love him; it just means my tolerance for his shit will decrease, my expectations of him increase; and with expectations comes disappointment, disillusion and all the other things that question and test the strength of love.

Love is suppose to be a marathon, not a sprint.

Ah! Love, mind numbing, thought altering, state of delirium, LOVE. A good friend of mind said to me that she wanted to grow old with someone; that of course being but one aspect of what she sees in her mind as an expression of love. I guess it would be, what else could explain wanting to be around someone long enough to see them become toothless, decrepit and senile (among other things) other than loss of your own lucidity. It must be love.

I am sure that I don't understand love, because understanding love requires you to understand and know people and yourself. According to my mom no matter how long you spend with someone you will never fully know them; she has been with my father for well over thirty years (I thing dem people pressing forty years together already); don't ask me if that is love, their relationship is a blog on its own. People never fully know or understand themselves. The Johari window gives great insight into how un-insightful we can be about ourselves.

Swingers love their spouses, yet they openly engage in the surrender of the flesh to human desire with other people (one of the biggest test of love in our sphere); this may not be some one else's notion of love. On the contrary many would view this as a perversion, anti-love behaviour. Rude, fast people, who says your definition of love must be mine. Ike beat the crapout of Tina Turner, but he claimed to love her.

We say and do many things in the name of love (poor jab love), we punish and compromise ourselves, sacrifice our very soul on the altar of love; in the moment, and a few hours, days, weeks, months maybe even years later we think to ourselves; what the hell was I thinking. But that's just it, whatever deluded perception you have of love, the common thing is its ability to cloud your judgement and distort the normal thinking process, sometimes with dangerous and life altering consequences.

Love! Irrespective of what you think about it, it is simply fascinating. I find myself observing young couples in love and thinking almost fiendishly, wait till later; you'll won't even see it coming, the hurt, the pain. Love can't exist without pain, the greater the love the greater the pain.

What we know of love is simply what we perceive it to be and our perceptions are very fluid.

Everyone at some point in their life falls in love and will as the sun rises every day, get hurt. Some of us never fully recover, some just never recover period. The brave or stupid, depending on who you ask, venture back out there to try their luck again (it is really a game of chance). We're humans, we never really give up all hope, so we hope this time will be better than the last.

Guess what!

Love (maybe part I)

It's me again your lovable neighbourhood cynic. I have been tussling in my mind with what the next topic of discussion would be. I was torn between the subject of love (or the notion of it anyway) and part two of assistance. A good friend of mine thought I should tear a new asshole for our telecom providers, given their ineptitude in delivering good service and value for our hard earned money; and yet another thought I should write about the energy of storms and the misunderstanding of that energy, much like her.

But in the end I opted to write about love, yes I said it love; a subject we know (at least in our own sphere) everything about and nothing about at the same time. I am certainly not an expert in the area, but as usual I have my own views. I think this may be the first in a two part series (or not).

http://www.thefreedicitonary.com/ has ten definitions for love and seven for loved, loving, loves. The number one definition reads "A deep tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness." Have you been moved by that scholarly sounding feeling; ooooow, I feel so warm and fussy inside. Beres Hammond says love means never to say that you're sorry. I guess being wrong and strong works for him. What kinda doatish meaning is that for love, as if you will go through an entire relationship and not do something stupid that would hurt someone.

My definition of love is, the foolishness that ensues as a result of an overflow of chemicals in the brain; which we could probably do without. All part of god's grand plan to be amused for an eternity, the reward to him/herself for having laboured for a full six days.

Love or the notion of love and what it is, what it should be and what it ultimately becomes, simply spits ( a big thick nasty yellow film) in the face of logic and defies rational human behaviour. More specifically "romantic love" is illogical and irrational. It is sometimes depressing the notion, because, as cynical as I may be, at the heart of my quarrels with love and lovers is the fact that I am a bit of a hopeless romantic. Thus a battle of epic proportions rages daily in my head, my heart and even poisons the blood coursing throw my veins.

Ah! But a hopeless romantic I am; not in the conventional sense of course. I don't believe in this "enchanted" happily ever after, or the white picket fence. It's a farce. The result of too many fairy tales, too many movies and the deliberate attempts to escape the harsh realities of life as we have made it on this wretched planet. Believing in happily ever after is like believing that jah will provide, even though you sit on your arse using none of your god given talents to provide for yourself. There will be no happily ever after; there will be good times and the not so good times.

Again I went a bit off on a tangent. Back to the root of this posting, love, or the illusion of it. No one ever really questions whether someone truly loves them outside of the trappings of a romantic relationship. Why? One rarely ask a friend do you love me; true friends being there for you is all you really care about; on occasion you tell your friend you love them. In that relationship, no one complains about not being told I love you or being shown love, etc, etc, etc. Because you know you are loved. So what's the difference with romantic love? SEX!!! There we came back to it, the root of all our ills (I'm kidding, people giving up all responsibility to the north wind and blaming everything bad on the morning star is the real root of our problems).

Once you have plugged in, the rules of engagement change. What the hell does one involved in a romantic relationship mean when they say, I Love You.

How many of us have heard this one, I love you but I am not in love with you. Such crap, crap for a long time perpetrated by the softer, gentler, kinder sex (softer, kinder, gentler, my ass). Hog wash. Did you ever really "love" that person to begin with. The pretense continues. All the world a stage.......

I have had so many women over the last sixteen years of my life express such intense feelings of love for me that you would need a surgical team to remove cupid's little weapon of mass destruction, embedded in their hearts or so it would seem.

My first lesson in love came from this fine thick brown skin darling, with lips so full the thought of them on mine was enough to bring me to a point of ecstasy; her butt, oh my god - the phrase apple bottom had its genesis in her rear (Shit, I think I just confused love with lust, or well; it was my first time, that's my story and I'm sticking to it). We were in love or so I thought until her ex-boyfriend returned to the island. That was the only other time I cried like a baby, other than the first time I entered this world (all the other times I cried like a grown man). I made a promise to myself then, one I have obviously reneged. Yet another woman said to me she would love me and stay with me forever no matter what, good and bad; she had me convinced too. Alas I found out the life expectancy of forever was roughly one year.

But where are all these women now; they are loving and being loved by someone else, or loving themselves. And the feelings of intense love (eroded with time, not enough sex, not enough time, not enough money etc etc) becomes a story to share with their girlfriends or the next poor sap to come along (and state with conviction how he can heal that broken heart and love her like no one has loved her before.....yaduh yaduh yaduh) and have his heart and very likely her's too ripped out and stomped on like an unwelcome cockroach.

Love is too complex to be defined and the meaning changes with the people involved like the weather changes in hurricane season. It comes with the energy and destructiveness of a storm, and once it has pass it leaves you with the pieces to put together and debris to clean up. But after a storm everything seems new, fresh. You have been given a clean slate to start anew; and wait patiently with warning or not for the passing of the next storm.

Love blindsides you. Boom! You have no idea what hit you till you awake from this long coma, unable to tell who is that person staring back at you in the mirror and who you use to be before this enigmatic illusion entered your life. Do you even want to remember, does it matter. Ah! You move on, because it is better to have love and lost than to never love at all. REALLY!!!

But love like everything else eventually fades. No matter how intense the love, how real the love, how much it is professed, how much people cry, how many blows they give or take, how many sacrifices, love fades and sometimes it is laid to rest with many left to mourn.

It hurts terribly when it fades, and you spend a long time thinking about when, how and why it faded. Why does it hurt? The reason for love and the pain of love is as profound and mysterious as the meaning of life.

So the pursuit of love and the meaning of life continues. Perhaps the meaning will be revealed at the end of the trail of the pieces of your broken heart.