Mirror, mirror on the wall.

Distance is an unknown variable.
There are many unknown variables but distance is certainly one of the most uncertain.

If I were to be a cynic tonight… what would I see? What would I choose?

There are vignettes of feeling, of sensation… like memories from a previous life.

flaming flowers that brightly blaze
swirling clouds in violet haze*


I love that line by L.P. Hartley: “The past is like a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

How do they do things? How does one locate, retrieve, and archive the old ways?

I look.
I delve into the depths of the sea and grasp blindly at something hidden between seaweeds and fragments of shells.
What have I brought to the surface? What have I retrieved?

I remember K. and R.
Vivacious, steady, bright-eyed K.
Who went away to a faraway land and refused to stay the same person. She grew and changed and she became an older, different K. It would be silly to say “better” or “worse” than before. She was just different…
And tenacious, steady R. became the past- he became part of the foreign country and she no longer knew him, or loved him with an everlasting passion like they had promised one another.
Is such a promise viable? Realistic?
People change after all- how can we blame someone for evolving?

You said you were going to conquer new frontiers**


Then there are D. and B.
She went. He stayed.
She tried. He tried.
They both tried- really really hard.
But they fell apart anyway, and she smiled her way into the glimmering life of money, and he stayed back and began to look for love again.

We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?**


W. and P. would have tamed the world.
They would have fulfilled the fairytale fantasy of love-across-the-seven-seas.
Except that W. didn’t make it.
If ever someone has searched in a possessed, frenzied fashion for some sort of saving grace in an unexpected, inexplicable death, it is P.
She’s still trying to find it.
She’s found other things along the way- but there are no more castles in the air.
Perhaps it’s easier to think of them making it because circumstances allow for that romantic possibility..?
But no… I think not.
I really think they would have managed…

We laid her next to him beneath the willow
While the angels sang a whiskey lullaby***


But while distance is an unknown variable… and the past is painful and incoherent… it seems there may be a mantra of sorts…

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 the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
…
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)****


Nothing is known. To attempt certainty is to defy the very laws of life, isn’t it?
Yet we strive and strain and search and seek…
Surely even the most “rational” among us cannot resist the occasional glance at a horoscope prediction..? Surely there is an inevitable thrill of expectation as we crunch open a fortune-cookie after a Cantonese dinner? I know I am susceptible. The temptation to know is ridiculously powerful.

However…it is impossible to really, truly know… So where do I go from here?

It’s easier when you go with the flow, and believe what makes the most sense to your heart.
It’s easier to find a mantra, and let it cartwheel and echo through the void of distance.

So then…that is what I choose, I suppose.
I choose to enjoy the dynamic of love.
I choose to believe in it.
I choose to have faith in the concept of bridging distance, of transforming unknown variables into manageable realities.
I choose to be talk about it, to write about it, to revel in it, to learn not to hold-back-and-keep-some-part-of-yourself-as-insurance-just-in-case…
I choose to believe that I have a choice…surely the greatest illusion of all?

I choose not to be a cynic tonight.

So here we are reinventing the wheel
I'm shaking hands with a hurricane
It's a colour that I can't describe
It's a language I can't understand**

Chaos meets sunshine meets destiny.




* “Vincent – Don Mclean
** “The Pioneers” – Bloc Party
*** “Whisky Lullaby” – Brad Paisley
**** “i carry your heart with me” – ee cummings