Stream of Consciousness ~ What is Love?

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Why didn’t anyone tell me about love, about romance, about passion? Why were the mysteries of being in love kept from me?

I never knew a love like this was possible. Complete, utter, total drowning in a feeling of warm, liquid comfort. Encircled by a soft blanket, a warm pool, a perfect bed.

It is not the hard passion of lust, all edges and erections, pushing against each other, slamming against walls, benches and floorboards. Heavy breathing, panting, gulping in the essence of another before it disappears. Although lust has its place. A place to start, a place to return when anger nips at my heels and frustration creeps in.

But lust isn’t all there is to love. There is more. There is the opening up, breaking down, loose liquid surrender of giving yourself to another. The hard mask of politeness, of significance, of brilliance falls to the floor exposing the true nature of our humanity. The need to be seen, touched, adored, appreciated and cared for. The joy of being appreciated naked — without shame, without comparison, without anything except the wonder of being given such a gift from another.

Without clothes our differences are exposed and we revel in the delight of another creature so similar and yet so foreign. The mole on his back, the dent in his hip, the line on his neck, the shape of his instep are all unfamiliar. Hands with different fingers, eyes with different flecks of colour, hair of a different texture and skin with a strange aroma.

Fascinating and delightful.

I am willing to be explored, appreciated and investigated without excuses for deviating from the normal. My curved belly, my rounded bottom, uneven breasts with flushed nipples all arouse. Never becoming as familiar as your own because the glimpses are rare.

Love is a feeling of expansion, of opening up that keeps growing. Like a sensation that pushes beyond the edges of a physical shape. The open green rolling fields of a mind that stretch beyond the edges of the horizon, the blue blue sky of the soul that flies off into outer space and the deep navy waters of the ocean of the heart that spill, lap, storm from shore to shore encircling the world — surging and retreating, with the phases of the moon.

The fields, the sky and the sea. Mind, soul and heart. Where is the body? It is finite and solid and has edges and limits. It grows older and changes without interference. It is visible, recognisable and always on display. But a mind … but a soul … but a heart can be anything I decide. Not an amorphous concept without substance like the puff of smoke from an extinguished candle, but huge and infinite, beyond what the eye can see.

Rolling, changing from moment to moment (except for the fields … taking a little longer to change .. but changing none the less with the turning of the seasons and the influence of the weather. Over time … eroding like the chalk cliffs of France, moving like the shifting plates of the ocean floor, erupting from volcanoes, ice cliffs falling into the sea as the weather warms).

I am no longer tight and contained in a vessel too small. I cannot stuff the ocean into a tea-cup or the sky into a balloon or the fields into garden pot. Our bodies are a tiny frame giving us only a thumbnail of who we really are.

Why the urgency? Why do my fingers fly across the page anxious and startled like a deer who hears a rifle shot? This isn’t a race. This is the rolling fields, the chalk cliffs, the lush forest trees trying to paint themselves with small strokes like an impressionist artist on a canvas. It takes time to choose the right colour, the right brush and to put one word next to the other so it is similar and yet so different.

Like his feet, like all our feet with toes, ankles and an arch but a different shape, a different texture, a different memory of the paths he’s walked, the shoes he’s worn, the oceans he’s waded in and the ground he’s stood upon when I was nothing to him except a faint sparkle out of the corner of his eye.