I dreamt I was back in Cairo last night. I was down on Talat Harb street, near the hub at the center of the city, and there was a large pool there. It was so full of people that nobody could dive for fear of landing on another. Heads above the surface all blackhaired, except for mine which bobbed in the sun so much higher than the rest. Blonde hair standing out in the center of the dark like the negative of a medical photo of a melanoma mole.
Next I was standing beside the pool and talking with a woman. She, of course, was absolutely beautiful. Long black hair hanging in wet curls -- her right eye hidden behind the strands, her left eye ice blue. Somehow, we were speaking of passion.
Im Passionate I sayed.
no youre not. She replied. you dont have passion.
Then everything stopped in the dream, a slow motion pan from her sharp features back across the pool full of heads above water and over to the large stone wall flanking the pool. There was a motif of golden elephants across the wall, a trunk-to-tail procession.
My blonde hair had sundried, baby thin and floating up in the breeze from my skull like flames. My scalp was burning.
So I woke up thinking of passion and suddenly remembered those two small words that escaped into last nights journal entry: no passion, just tracers and whisps.
Shes right, I may not have passion.
So what IS passion then? I am not talking about sexual passion because that is already a part of the general passion. Sometimes sexual passion is a misguided grasp, a sunflare explosion of pent-up energy based in something else, a transmutation. Sexual passion isnt what that conversation was about.
I have a connotation of passion and I see it like an anger sometimes, but what is the real definition of passion?
Synonyms: passion, fervor, fire, zeal, ardor
These nouns denote powerful, intense emotion. Passion is a deep, overwhelming emotion: There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy (Richard Brinsley Sheridan). The term may signify sexual desire or anger: He flew into a violent passion and abused me mercilessly (H.G. Wells). Fervor is great warmth and intensity of feeling: The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal (William James). Fire is burning passion: In our youth our hearts were touched with fire (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.). Zeal is strong, enthusiastic devotion to a cause, ideal, or goal and tireless diligence in its furtherance: Laurie [resolved], with a glow of philanthropic zeal, to found and endow an institution for... women with artistic tendencies (Louisa May Alcott). Ardor is fiery intensity of feeling: the furious ardor of my zeal repressed (Charles Churchill). See also synonyms at feeling
Hmph. Zeal. Theres that word again. Keeps popping up hidden in my dreams, doesnt it? Passion also means suffering?
My brain is so full of racing thoughts this morning because of this. I could sit here for two hours and still not get it all out just right. Its currently 6:34 and I have so much to do before work begins again. Morgan is groaning, curled up beside my feet. His eyes keep glancing up at me when I look at him, he needs to go out early today I think.
Passion is zeal is suffering?
The CBC news this morning is talking about all the people that are at Auschwitz today to mark the 60th year since the holocaust. I dont want to say anniversary, but in some cases perhaps it is.
The reporter was describing the scene there in the fields behind whats left of the crematorium, not far from the low slung buildings which were the barracks. The survivors today to speak of the atrocities are few in numbers now because even if they were only 15 when they were in that camp, they are 75 today. Widowed.
She said it was cold, snow was falling, the crowds were huddled in blankets and I pictured it as it is today first. Then I pictured it as it would have been 60 years ago and my first thought was of romance. Not of the skeletons and screaming, not of the sorrow, anguish. No, the first thing I thought of was of falling in love.
When I was living in Israel, I had a job for a short while helping out a guy that worked in the shoe factory at Neot Mordechai. He was a truckdriver, and we had to deliver sandals to Nazareth. I remember one day in particular that I will not likely forget. We arrived at the building where this one delivery was going, and we walked into the offices. The woman that was there to receive us was in her late 60s or early 70s and she was just one of those people you instantly like. Yknow, the whole sparkling eyes thing. She bid us to sit and she made us coffee. They spoke in Hebrew which I knew little of, so I just sat and took it all in.
She put a small cream jug, a bowl of sugar, a jar of honey and the coffee urn onto a silver platter and she walked over with it to the table in front of us. When she bent forward to lay the tray on the table, I saw that tattoo.
I couldnt read the numbers anymore, as it was more of a green smudge on her liverspotted arm after so many years in the sun, but I instantly knew what it was. I bet I looked horrified, but I had never seen one of those tattoos before. I looked up at her face again with a new understanding of who she was and I wanted to cry.
I wanted to hug her, I wanted to go back in time with her. I looked at her face again trying to remove those 50 years, what did you look like then? I was thinking. I wanted to go back with her there and fall in love, huddled together in November with the sweet stench of burning hair.
The tsunami brought out the same feelings in me. Disaster is romantic.
Airport terminals make me feel the same way. Whenever I am in the crowds of an airport, I scan the faces and wonder which of you has just left it all behind, which of you just lost what you thought was your life? Are you saying good bye here to somebody for the last time? Or have you just done that in some other country and are now arriving here for the first time, alone and feeling scared? Maybe I am just picking up on the general emotion that terminals keep inside. So much emotional energy in those places, and deep sorrow is sexy.
I suppose all this is making me sound incredibly macabre, but my thoughts on passion this morning are being defined by this. I certainly do not sidestep the understanding of so much death and how horrible that is. The 100s of thousands dead from the tsunami, the traincrash in LA yesterday, Pompeii, . Of course thats terrible. BUT amid the wreckage and mortality are a man and a woman locked into the throes of real life. Maybe for the first time those two people really understand and feel life and its heart of sorrow and suffering. Maybe they meet in the rubble, and that love is going to last.
If I have lost my passion, does that mean perhaps -- that I am no longer suffering?
Next I was standing beside the pool and talking with a woman. She, of course, was absolutely beautiful. Long black hair hanging in wet curls -- her right eye hidden behind the strands, her left eye ice blue. Somehow, we were speaking of passion.
Im Passionate I sayed.
no youre not. She replied. you dont have passion.
Then everything stopped in the dream, a slow motion pan from her sharp features back across the pool full of heads above water and over to the large stone wall flanking the pool. There was a motif of golden elephants across the wall, a trunk-to-tail procession.
My blonde hair had sundried, baby thin and floating up in the breeze from my skull like flames. My scalp was burning.
So I woke up thinking of passion and suddenly remembered those two small words that escaped into last nights journal entry: no passion, just tracers and whisps.
Shes right, I may not have passion.
So what IS passion then? I am not talking about sexual passion because that is already a part of the general passion. Sometimes sexual passion is a misguided grasp, a sunflare explosion of pent-up energy based in something else, a transmutation. Sexual passion isnt what that conversation was about.
I have a connotation of passion and I see it like an anger sometimes, but what is the real definition of passion?
Synonyms: passion, fervor, fire, zeal, ardor
These nouns denote powerful, intense emotion. Passion is a deep, overwhelming emotion: There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy (Richard Brinsley Sheridan). The term may signify sexual desire or anger: He flew into a violent passion and abused me mercilessly (H.G. Wells). Fervor is great warmth and intensity of feeling: The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal (William James). Fire is burning passion: In our youth our hearts were touched with fire (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.). Zeal is strong, enthusiastic devotion to a cause, ideal, or goal and tireless diligence in its furtherance: Laurie [resolved], with a glow of philanthropic zeal, to found and endow an institution for... women with artistic tendencies (Louisa May Alcott). Ardor is fiery intensity of feeling: the furious ardor of my zeal repressed (Charles Churchill). See also synonyms at feeling
Hmph. Zeal. Theres that word again. Keeps popping up hidden in my dreams, doesnt it? Passion also means suffering?
My brain is so full of racing thoughts this morning because of this. I could sit here for two hours and still not get it all out just right. Its currently 6:34 and I have so much to do before work begins again. Morgan is groaning, curled up beside my feet. His eyes keep glancing up at me when I look at him, he needs to go out early today I think.
Passion is zeal is suffering?
The CBC news this morning is talking about all the people that are at Auschwitz today to mark the 60th year since the holocaust. I dont want to say anniversary, but in some cases perhaps it is.
The reporter was describing the scene there in the fields behind whats left of the crematorium, not far from the low slung buildings which were the barracks. The survivors today to speak of the atrocities are few in numbers now because even if they were only 15 when they were in that camp, they are 75 today. Widowed.
She said it was cold, snow was falling, the crowds were huddled in blankets and I pictured it as it is today first. Then I pictured it as it would have been 60 years ago and my first thought was of romance. Not of the skeletons and screaming, not of the sorrow, anguish. No, the first thing I thought of was of falling in love.
When I was living in Israel, I had a job for a short while helping out a guy that worked in the shoe factory at Neot Mordechai. He was a truckdriver, and we had to deliver sandals to Nazareth. I remember one day in particular that I will not likely forget. We arrived at the building where this one delivery was going, and we walked into the offices. The woman that was there to receive us was in her late 60s or early 70s and she was just one of those people you instantly like. Yknow, the whole sparkling eyes thing. She bid us to sit and she made us coffee. They spoke in Hebrew which I knew little of, so I just sat and took it all in.
She put a small cream jug, a bowl of sugar, a jar of honey and the coffee urn onto a silver platter and she walked over with it to the table in front of us. When she bent forward to lay the tray on the table, I saw that tattoo.
I couldnt read the numbers anymore, as it was more of a green smudge on her liverspotted arm after so many years in the sun, but I instantly knew what it was. I bet I looked horrified, but I had never seen one of those tattoos before. I looked up at her face again with a new understanding of who she was and I wanted to cry.
I wanted to hug her, I wanted to go back in time with her. I looked at her face again trying to remove those 50 years, what did you look like then? I was thinking. I wanted to go back with her there and fall in love, huddled together in November with the sweet stench of burning hair.
The tsunami brought out the same feelings in me. Disaster is romantic.
Airport terminals make me feel the same way. Whenever I am in the crowds of an airport, I scan the faces and wonder which of you has just left it all behind, which of you just lost what you thought was your life? Are you saying good bye here to somebody for the last time? Or have you just done that in some other country and are now arriving here for the first time, alone and feeling scared? Maybe I am just picking up on the general emotion that terminals keep inside. So much emotional energy in those places, and deep sorrow is sexy.
I suppose all this is making me sound incredibly macabre, but my thoughts on passion this morning are being defined by this. I certainly do not sidestep the understanding of so much death and how horrible that is. The 100s of thousands dead from the tsunami, the traincrash in LA yesterday, Pompeii, . Of course thats terrible. BUT amid the wreckage and mortality are a man and a woman locked into the throes of real life. Maybe for the first time those two people really understand and feel life and its heart of sorrow and suffering. Maybe they meet in the rubble, and that love is going to last.
If I have lost my passion, does that mean perhaps -- that I am no longer suffering?
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It's a good thing I never went into the military.