shivasshakti

i've been drinking for 30 hours

My first week in this town has been profound, amazing. The culmination of all the changes that have been happening inside me over the last year. I'm starting to see things symbolicly, to rant like a literary madman.

Night before last I was tired, I curled up in the sleeping bag on the floor of my empty apartment. Unable to sleep I get dressed and go to the pub three blocks away, where I had a wonderful conversation with a pair of philosiphy majors, about positivism, existentialism and post-modern philosphy in general followed by discussions about travel, drugs sex etc. Has a conversation ever set you on fire?

They leave to go study (although how one studies after five or six beers is beyond me), I go say hello to two beautiful women at the other end of the bar, one of them has been sending smiles my way for the better part of an hour. We talk about music life, art, writing, one is a songwriter. I begin to talk about symbolism.

"Have you ever had one line of a book send you into a trance? The line that set me off the other day was this 'For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower, beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive...' I got up and started walking, love for everything filling me, I looked to my right and I saw a pretty young woman skipping up to a man sitting on a bench, she throws her harms around him from behind, and I overflow, filled with infinite compassion for them. A pure expression of love, not eros but love based on honest connection. I continue walking; again on my right I see a couple taking their wedding photographs, compared to what I had just seen it seemed false, contrived force and very cold. The shackles of definition that we use in a futile attempt to reign in love, to make it selfish and possesive. Next block again on my right (funny how things come in threes) I see a homeless man talking to himself, the absence of love, of connection with others drives one to madness."

"It seemed so marvelously simple, we are comfused, eros is not love, lovbe is just the simple desire to connect, so for a fleeting moment you can know that you are not alone, more than that, that we are all made of the same stuff. Imagine if the entire world, all six billion strong stopped for a moment to express love simply and honestly, it would cause an implosion of everything we know and are. At the end of this walk one phrase popped into my head, 'The beautiful thing about humanity is it's infinite potentiallity.' The fact that two people can share love, implies that we all can, proving to me that the perfect world is within the realm of human potential, and that is a beautiful enough thought to make want to continue to live and love in the most profound way possible."

All the time that I am ranting, they are looking at me, two pairs of beautiful, wet eyes, listening, transfixed.

The first woman smiled at me and said, "You seem mildly explosive."

They then get up to leave, she comes up to me, hugs me, kisses the corner of my mouth and looks into my eyes, "You are brilliant, but you need focus."

She smiles again, honestly, deeply, squeezes my hand, lingering on my fingertips then walks out the door. I am in rapture.

[Edited on May 31, 2005 11:31AM]