She Was.

Tonight I found Cavafy.

Half An Hour

I never had you, nor will I ever have you
I suppose. A few words, an approach
as in the bar yesterday, and nothing more.
It is, undeniably, a pity. But we who serve Art
sometimes with intensity of mind, and of course only
for a short while, we create pleasure
which almost seems real.
So in the bar the day before yesterday — the merciful alcohol
was also helping much –
I had a perfectly erotic half-hour.
And it seems to me that you understood,
and stayed somewhat longer on purpose.
This was very necessary. Because
for all the imagination and the wizard alcohol,
I needed to see your lips as well,
I needed to have your body close.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1917)

And he said everything that I tried to say yesterday much better than I ever could.

I want him to know me. (I want more from him than he knows.)

I want to tell him everything. (Even all that I am not supposed to.)

I want his dark, sullen moodiness. (I love his petulant face.)

I want him to trace his fingertips over me and remind me of how I can be soft. (I’m so tired of being hard.)

I want to play with him in the raining dark. (I want to meet him there.)

I want to take him inside and show him all that I’ve learnt. (I want to teach him, I want to get inside our otherness.)

I want to dance drunkenly all night, his hands on me constantly. (One of those nights that move in slow motion.)

I want to go home with him, play our songs and undress slowly. (It’s always been the music.)

I want his mouth on mine and my hands in his. (His wrists, my wrists.)

I love not knowing him. (I love the long, slow tease of finding each other out.)

I want to unravel him. (I love the way he tries to unravel me, slowly, layer by layer, week by week.)

I want to clash and to burn. I want the rush, the sleepless nights and empty mornings, the late night phone calls and the silence, the sweetest absolution.

I want no more fucking barriers. (I think he’s as greedy as me.)

And it sure as hell isn’t the answer either!

It seems to me that sex, good sex, really great, amazing, ‘please don’t ever stop touching me’ sex sometimes also happens when there is something just a little bit rotten in the state of longterm lovedom. To have reached the stage of things going wrong, you generally need to have survived the ‘everything is so great let’s get married’ stage. You both know where things go, what fits where best. You know exactly where to touch to provoke that so fucking sexy sharp intake of breath, exactly where to lick to cause the other’s back to arch. You know just how much is enough, how much is too much, how much time it takes, just how to and where to stroke to cause the other to literally tremble with desire.

Besides the lover’s roadmap you’ve acquired, there’s usually enough resentment at this stage to mean that you don’t really care so much about whether the light is flattering, whether your thighs look fat in this position. You’ve always known that you’re not perfect but now your pretty damn sure the other person playing the game isn’t either. So you’re just a little freer, a little less inhibited, more inclined to say, ‘i want your – in my – now, harder, longer, faster, please, yes, oh yes, now’. It all comes a little easier, maybe because you care just a little less about what the other person will think of you afterwards.

Maybe, it’s also the one time of the day, the long day of arguments, and insults, and hurts, that allows you to remember how nice it feels to be touched by the person you’ve been arguing with. What a comfort it is to be stroked, to stroke, to feel pleasure and to give it. Maybe it reminds you of how it used to be, how you fit. Maybe it just reminds you of what it felt like to be so in synch, to give and to take, to communicate, to understand, to feel loved and desired and wanted.

But no matter how great the sex is, it’s not a permanent state, it’s no replacement for intimacy and thus it just doesn’t last. You come, he comes, it’s over and you move to seperate sides of the same suddenly too small bed. Slowly the resentment shroud settles back over you both. Sex neither answers questions, nor does it heal rifts. The loneliness creeps back in, the anger, the sadness, the great big fat question mark.

Sex is neither question nor answer. It’s a temporary escape, a fantasy, a lull, respite.

‘There may be a great fire in your soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself by it, all that passers-by can see is a little smoke coming out of the chimney and they walk on.’

Vincent Van Gogh, Van Gogh’s Letters.

For more from the letters visit Van Gogh’s Letters.

For more on Van Gogh check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh

Being away from home hurts sometimes. Really, truly, hurts.

It’s a physical pain.

I can feel it in my raw, constricted throat. The pain is there each time I try and talk about the way I feel and my words just won’t come out. I can feel it in the heaviness in my chest. In my back and shoulders, they ache like I’ve pulled a muscle, like I’ve been carrying something far too heavy, for far too long. I can feel it in my calves, they’re too tight, like I’ve walked a long way. It’s in my dry, wordless mouth and in my gravelly, tired eyes. And on days like today, low days, blue days, dark cloud days, I just can’t seem to shake it no matter what I do. It follows me around and it nags at me and it whispers to me ‘you just shouldn’t be here, this just isn’t home’.

Today, someone I love and care for so very fucking much, needed me and I couldn’t be there for her. I couldn’t comfort her. Or hold her hand. Or tell her that everything is going to be ok. I couldn’t go with her, or be with her afterwards, or make her laugh or be there while she cried. Instead, I am here, feeling useless and guilty and shitty and useless and guilty.

I hate this decision that I have made sometimes. I hate being here. I hate that being here feels like choosing him over home. I hate missing home. Something is missing all of the time. I miss all of the time.

I miss Flynn, perhaps the greatest dog in the world. I miss her bedtime cuddles, and her sparky morning attitude. I miss her contagious enthusiasm for every brand new day.
I miss her mopey ‘please give me another bit of your wagon wheel‘ eyes. I miss her ‘awww, don’t be sad’ licks every time I cry. And I hate knowing that she must wonder where the fuck I upped and went to.

I miss my best friend. I miss his humour and his constantly optimistic attitude. I miss our long morning talks and our dinners together. I miss our in-jokes. I miss being understood without having to speak. I miss the sense of ease I feel when we are together.

I miss my work. My real work. My ‘use your brain while you work’ work. And I hate the joke of a job that I have here.

I miss Australia.

And I didn’t think I would ever say that.

I miss dust storms and tumble weeds, big blue skies, the wide, vast, green, brown land. I miss scale and perspective. I miss the ocean, the thump of the waves, the sheer size of home. I miss the freedom and the isolation, the grief that you can feel in the land and it’s peoples. I miss the hardness, the gently rolling hills. I miss the Southern Cross. I miss the never-ending ‘as far as my eyes can see’ horizon. I miss Australia. I miss place.

And I hate that this place, this ancient, beautiful, strange and yet familiar place, is feeling more and more like home everyday. I hate that. I hate that I am beginning to experience this place as home. I hate that this place has helped me to heal and to grow and to live braver than I have ever lived before.

But most of all, I hate it that today, I couldn’t be there for the one person, the ONE person I wouldn’t have made it through this life without.