all fires have to burn alive, to live.
I have been well.
* * *
The snow in Philadelphia is blackened and decaying in pocked mounds that are nothing like their original formidable selves. They had been beautiful and stopped traffic, even foot traffic in many places. For days, the center of the streets was the most reliable footpath. You'd look over your shoulder now and then to see a stray car coming, and trudge into the snowbanks long enough to let it pass. No one honked; we all understood the need to hack the rules and get by. The snow was magic, watching it fall and blur my view of the skyscrapers, laughing as I plowed through drifts past mid-thigh ("And mid-thigh for you is no small height," a friend laughed). It was magic, too, in its ability to pull us together into alliances that might melt with the snow, and might not.
There was a snowball fight in Washington Square, organized online the night before. Hundreds of strangers decimated the small park, assembling organically into teams and unleashing waves of snow and glee onto each other. I went with Ari, who asked me how my back was, as a preliminary precaution to tackling me into the nearest mountain of powder.
We destroyed a few sculptures, left like Easter Island monuments in the quieting park, and practiced holds and takedowns from his Brazilian jiu jitsu classes. I was surprised at how easily he lifted me into the air, for a man as lean as he is. We dumped snow on each others' heads and laughed and laughed.
* * *
I've said it before, and I'll say it again
all fires have to burn alive
all fires have to burn alive
from near his heart, he took a rib
but all fires have to burn alive, to live.
* * *
My dating habits in 2009 were largely of the nonexistent variety. I was busy and happy and not bothering with any of it. The first weekend of August, I should have been in Chattanooga, kayaking into bat caves and deepening my connections with one or two of the incredible people I'd met at SXSW. Instead, I drenched myself in lashing torrents of rain, and met up with a man who acted like a sudden oil slick to my emotional traction. A Gemini, with a beautiful mind and a series of fascinating personality quirks and inviting tragic flaws, in a deep state of fluidity and upheaval and discovery - ripe for fusing, staring rapt at potentials, making quick sparking contact with my mind and openness. A potent whiff of my drug of choice, in a unique configuration, and so promising, and so intoxicating, so fast.
It was unexpected, especially since I'd been so good with taking my last relationship slow, how instantly I reverted to patterns of intensity, involvement, entangling. How quickly it went from first meeting to hours and hours of probing conversation, to the full-contact enrapturing and giddiness that feels so much like love so quickly. It gave way (as it usually does, doesn't it?) to heated wrestling with incompatibilities, stubbornness and frustration with the inescapable parts that don't mesh, when dammit so much else does, so much else that so rarely meshes, here, comes together so well.
It's not an unfamiliar tune, but I'd almost forgotten the sound of it. It crescendoed and backed off and crescendoed again, taking on a burning life of its own, until it became something that needed to be gotten ahold of. We got ahold of it, the slippery beast. We are leashing it, we are breaking it like a wild bronco, trying to make it saddle-safe. It is slow, bruising going, but how could you not try, with a horse as beautiful and spirited as that? How could you not try to make it a part of your life?
* * *
Which is to say, my dating life awoke with a start, caught its breath, and decided it was hungry. I've been dating more in the past two months than I've done any other one thing, except for my work. Tall, short, older, younger, black, white, asian, arab, American, foreign, you name it. The dates have, with a few dramatic exceptions, been positive experiences.
All in all, I've met few astonishingly fantastic men, some of whom I want to keep around, none of whom I want to get romantic with. The notable exception was a system-shocking moment of serendipity, a stranger on a bus to DC who played "catch us looking at each other" games with me until one of us could figure out how to make conversation happen - and when it did happen, it was alarmingly electric, each of us increasingly full of incredulity that the other was so... awesome. We spent perhaps four hours together all told, and I left with this strangely unsettling feeling that I couldn't think of how to make him more perfect for me. Five days later, he took a job in Singapore, and flew home to Sydney to prepare for his new life. Really, universe? It's like that, is it? You tease.
It's a process. I'd just forgotten how exhausting it can be.
* * *
OkCupid keeps showing me my various local friends and exes in my matches. Sometimes we view each other, sometimes we wink, mutually critique, exchange stories.
Ari and I, after a fun first date in December wherein we decided that dating would fail but friendship would succeed, have taken occasional refuge in each others' company when it gets too depressing. "Last night I walked through the snowfall with someone I just had no interest in sharing the moment with," he told me over tapas and wine. "It felt like such a waste. Basically, I'm really happy to see you."
I couldn't have said it better myself. We played Go and drank cognac for the rest of the evening, as the snow fell. Respite from the process, for a night at least.
* * *
The snow in Philadelphia is blackened and decaying in pocked mounds that are nothing like their original formidable selves. They had been beautiful and stopped traffic, even foot traffic in many places. For days, the center of the streets was the most reliable footpath. You'd look over your shoulder now and then to see a stray car coming, and trudge into the snowbanks long enough to let it pass. No one honked; we all understood the need to hack the rules and get by. The snow was magic, watching it fall and blur my view of the skyscrapers, laughing as I plowed through drifts past mid-thigh ("And mid-thigh for you is no small height," a friend laughed). It was magic, too, in its ability to pull us together into alliances that might melt with the snow, and might not.
There was a snowball fight in Washington Square, organized online the night before. Hundreds of strangers decimated the small park, assembling organically into teams and unleashing waves of snow and glee onto each other. I went with Ari, who asked me how my back was, as a preliminary precaution to tackling me into the nearest mountain of powder.
We destroyed a few sculptures, left like Easter Island monuments in the quieting park, and practiced holds and takedowns from his Brazilian jiu jitsu classes. I was surprised at how easily he lifted me into the air, for a man as lean as he is. We dumped snow on each others' heads and laughed and laughed.
* * *
I've said it before, and I'll say it again
all fires have to burn alive
all fires have to burn alive
from near his heart, he took a rib
but all fires have to burn alive, to live.
* * *
My dating habits in 2009 were largely of the nonexistent variety. I was busy and happy and not bothering with any of it. The first weekend of August, I should have been in Chattanooga, kayaking into bat caves and deepening my connections with one or two of the incredible people I'd met at SXSW. Instead, I drenched myself in lashing torrents of rain, and met up with a man who acted like a sudden oil slick to my emotional traction. A Gemini, with a beautiful mind and a series of fascinating personality quirks and inviting tragic flaws, in a deep state of fluidity and upheaval and discovery - ripe for fusing, staring rapt at potentials, making quick sparking contact with my mind and openness. A potent whiff of my drug of choice, in a unique configuration, and so promising, and so intoxicating, so fast.
It was unexpected, especially since I'd been so good with taking my last relationship slow, how instantly I reverted to patterns of intensity, involvement, entangling. How quickly it went from first meeting to hours and hours of probing conversation, to the full-contact enrapturing and giddiness that feels so much like love so quickly. It gave way (as it usually does, doesn't it?) to heated wrestling with incompatibilities, stubbornness and frustration with the inescapable parts that don't mesh, when dammit so much else does, so much else that so rarely meshes, here, comes together so well.
It's not an unfamiliar tune, but I'd almost forgotten the sound of it. It crescendoed and backed off and crescendoed again, taking on a burning life of its own, until it became something that needed to be gotten ahold of. We got ahold of it, the slippery beast. We are leashing it, we are breaking it like a wild bronco, trying to make it saddle-safe. It is slow, bruising going, but how could you not try, with a horse as beautiful and spirited as that? How could you not try to make it a part of your life?
* * *
Which is to say, my dating life awoke with a start, caught its breath, and decided it was hungry. I've been dating more in the past two months than I've done any other one thing, except for my work. Tall, short, older, younger, black, white, asian, arab, American, foreign, you name it. The dates have, with a few dramatic exceptions, been positive experiences.
All in all, I've met few astonishingly fantastic men, some of whom I want to keep around, none of whom I want to get romantic with. The notable exception was a system-shocking moment of serendipity, a stranger on a bus to DC who played "catch us looking at each other" games with me until one of us could figure out how to make conversation happen - and when it did happen, it was alarmingly electric, each of us increasingly full of incredulity that the other was so... awesome. We spent perhaps four hours together all told, and I left with this strangely unsettling feeling that I couldn't think of how to make him more perfect for me. Five days later, he took a job in Singapore, and flew home to Sydney to prepare for his new life. Really, universe? It's like that, is it? You tease.
It's a process. I'd just forgotten how exhausting it can be.
* * *
OkCupid keeps showing me my various local friends and exes in my matches. Sometimes we view each other, sometimes we wink, mutually critique, exchange stories.
Ari and I, after a fun first date in December wherein we decided that dating would fail but friendship would succeed, have taken occasional refuge in each others' company when it gets too depressing. "Last night I walked through the snowfall with someone I just had no interest in sharing the moment with," he told me over tapas and wine. "It felt like such a waste. Basically, I'm really happy to see you."
I couldn't have said it better myself. We played Go and drank cognac for the rest of the evening, as the snow fell. Respite from the process, for a night at least.