Note to Self: Rose Petal Rejects

A squirrel clings to a tree trunk, teasing and taunting a large tiger striped cat slumbering on the path. I run by, but pirouette for a second glance. Assortments of humans in the lakeside plaza eat alfresco. The tree’s around Lake Anne undressed a couple weeks ago and right on time, but not on queue. See, Autumn weather has been stubborn and it’s December – the leaves should have paid attention to the weather before leaping. Perhaps this is the dawning of the fifth season – and what we might call Fall’s failure to launch.Our heart rates slow and some of us want to disappear into the woodlands for a spell – where we can write or paint or compose a masterpiece without the interruptions of so many pragmatic options. But a long spell turns out to be only a punctuated series of moments – minutes and hours where we create our masterpieces. I would love to just hide out for a month and write.

Rose Petal Rejects

Constrained by modesty, you resist too much fascination with your own observations…that is the impetus for the ionic bond of human nature – it is this gentle downplay of ego, that enables us to discover within another that which fascinates us about ourselves. Self love, projected outward holistically and purely toward others is just love. And in the musical cross-stitches of projected love, two chords will find harmony in the fabric of life.

You let go a myriad qualities in whatever your medium of choice…in numbers inversely proportional to the odds that each will meet and intertwine with those of another. Being ALL of you is far more important than being only those parts that mirror the important parts of another. People will fail to see you as a composite and will focus in on small arcs of light, and not the illumination. But soon, in this new found proximity, the truth of ALL of you is revealed. And the other admits, “I didn’t expect this when I saw your beacon in the dark…I didn’t sign up for ALL of you…” and they draw up their anchors and drift on…

You quietly relinquish to being alone (you’ve failed at doing this at least a hundred times). You realize that being alone is ideal to being an attentive witness to the marvels of nature and mankind and yet it brings this uncontrollable desire to share it with someone. In the desperation of sharing, you’ve missed many a sunsets moments, looking through the lens of a camera rather than your own eyes. You’re learning to record beauty in your mind and be happy with that. Yet as much as you fail to accept being alone, you also fail to find that someone with whom to share in the mutual aloneness of experiencing the magic. Okay, that’s confusing. Frustrating.

Your companions have little tolerance and patience for your proclivity to stop and spend 15 minutes staring silently at a lit up water fountain springing up from a lake at night or slide away into the soliloquy of sunset. But you love to capture it and spin it with belletristic prose and dose it back to them in writing…and some people are happy reading your accounts more than they are to join you in the appreciation.

The ad reads, “person seeking alter ego embodied in another.” Relationship objective: stop the writing and solitary art and just experience… would the discovery of your alter ego make each of you superfluous? Don’t think so. No, you think, strangely enough, that each of you would seek the gentle deviations within the other and aspire to understand those. This is the alter ego seeking to free itself, of itself. Hm, perhaps the ultimate romance may be the separation of the self from seeking itself – romance of this kind engages the discovery of new paths within the strikingly similar world of another.

A “recluse,” a shut in. This doesn’t prevent you from being discovered – in fact, it’s those perfect imperfections of being a recluse that seep through the cracks in the foundation to find another. An objective is to pay attention to detail…look for the glowing fissures within nature and mankind, for there awaits your companion. Serendipity is a fortune we create for ourselves…God leaves us with just enough latitude to discover miracles. But calls us in to be sure we give thanks and the most thankful find the most unexpected fortune.

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About skipavm@gmail.com

I'm just a seeker
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