Open house, open hearts.
I have to make ready for a day's worth of viewing, and I'm not sure how to feel about it yet. I've cleaned off surfaces, put up books and movies and such, took down masks, swapped out paintings, all to please those folks out there who have the imaginative powers of a bucket of sand.
When it comes to this place I can look around and still see all my belongings, my times, dinners, holidays and the kids, all that. Whenever I wake up in my bed I look across the hall and see stuff that tells me that I've lived waay too much life here, that I need to take my goods and go somewhere else, start anew, get a fresh take on life and love, all that.
The bedroom across the hall was a battleground, a nest, a place of solitude and rest, a haven of a sort of strange purity that I can't even begin to imagine ever being able to capture it again. I watch romantic films and read exquisite love stories and know what we shared here in this house was a strange and wonderful kind of love, and know that what we struggled to accomplish up in that room was hamstrung by the simple fact that you weren't truly mine and I wasn't even close to being yours. Didn't help that we shared a mutual pact that revolved around having no more children. And really, how did we ever expect to truly get comfortable knowing that we shared that downy surface with all my household gods and your Big G God and the shadows of a Detective and an Estranged One? It was some sort of perverse cosmic joke they shared, all of them sitting around the edges of the bed looking down on us or nestling inbetween us whenever we could sneak in a moment to relax. We had more than ample opportunity to wrestle hard, get down to spit and sweat and all manner of viscous bodily fluids, but instead we chose to lay down like newborns, sometimes down to socks and sheets and sleet outside the window.
When it came to Valentine's Day we shared something different than what we might have shared had we been allowed to really "go all the way". Instead of taking our love to the streets and finding a pricey restaurant to show off our affections, you ate supper at home that night before pushing your tribe out the door for religious studies and coming here. Instead of a Hallmark moment we wrote notes and poems and exchanged simple gifts like tart tins and cheesecakes. It was all about the heart, all about simplicity, about all the possibilities of what we might share if the world would just lay off for a moment, stand back and see what we had going on.
I think of what we passed back and forth on the couch that night as a sort of simple benediction, a laying of the hands on our love, reaffirming a sort of simple faith that our love would endure, would carry us home, would somehow impress the world enough to open doors for us, to have the entire freaking planet see what we shared was good and somewhat holy and aching, aching, for resolution and communion and consumation. We wanted to open up the House of Love to the world, invite everyone to our party, but then, once the witching hour came down at 8:35 we had to close up shop and get you the hell out of my house, into your car and down the alley and off to the Woods before your sanctified troops lead by The Detective came back home again.
We had one more thing inbetween us in that bed, too, my dear, one thing that we could never shake, and that was our obligation to those pesky, beautiful and needy children of ours. I suppose that's why today on this holiest of days dedicated to love I could walk across the hall into my old bedroom and sit down on the edge of the bed and look over at a photo or three of you and know that I was looking down at a photo and not holding you only because of our high ground and the role that our kids play in our lives. I won't take those photos of you down, staging or folks in the community who might know us be damned. On Valentines day that old bedroom of mine is a shrine to Love, is a sacred place dedicated to two hearts who wanted to take that love to the limits but knew and understood that the restrictions of life and our children had more power and purpose than our love ever could.
We loved, that much I know. My surroundings tell me so. Look at that fireplace mantle, glance over into the kitchen, look at that back door, peek up the stairs and know that we loved here. No matter how much I box up and square away this place I can never remove that. Never a stigma, always a blessing.
Love to you, Jane. Happy St Valentine's Day.
Your WHMB
I have to make ready for a day's worth of viewing, and I'm not sure how to feel about it yet. I've cleaned off surfaces, put up books and movies and such, took down masks, swapped out paintings, all to please those folks out there who have the imaginative powers of a bucket of sand.
When it comes to this place I can look around and still see all my belongings, my times, dinners, holidays and the kids, all that. Whenever I wake up in my bed I look across the hall and see stuff that tells me that I've lived waay too much life here, that I need to take my goods and go somewhere else, start anew, get a fresh take on life and love, all that.
The bedroom across the hall was a battleground, a nest, a place of solitude and rest, a haven of a sort of strange purity that I can't even begin to imagine ever being able to capture it again. I watch romantic films and read exquisite love stories and know what we shared here in this house was a strange and wonderful kind of love, and know that what we struggled to accomplish up in that room was hamstrung by the simple fact that you weren't truly mine and I wasn't even close to being yours. Didn't help that we shared a mutual pact that revolved around having no more children. And really, how did we ever expect to truly get comfortable knowing that we shared that downy surface with all my household gods and your Big G God and the shadows of a Detective and an Estranged One? It was some sort of perverse cosmic joke they shared, all of them sitting around the edges of the bed looking down on us or nestling inbetween us whenever we could sneak in a moment to relax. We had more than ample opportunity to wrestle hard, get down to spit and sweat and all manner of viscous bodily fluids, but instead we chose to lay down like newborns, sometimes down to socks and sheets and sleet outside the window.
When it came to Valentine's Day we shared something different than what we might have shared had we been allowed to really "go all the way". Instead of taking our love to the streets and finding a pricey restaurant to show off our affections, you ate supper at home that night before pushing your tribe out the door for religious studies and coming here. Instead of a Hallmark moment we wrote notes and poems and exchanged simple gifts like tart tins and cheesecakes. It was all about the heart, all about simplicity, about all the possibilities of what we might share if the world would just lay off for a moment, stand back and see what we had going on.
I think of what we passed back and forth on the couch that night as a sort of simple benediction, a laying of the hands on our love, reaffirming a sort of simple faith that our love would endure, would carry us home, would somehow impress the world enough to open doors for us, to have the entire freaking planet see what we shared was good and somewhat holy and aching, aching, for resolution and communion and consumation. We wanted to open up the House of Love to the world, invite everyone to our party, but then, once the witching hour came down at 8:35 we had to close up shop and get you the hell out of my house, into your car and down the alley and off to the Woods before your sanctified troops lead by The Detective came back home again.
We had one more thing inbetween us in that bed, too, my dear, one thing that we could never shake, and that was our obligation to those pesky, beautiful and needy children of ours. I suppose that's why today on this holiest of days dedicated to love I could walk across the hall into my old bedroom and sit down on the edge of the bed and look over at a photo or three of you and know that I was looking down at a photo and not holding you only because of our high ground and the role that our kids play in our lives. I won't take those photos of you down, staging or folks in the community who might know us be damned. On Valentines day that old bedroom of mine is a shrine to Love, is a sacred place dedicated to two hearts who wanted to take that love to the limits but knew and understood that the restrictions of life and our children had more power and purpose than our love ever could.
We loved, that much I know. My surroundings tell me so. Look at that fireplace mantle, glance over into the kitchen, look at that back door, peek up the stairs and know that we loved here. No matter how much I box up and square away this place I can never remove that. Never a stigma, always a blessing.
Love to you, Jane. Happy St Valentine's Day.
Your WHMB
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