05/28/17

When this letter posts I will be in the Great Smoky Mountains alone waking in my tent to the Tennessee sunrise. Figured I'd write a bit ahead of time since I will not really be in the mood to pull out technology on the Appalachian Trail. That isn't to say my brain won't have much to express once I am back home, but rather in the moment I'd prefer to not waste my precious fragile eyesight in man's computer machine but God's unique pale blue dot.

Don't wanna steal you
Of a young woman's light
To me it's perfect
Just wanna do you right
-Offering, The Avett Brothers

June first is four days away. But I don't know what that means or matters.
She's mentioned to me before she's jumped from one relationship to the next, never taking time for herself. She's mentioned never having a one night stand, never kissing someone she didn't know their middle name, never simply being single.

This Avett brothers song always came to my mind when she would say things like this... but then again I thought the lyrics were:
Don't wanna steal you from a young woman's life to me it's perfect, just wanna do you right.
I always understood the line to mean the man loves her but to pin her down in a relationship would mean to steal her freedom, to steal her young woman's life.

The singer professes he sees her young woman life as perfect and by tying her down, in so doing he steals from her the very thing he finds so perfect about her.

Earlier this month I was reminded of the letter Kelly shared with me in July.

And I've known others
And I've loved others too
But I loved them cause they were stepping stones
On a staircase to you

I've been taught life's greats lessons in wisdom through failure. My rubble of failure compiling to create my stepping stones on a staircase to what I don't know.

But I do know that Kelly needed s p a c e. It did not matter what I needed or what I wanted. That's how relationships work. We tether ourselves so closely to another that their independent decisions can at times be our decisions whether the other part wants it or not like walking on a sleeping leg.

I was once told by a coach in high school:
Wise people learn from other people's mistakes
Smart people learn from their own mistakes
Dumb people never learn

I suppose I'd like to consider myself a smart person based on that criteria.

Again it doesn't matter how ready, how sure, how strong my feelings, how right, how good, how anticipated, how perfect it seems to me and prepared I am

When we talk about love
relationships
otherness

one party need only 50% of the vote in order to have 100% the decision making power.

The more wisdom through failures I learn the more I've come to realize just how true the phrase "timing is everything" really is. It is a profound truth timing is everything.

Who can say what is good and what is evil?

Who can say what is best or not?

All I can do is live my life authentically acknowledging the things I want in my life, admitting the mistakes I have made, and attempting to grasp the life I want to live.

I have very strong feelings towards her and I haven't been in anything serous or even met a woman I've felt nearly this much about in about a year. I know what I want and I'm not afraid to try for what I want.

But there is so much more to this situation than my timing, my wants, and my life.

There is the "otherness"

the stealing of a young woman's life.
So what more can I do? Who can say what is best or not?
I suppose I should progress with honestly trusting the other to make a similar gesture of honesty.
To suppress my feelings in order to try to help her get what is best for her just sounds controlling and unfair.

I believe to stay in a relationship you feel nothing towards in an attempt to protect the other is equally as controlling and dishonest as not expressing feelings towards someone with the same good natured intent.

Like a government pulling levers behind the public's back in the name of protection.

ignorance is not bliss. For ignorance is not reality, it is a lack of reality and truth and thus whatever bliss is experienced is a fictional reality thus cannot possibly be true bliss.

I'm rambling now... I guess all I am trying to say is
...Just wanna do you right

Geotic - Nav

05/21/17

For some time she looked into his face without answering, and, though he stood in the shade she noticed, or thought she noticed, the expression of his face and eyes. It was the same expression of respectful ecstasy that had so affected her the night before. She had assured herself more than once during those last few days, and again a moment ago, that Vronsky in relation to her was only one of the hundreds of everlasting identical young men she met everywhere, and that she would never allow herself to give him a thought; yet now, at the first moment of seeing him again, she was seized by a feeling of joyful pride. There was no need for her to ask him why he was there. She knew as well as if he had told her, that he was there in order to be where she was.

"I did not know that you were going too. Why are you going?" she asked, dropping the hand with which she was about to take hold of the handrail. Her face beamed with a joy and animation she could not repress.

"Why am I going?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I am going in order to be where you are," said he. "I cannot do otherwise."

At that moment the wind, as if it had mastered all obstacles, scattered the snow from the carriage roofs, and set a loose sheet of iron clattering; and in front of the deep whistle of the engine howled mournfully and dismally. The awfulness of the storm appeared still more beautiful to her now. He had said just what her soul desired but her reason dreaded. She did not reply, and he saw a struggle in her face.

"Forgive me if my words displease you," he said humbly. He spoke courteously and respectfully, but so firmly and stubbornly that she was long unable to reply.

"What you are saying is wrong, and if you are a good man, I beg you to forget it, as I will forget it," she said at last.

"Not a word, not a movement of yours will I ever forget, nor can I..."

"Enough, enough!" She cried, vainly trying to give a severe expression to her face, into which he was gazing eagerly. She took hold of the cold handrail, ascended the steps, and quickly entered the little lobby leading into the carriage.

-Anna Karenina Part One, Chapter 30 by Leo Tolstoy

When he got out of the train at Petersburg he felt, despite his sleepless night, as fresh and animated as after a cold bath. He stopped outside the carriage, waiting til she appeared. "I shall see her again," he thought and smiled involuntarily. "I shall see her walk, her face... she will say something, turn her head, look at me, perhaps even smile." But before seeing her he saw her husband, whom the station-master was respectfully conducting through the crowd. "Dear me! the husband!" Only now did Vronsky for the first time clearly realize that the husband was connected with her. He knew she had a husband, but had not believed in his existence, and only fully believed in him when he saw him there: his head and shoulders, and the black trousers containing his legs, and especially when he saw that husband with an air of ownership quietly take her hand.

When he saw Karenin, with his fresh Petersburg face, his sternly self-confident figure, his round hat and his slightly rounded back, Vronsky believed in his existence, and had such a disagreeable sensation as a man tortured by thirst might feel on reaching a spring and finding a dog, sheep, or pig in it, drinking the water making it muddy. Karenin's gait, the swinging of his thighs, and his wide short feet, particularly offended Vronsky, who acknowledged only his own unquestionable right to love Anna. But she was still the same, and the sight of her still affected him physically, exhilarating and stimulating him and filling him with joy.

-Anna Karenina Part One, Chapter 31 by Leo Tolstoy

My last day of grad school was cinco de mayo. Once I finished school I immediately, that night, drove to the library and grabbed the first book off my list of books to read in my lifetime. Of course alphabetically speaking Anna Karenina was the first available selection.

I've never read any of Tolstoy's works. I do find myself fascinated by these large intricate writings from Russian authors. The Brothers Karamazov is by far one of my favorite books I've ever read. The closest I came to reading one of Tolstoy's books was when I bought Kelly one as a gift and colored sunglasses on the bearded elderly author in hopes I could make her smile when she opened the gift. I've found their writings so interesting because I imagine there wasn't much else to do in those long unbearable Russian winters in the 1800's but settle in and spend your days writing with great detail for the abundance of time allowed for such details during those winter months. Out of such a place for indoor free time came some of this planets best literature and according to the list from which I am pulling my reading selections Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is one of these works.

As I sat reading the book it felt like I had picked up exactly where I left off in 2015 before grad school had robbed me of the pleasure of reading by choice rather than duty. It didn't take long before I realized this novel involves a character who is in love with a married woman and perhaps the woman shares the feelings...

sigh

I mentioned her journal writings, I mentioned my feelings this past winter, I mentioned the other woman, she's not the one that I want, but she's the one that wants me.

What am I to do? This woman's writings, her thoughts, her feelings, they are so genuine and they are everything to me. I find myself pouring over each and every new post. I find myself disappointed when I check to find no new writings.

I feel like I am in love with a journal. But I know the fingers which spread across the keys that slowly paint the words collectively forming the journal I love. But what can I do? We both fear each other so much.

All we have is possibility. Possibility is endless, romantic, perfect... reality is a path narrowing, messy, sweaty, regretful, and disappointing.

It seems as though the both of us know what we have now, possibility, is so flawless that neither of us are willing to be the first one to take a step on to reality neither wants to be the one to extinguish perfection in an attempt to grasp validity. Like an inexperienced painter dripping from brush to toe paralyzed at thought of spoiling the blank canvas.

But I must risk.
I must trust.
I am willing to stand through rubble, although not simply finding the light through the rubble. To search only for the light in the rubble would infer that the rubble itself is not beautiful. The rubble mixed with the light is intertwined. One is not only their light without rubble, to neglect the rubble or to overlook such things is to miss the entirety of the person. To take only what we wish to take, that is not love. That is not authentic, it is not truthful. I myself am a mixture of such rubble and light. For someone to only accept my light, to only see my light is to be blind to the man I am.

'I don't take any view. I always loved you, and if one loves, one loves the whole person as he or she is, and not as one might wish them to be.'
-Anna Karenina, Part Six, Chapter 18 by Leo Tolstoy

Likewise, if I am to take the step from the cloud of possibility towards the path of reality I must see and in the seeing, delight in the rubble. To miss the rubble is to miss the person.

I will take the first step. Although the idea of spoiling the canvas terrifies me the idea of leaving such a canvas blank ruins me all the more.

Finding someone who's thoughts stir up in me as hers is something so very very rare. My only option is to risk. To attempt, to stroke the brush to canvas.

I must.

June first is eleven days away.

KYLE - Don't Wanna Fall In Love

05/14/17

She started writing almost a month ago.

I hesitate to even contribute my own ideations polluting the originality of her words with the drivel of my own commentary. I'd prefer to let her words speak for themselves here in my sphere of self expression. So here I hang them like a piece of art in a gala for my own reflection and indulgence.

...

:)

Heart Hope - Oh Wonder

05/07/17

Lately I've been having the strangest dreams of being held in the arms by a naked woman.
But I don't know her even if she knows me and when I look up to see her, I see something gruesome.
She's gonna eat me alive with my skin in her teeth and my blood on her blue eyes.
And I don't know why I can't find a lover, One that I like or one that really feels like home.

And when I'm awake, you know I see her in the streets.
She's not the one that I want but she's the one that wants me.
And I get so scared because I see her all the time with her long black hair and those bloody blue eyes.
She's gonna eat me alive.
She's going to choke on my skin, gonna spit out my blue eyes.
And I don't know why I can't find a lover, one that I like or one that really feels like home.

where have you gone to, my love?
Cause I don't know why I can't find a lover, one that I like or one that really feels like home.
I said goodbye to my daddy and my mother, to all of my friends and my three baby brothers, I'm gone.
I can't stay here no more.
I cant stay here no more.
I can't stay here no more.
No, I can't stay here no more.
I can't stay here no more.

Susto - Dream girl