Lise’s Birthday
I’m puzzled at how I can pour myself so fully into another and come away
so empty. The moments begin with such magic and end with me feeling so
drained. I long for the immersions. To break through, if just for
hours, into the space of another. But this landscape I’ve found is so
riddled with contradictions. openness, strength…the sure knowledge
that what we are is not at risk if we risk. Against this the jaded lack
of investment and the retention of deep control. A dance of incredible
contrasts between true feelings and true callousness. It strikes me
that God, once again, has sent me a mirror of myself to gaze into. I’m
not sure how it all fits together. I’ve opened together with another
before and felt joy and growing. Have my motives changed or is it she?
Even as I write I form my answer. I think its she. Its worked with too
many others; that opening and giving has given me more than I gave. With
her my compassion empties into her as if she were a bar across the poles
of my battery. And I wonder if I understand who I’m dealing with. Her
life seems to draw so much misfortune to itself. All driving pressures
to beat her down…and she, like steel beneath the woman, bears it with
grim tenacity. Darkness in her eyes and her skin and her karma. Her
history a battlefield of confrontations in a lustier vein than mine.
Nothing subtle, just brutality. I feel like some half grown do gooder
gaping at a soul being hammered…unsure of what I see or why its
so…guidance and growth raining like stones from above. I’ve always
sensed the power of her soul and seen the violence of her karma. Now I
begin to sense what kind of soul could draw such lightening into it’s
life. Her husband, Phil, so into spiritualism these ten years, playing
games far beyond fair or reasonable; knowledge not come to fruition,
cloaking evil terror. But this is what she tells me. How should I know?
Something drew them together, wedded their lived and gave them each to
the other. Games with the minds of his children, threats of suicide,
violence and physical domination, psychic draining and forcing. All
these weapons whirling in wicked arrays. And she survives. She knows
instinctively about spiritualism. Does she give back his physical and
intellectual domination in other ways? Has she enslaved his soul through
love? She told me she’s felt evil come to her twice. Skin crawling
permeation of her mind and perceptions and of everything around her.
Breath shortening and a deep animal fear clawing. Objects diffused with
evil like a cloud…the room filled, the feeling unbearably tangible.
What do I sense in her from what I’ve seen and heard? I’m still not
sure. I remember Tarot cards told me to stay away from Tarot cards, but
why that connects, I’m not sure. I don’t think I’m in any danger of
being overcome. But what is my purpose here if not to share openness?
What ever I do seems so ineffectual against the stories running through
her life. Perhaps, I’ve met a spiritually advanced soul who’s not making
it this time around and whose spiritual depth so far exceeds my own that
I’m like a child watching an adult and offering irrelevant advice.
gallagher
16 Jun 1984
— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —