What you feel is life, what you live is another story.

The Idea of You

I have fallen for you

This idea…

This incessant demand of my soul

To follow the twisted paths and fractured roads

That twist my ankles and cause my weary feet to blister

Just to catch a glimpse of you, my Beloved.

 

I can only do what my heart beckons me to do. I’ve long given up the fight with it. The demands of battles waged between my heart and mind take too great a toll. I’ve long surrendered to the inhuman voice within me, a voice that sometimes has to drag me, kicking and screaming, while at other times has to struggle to keep up with feet bent on taking me somewhere.

Where once I had to think, to demand reason of the unreasonable, to seek the indescribable answers with describable questions, I now surrender. The once befuddled mental spreadsheets and flowcharts that bound me to the Earth have given way to a sense of freedom that allows my sturdy wings to unfurl and catch the winds of life, embraced in unfettered destiny.

I allow those winds to capture me, to take me high above the clouds; to plummet me through the dense underbrush of life thicketed with my own insanity. I allow them to pick up my bloodied corpse to fly toward new fields of destiny, toward unknown stories of welcome and woe, to write a new chapter and verse in this life, to fill the pages still left blank in a heart overflowing with this idea.

The idea of you.

I hear you in the winds of change

Howling at me…

Reminding me of my own instability

Preaching a virtue foreign to my mother’s ears

Reminding me of my father’s own insecurity

It sings…and sings…relentlessly battering me with its hopeless tune.

 

The discourse of surrender can be such a fearful dialog to the unwise mind. Since the moment of our birth we are taught to fight, and to fight hard. Soon, we lose sight of what “fight” means, and we discover a value in the struggle. Then, everything becomes a fight, a struggle, until we have nothing left to identify with outside of it. We become vessels of drama.

Yet I sit in impassioned stillness, longing for the facade to dissolve. I long for the steeled silence to replace the battered illusion; for the peaceful space to replace the dramatic game. I long for it to become easy, like breathing in a spring day. I search for it to become as effortless as sunrise, and equally as meaningful.

Yet, I am only human. I am just a man. This is, of course, more folly from my ancestors, a continued denying of my implicit truth. Even the blue skies lie, and beneath them I forget the limitless bounds that rise above me. I can lay in a lie bestowed upon me by others for only so long until, one day, I need something so much different, and I begin to change.

Change it seems, can be a whip used to beat me or a rope I use to climb. The choice I make, is mine.

Lover, hear me whisper

I’ll hum you a lullaby.

I’ll caress your face with undoubting hands

Hold you firm against the tide

Share the board on which we’ll ride

Until tomorrow, we have today.

 

Which is the right way to love you? Which is the right road to choose until we sit, illuminated by a raging fire, nestled closely against each other? Which path should the beads of sweat born against our skin take to form the puddle we will share? Who are they to tell us? Tell me, which lion born forgives itself for pretending to be a zebra? Which drop of rain flies upward in some vain attempt to kiss the very face of our raging Sun?

Who am I to deny the very life we were born to share?

I relinquish my control while being embraced firmly to the roots that hold me to this place. I search for the sea and the highest peaks on which to make our holy altar. My body screams your name and my heart…well, my heart…it simply beats praying for that one moment when yours has becomes its echo.

I have simply given in to…

This idea of you.

One day this moment will be gone

Nothing but a distant memory, an over-told story.

We’ll be two old crows silently squawking in some corner of a room.

But my, how we will have loved,

How we will have loved and loved and loved,

The truth be told in the glances we share,

In the smiles our eyes betray upon our knowing lips,

In the way our wrinkled hands fit nicely,

In the way my shoulder bends to the touch of your head,

The way my aged arm fits perfectly around your longing waist.

 

One day today will be but history,

And we reborn into nothing but a vision of two aged fools.

But, my love, what a tale we could tell!

The countless nights in eternal ecstasy,

That ocean of love that bestowed us an infinite number of waves,

Too many to count, but we were too busy anyway.

I’ll long to hear those words you had first spoken so very long ago,

Words that had never aged from the first moment you gave them life.

“I love you…”

 

With those word gave birth a new universe

Where two aged fools in love could sit

And say nothing while saying all that need be said.

Where the space that we have shared a million nights before

We share but for one last breath

And close our eyes for one last time.

We’d have but one regret,

That we had not one more to share.

 

Love has little to do with ending. That is the folly of the mind. Yet all stories must end, even if there are sequels to be had. The idea of surrender takes me to a place that we share, a place where love basks in the imperfect and glows lovingly on the humanity that gives it life. When i think of you I think of such things. Perfect imperfection. Beauty. The truth of incredible strength as two souls trudged through the muck and the mud created by stories of old toward the beaches and peaks of their own creation. The stories of how pain and failure gave way to happiness and success; how struggle and limitation surrendered to acceptance and love.

That story never does get old, does it? Somewhere in the deep crevices of who we are our hearts beg to write it as our minds plead to read it. Yet there I am, alone at my writing place blocked by the empty air around me and the buzz of longing in my ears. No light can shed this darkness and no thing can fill this emptiness.

Until…

I have this idea. This idea of you. Suddenly life springs into my fingers and it all comes together. That’s all it takes, a simple, complicated idea of you. A thought. A glance. And then a smile.

What a life it will be.

8 Comments

  1. Maker of helmets

    Many exquisite thoughts and formulations in this piece.

    • Tom Grasso

      Glad you liked…it was a pleasure translating it. 🙂

  2. sheila

    What a beautiful, caring and hopeful heart you have. This touched me on a very personal level. It is a piece to cherish.

    • Tom Grasso

      And thus begins a book that has, hopefully, many pages. <3

  3. Lisa

    I think that this is by far my favorite of your writings…I can read it over and over and each time feel it more. Amazing sentiment…

    • Tom Grasso

      Thank you so much. I’m happy it has resonated with you at some level (or levels). Peace.

  4. Kristi

    Tom I am in awe. Thank you for putting my soul’s longings into words.

    • Tom Grasso

      You are more than welcome. Isn’t it wonderful that so many of us hear the same voice from the same place? Yes… 🙂