I’ve been going through old journals with the aim of getting rid of most of them, by depositing in a plastic bag, and then throwing the bag in the trash. This usually works. But one batch of letters, to and from my teacher way back in 1971-1972 — when my sudden involuntary drop into the depths of my own unconscious threatened to dismember me entirely, and he was there for me, all the way — felt so poignant and still so real that instead of trashing them, I burned them, one by one, slowly. Thank you teacher, thank you.
Besides philosophical struggles, most of my old journals center on two subjects: writing down and interpreting my dreams, and wrestling with whatever relationship with a man I happened to be in at the time.
(There have been so many that I don’t even remember some of their names! Whole sections of life blotted out!)
And yet, looking back at life from the vantage point of 82 years, I realize that we humans learn about ourselves mostly through relations we have with others. Especially intimate relationships. (And I’m not talking about “hook-ups,” casual sex; I refer here serious attempts at unification.) Usually, we come upon this understanding later in life, if at all; but there were times, for example in this excerpt from a 1984 journal, when the all-too-human situation at least briefly, clarified. I was 41 years old. Many more years would go by when what follows would still be the case
I notice that the search for a man, a mate, goes on underneath everything I do. Each one I meet I scan for its possibilities. It’s as if I have this dream, this vision, hanging there suspended in the air, a fishnet ready to be thrown over the first available man who doesn’t too blatantly contradict what the dream represents. This runs on beneath all my other daily lives — all my plans, projects, realities are of a more superficial order than this one. Even while in the middle of casting my net over someeone I can (and do! thank God!) stop and notice, look at myself — but this doesn’t change the intensity of the search one iota. I think all this originates at the Moon level, but somehow Moon is linked up to Neptune — subconscious to superconscious — so I don’t want to reduce it to a set of infantile wishes. There is something more to it. Strong as it is, no matter what my experience in real life with real men, the search continues, the fishnet waits, suspended, who will it capture next? And I, no matter how “conscious,” how “enlightened” how “aware,” am ever humbled by this single realization.
By the time I was 65, however, the situation had clarified. The fishnet no longer hung suspended. I had taken it down. Learned my lesson. Learned the real nature of LOVE.
Grateful.
1 thought on “LOVE’S LABOUR LOST? “It’s as if I have this dream, a fishnet suspended in air” . . .”
I started to read “Discourse on Love” but soon learned that I needed more time to study and digest the whole treatise. I didn’t want today to pass without responding to what I have learned about love and life in my years. When animals have sex–they are mating–and usually offspring are produced and nurturing of the young occurs. Homo sapiens appears to be different as the physical attraction or mating urge seems to not pass for all as they age. I have a saying that I have developed over my years and 2 marriages: I believe that God intends for us to do the hard work necessary to succeed in a relationship with a person of the opposite sex.