Two, Weird

It's Saturday and I'm soon headed upriver. I'm making coffee while my computer reports loudly from across the room: "Alert! You have been disconnected". So, what else is new?

Not much, in this department, so I hit the "connect" button again. And again.

***********

It's been a whirl of a week emotionally, and that's causing me pause today. I'm getting pretty good at sorting the endocrine surges from the ongoing reality commentary delivered regularly by my internal anchorman, but this last bout has left me with some residual news flashes that need reporting before they can be filed. And, again, it seems like you get the news feed.

Whether you're tuned to the channel is another matter, as well as the focus of this particular line today.

I'd told myself that it didn't matter if you tuned in. For the most part, that's still true. Of course, it's true in the way lots of things are true, with a kind of halfwayness that agrees to submit to the presenting reality in the name of Higher Goods - like what the other person wants, Natural Law, or the play of the Universal Hand - but it's a truth that does so halfheartedly when those "goods" counter what sits in my heart and my gut as full-blood(i)ed Desire.

For the sake of so many things that deserve to be considered, like the geography between us, the still present "stranger" factor (who *are* you when our eyes meet? I still see you in that first look, as you saw me for the first time, not knowing who I was - as I saw you, and felt I knew...), as well as my respectful awareness that the "you" I conceive of still exists mostly in my head and vice versa, I've held that your overt attention was not mandatory for my verbal iterations in these pages.

In addition, we've both implied mutual needs to protect both ours' and each others' feelings - yours through redundant and high-level emotional distribution, per your "Shameless" essay and other comments, and mine through forthright and lasered concentration on Another that keeps all but the best - no, all, including the best - at a safe distance.

All this boils down to an interesting state of weird "twoness" - how do *you* describe it to yourself or others? - that has us in these recent months sharing the Big Cosmic One Love, lending nurturance to one another in times of need through this tenuous electrical connection, acknowledging the creativity, heart and genius in each other, and resonating sub-harmonically, attuned to events in one another's worlds without daring to put conscious awareness to it, and all the while inching along in the dance of "wait and see".

Two, wired. Two weird. T'weird.

And so I've stumbled across "tweirdness" - a kind of weird two-in-towardness bound in a hoop of mutually attenuating duality, this vector of you and I as two wired weirds who've blundered into the weirs of one another while fishing innocently along this river of light.

I'm caught in your net, as evidenced by my frustration at not hearing from you. I'm wriggling to extricate myself. You're probably wriggling to free me, and loose yourself from my need as well. I don't know - and the fact that I don't only emphasizes the fact that I'm not holding this loosely enough.

I don't want to need to hear from you, or need to hear your voice, or need a connection. I know your sort of independence, for I have it too. It's hard for me to ask for anything so personal - like connection, like an asterisk - from someone, let alone you who has been so (reluctantly) clear about (reluctantly) not being available to someone like me who is (reluctantly) alone and (reluctantly) unable to do anything right now but live her life, practicing being the Being-Alone.

[--Though when I'm ready, I'm *still* counting on you to collude with me and help me find That Guy somewhere...I figure you know a few of them, and perhaps one or two who won't consider me excessive punishment for their sins!--]

But for now I want to be content with the Light. I *have* to be content with the Light. And this week I haven't been, much to my embarassment and dismay.

My desire all along with these writings has been to express to you, as fully and as honestly as possible, the depth of sentiment my *ideas of you* - a once-stranger whose writing has moved me very deeply - continue to stir in me, and to write without regard for how it's received on your end, since you have the power to disable the receipt of these Tales at any time and haven't yet done so.

My assumption is that the force within us all is enhanced when we express our love of living and life, not withstanding our fears of rejection or approbation and, since I can't seem to find a Manifest Fellow to hear these songs F2F, and you're still signed up for the Cynthia Connection, I figure we have some more exploring to do.

The point I'm owning up to here is that I've failed to maintain my own compositional integrity as evidenced by my frustration this past week. Despite my best efforts, I have continued to develop a regard for how you receive my words. I've developed a hunger for feedback from you, and that hunger is translating into behavior - edgey needy messages to you that now concern me.

I'm disatisfied with this shift in the program, for it makes me feel that I'm failing to maintain some agreement between us, still unstated, dynamic and only implied, by asking for connections with you that I cannot reasonably expect.

The upshot: The onus of not connecting F2F next weekend is fully on me, though my notes may have suggested otherwise. To blame it on Coyote may have been disingenuous (though Coyote is said to work by exposing one's own disingenuity). It's just that the finger points to me.

I'd like to think that I could see you, but I think I've just discovered a piece of myself that's terrified of that - and here I was, earlier, implying it was you who "reaches and obstructs". I'm sorry. I think an INIT conflict between my autonomy parameters and my connection extension just crashed my less-backwards-compatible OS. Hopefully, this has been an isolated disturbance, and the only aspect you've registered is this particular note and an excess of bytes from me in a shortened amount of time.

Further, this cascade of feelings I'm summarizing here might be primarily self-generated and self-experienced (ironically appropriate and true to the very nature of these Tales), to be logged as just one more of Cynthia's "explorations of the heart", while you're off in a magnificent storm of inspiration writing up your vignette synopses - that I very much look forward to, btw - with my sturm-and-drang as just one small butterfly flutter in your own tremendous existential hurricane.

I'll continue to hold (but not need) the notion that you've simply been off-line and would have sent me an asterisk if you could.

I know this will hit your in-box. Thank you again for maintaining this precious (*sigh - sorry about that*) thread to me. I know that my plan is to remain detached from any need for your reply. I know that the best I will do is generate the intent to detach, for detachment from someone - you - I feel so strongly through the aether is impossible.

I'll assume that the tension that results from the disparity between the intent ("I transcend need") and the reality ("I need") will continue to feed these Tales with the energy of Life's urge to be dreamed and articulated, and that, in its turn, will fuel my art and my changes, contributing to more positive recursions in the Poetry of All.

And maybe, by accident if nothing else - but obviously in spite of myself, as stupid and inefficiently complex as this must, at times, seem - I'll see you again someday. That would be nice.

Your t'weird and loving twin in dynamic free-form twoness,

Cynthia

"...One of the comforting features of life in this world is that whatever a man has to offer he will somewhere and sometime find a hunger that will be satisfied by his offering -- if he lives long enough. But even if he doesn't, the means of recording his testimony and demonstration in behalf of a new liberality are still available -- manuscripts and records; he then has the satisfaction of having endeavored to exert some small influence. ..And whether he is a "representative" individual is not particularly pertinent -- the fact that he is a human animal is enough."
--Harry Partch, "Genesis of a Music", 1949

*

*

*

*

*

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2002