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i did not have anything at all in mind, really. the drift of road under the car, the vibration of time and motion putting you to sleep as someone whispered news i'd heard already about a thousand times - the whole world seeming to wait for something sad, bad, or even interesting - while i drove and you slept and i grew more awake as i always do when faced with taking you where you want to go. the radio dial began to thin of choices as the road lost lanes, countryside taking over where chicago's grey gristle had ruled. the sun came in on you and i watched you from the side of my face as the road whined underneath us both and your face twitched and you moaned one of those funny sort of almost words like the time you started yelling at me angerly in your sleep but nothing you said sounded like english or any other language though you sure were mad about it until you woke up and wondered why i was jiggling the bed laughting so hard. you said i hurt your feelings, but i kept laughing, in fact it got worse i couldn't help it. as i said, you sat in your seat as the sun shined, or shone, or did whatever it felt like doing because it is the sun after all, onto your face. Your hair was short still, but looking pretty healthy after all that chemo -- chemo curl, i called it -- and i reached out to touch it with my right hand and you stirred a little as the car hit a bump and i hurriedly put my hand back to the wheel where good hands belong. i thought about when i loved you -- which is then now and always -- and how love is so sensual to me, so much about the breath and touch and body of the beloved. and i wondered at the fact your love seemed less rooted in such things, your mind not finding me an easy nut to crack. and i thought about all the words about love -- love of God and love of women -- i'd written while sitting in front of a computer or driving a car and thinking long, long thoughts of youth (to quote Longfellow or whatever poet's responsible) even though i'm not that young. i thought about loving you and through you learning what it was to love a woman again, which is to trust a woman again, after being so hurt those now-long years ago. you may not be the bride of my youth, sed i to myself, but you are the bride of my adulthood, the woman who came to me when the eight years of childish struggle of that other marriage fell to bits and broken hearts. you came to me as a balm -- i love the word balm because it sounds like what it is -- of healing. and i felt as though your touch somehow... well... There
is a sensual love unseen plane. sort of, anyway, like that... or maybe Sex
is not enough to fire the soul and i kept driving and smelt the pulpy, acrid stink of the Indiana factories, which you don't smell and so slept on uninterrupted as i wrinkled my nose and goosed the gas. i begin to hum a little under my breath out of boredom and because my brain contrary to opinion rarely stays in neutral long even when there's not much to stimulate it so i start writing songs in my head as i drive -- i've done it ever since i was a kid and could hear classical music in my head (original, i think) -- and i first do some worship songs due to being such a spiritual giant. inevitably my songs turn to love, the romantic kind, as i think about us and love and bodies and all of it that i like to be in and of, the humanness of being human. then i look over at you again and it really causes me a moment of Holy Pain. hp is when you hurt, but you don't want the hurt to leave, because the ecstasy of the hurt is that GOD is behind the hurt and you want it because you love him, well you get the idea. and you made me feel like that as you slept, head tilted weary against the door and truthfully not exactly looking like a model right at that moment, mouth hanging open and once in a while a snore, and i realized how i just loved you so much, how love's mystery to me is that i have to love you but i could stop if i wanted to but i don't want to and don't experience it as a choice but as a wonderful necessity; to keep on loving you, that is, until this sarx (greek for 'flesh,' honey) kicks it. so i'm driving along and a song comes in my head, well, it started in my head while i was taking a shower a few days earlier, but unlike most of them, it keeps growing, and so i start working on it again, and i realize that i'm an amateur theologian masquerading as an amateur rock musician driving a car while my one true love sleeps and i while away the time, singing under my breath in an almost audible raspy voice (to sound like a rocker): The
skin, the sweat, the shadows softly I
wanna love you Burning
even through the after glow I
wanna love you See
all good things that God has made
a snort from you, startling me with a sudden "whut? whut?" and sitting up bleary-eyed looking around as though something was awry, takes my mind off the great lyrical marriage of Holy Spirit with sweat-soaked sheets, and puts it back on needing another diversion. you smile at me, i smile back, you go to sleep and i try to retrieve whatever great line i was on, but it doesn't work and i finally resort to the radio again, flipping back and forth between a news station still retreading the same old information we had hours ago -- 'bin laden is believed to be hiding in a cave' (duh, i guess whut else would he do with 2,000 lb. daisycutters getting dropped on his peenty widdo haid?) -- and a rock station majoring on really loud seventies and eighties bands. i like the last, actually, and find myself singing the uplifting lyrics to 'comfortably numb.' wow, thought i wuz gonna get saved or something. and a truck comes up on my left side and passes, the gust of wind shoving me toward the shoulder; i'm not gonna die by terrorist bomb or drive-by shooter i'm gonna get run over or through by some yahoo with too much booze in him, and you, awake yet again, agree with me until i'm calmed down and we talk about kids and them growing up and just what we'll do when they're gone and you start talking about projects that need to get done in our Bushnell trailer and i sigh, how romantic is this? real life always messes up romance. nothing poetic about that and you sit up and ask me how i feel, even though i've never gone to sleep or even come close to falling asleep driving us anywhere; you, poor thing, fall asleep all the time in a car whether driving or not. for me it is like a computer, an artificial stimulant able to keep me awake far longer than is normal or even healthy, while for you it is like that romantic movie we watched last night where just as he was about to ask her forgiveness you began snoring loudly and i didn't know whether to be mad or start laughing... no real life always messes up romance, except the romance rooted in life, and love, and loyalty, like the verse that starts out, 'whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is good....' i keep my mind on those things like the verse said because i find myself sliding down into a sadness hole if i don't. you need a potty stop, and i need coffee. we pull into a gas station and i fuel up the van and use the bathroom myself as you trudge back with two diet pepsis. you suggest driving for a while, and i kind of like the idea, though doubt i'll sleep since i rarely can sleep in a vehicle that's moving. you pull out, i direct you back the way we came in, and soon we're sailing down I-80 again. i close my eyes and the sun, the warm and relentless sun, interpenetrates my eyelids and bathes my inner eyes with the ruby red glow of blood and life, my blood and life. i think of you yet again, and us, and me, of course, which is the strangely wonderful narcissism of romantic love. i dream i can see the whole world struggling with their pitiful loves, their life's light being poured out indiscriminately on anyone and with anyone just so they can feel their lives are not in vain. and the energy and light they were gifted by God with drain away, pour away, into the darkness. and i see our love as frail, imperfect, doomed to be met by the death of one of us one day while the other likely lives on. yet i do not mind that so much, i would only mind not loving exclusively, all-out, all yours and all mine. I am loved like that by God, the most Jealous Lover. as you are loved like that. and i dream i can see our love, and others like us, loving not with the weak, flickering love of those who pour out sexual and romantic love upon whomever. I see love
is a laser beam i loved you as you drove, and i sat back, even though i knew i'd probably get cross with you again because you were talking about all the projects i needed to complete at the trailer while i wanted to talk about all the wild lovin' we'd have there and just once i wanted you to say the same thing to me and really think it before you thought the rest and of course you likely wished i'd say the projects first instead of the sex stuff and we both wish.... but love is love in real life and real life is that our differences help each of us grow and are the reason (or part of the reason) we love so crazy on each other... i thought all that as we drove along, and pretty soon, you asked if I could drive again because you were getting sleepy. so i said sure and hopped in and started driving down the road, the road that ends after a time, we usually can tell pretty much how long it will be, and then comes the celebration and the relaxation and realization that we made it to where we were going in one piece and that you love me and i love you and that life is so good i'd only throw mine away on love and nothing short of love. you start sleeping almost immediately, and i turn on the news. 'bin laden is believed to be near Kandahar in the rugged mountain terrain, perhaps...' IN A CAVE! i shout, startling you only slightly as you sink deeper into the sleep of the virtuous. i flip the dial back to my rock station, and in a lovely coincidence the Doobies are just into "Jesus is just alright with me".... and I smile to myself and start singing along, a hand sneaking over to stroke your curling, warm, sunlit hair. -for carol dec 2001 -jonboy
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