I’m not happy. Okay, I’m not mad either. I’m sort amused. “je m’amuse” my crappy French for, I amuse myself.

Here’s what’s funny to me. I’m looking at the current list of posts >> over there on the side navigation and I’ve just about blown the whole set of links with POETRY. What? When did this become a poetry blog? I’m sorry, I’m confused, too.

Here’s what I think is happening.

• I’m happy. (I know I just said I wasn’t happy, but that’s not true.)
• I’m lonely. (Not that I am not enjoying my time, because I am, but I’m also … longing.)
• When I’m creative I write poetry and songs. (God, I hope this doesn’t become a music blog.)
• Maybe it’s the change of the seasons. (And the ramp up towards my birthday is usually a time of great joy and striving.)

What I know about myself, is when my life is in top form, I am writing, writing, writing. All kinds of writing. (Music, poems, techie stuff, and this divorce/dating/dad thing, here.) So I’m ripping through a lot of content these days, here and elsewhere in my life. And what I think I am doing is allowing my mind to wander into the what ifs and wants of my heart. Not censoring or editing the romantic form, but amplifying it by giving it form on the page, an image to echo from.

I am sounding out the dark edges of my heart, here on this blog. And where three years ago the song came back harsh and hard, today the music is more lyrical and aspirational.

I won’t try to imagine a woman wandering into this garden and trying to make sense of the messiness. I will let my friend find her own way with all the material. She will either pick up the songs and the poems and reply or she won’t. That part I can be certain is not up to me.

And where would I go, if the symphony were to come alive with a new lover? What new form would I need to construct to hold an arrival and collaboration? I know it won’t be to broadcast it here. ACTUAL LOVE is much too fragile to publish. Longing is much more safe.

First, I am letting the words come to express what I am looking for. Sometimes that’s in the form of “dating” posts. But recently, it has come in the form of a more fluid language. I imagine that I am plumbing the edges of my desire with these streams of words, like sonar pings, searching for the boundaries and reflections. I am also writing them to make my love song more real, both for myself, and for any future lover who trips into my garden.

Second, in giving flight to all this poetry, I am slightly freed from the darker work of divorce, anger, sadness. What I think I’m saying, is this blog has evolved from a catharsis to an aspiration. In the early days of divorce I was wounded, howling, and acting out. Today I am patient, alone, and singing.

An amazing thing happened last night, but I don’t want to say too much about it. But a turn of events led me to share this blog with someone who I’m still very much interested in. I’m going to hold back the story, of course, because it is likely these words will soon be read by her… Hmmm. Isn’t this a fine kettle of fish?

As I wondered aloud, last night, about the wisdom of sharing such raw emotion with a future potential, she was happy to rejoin with encouragement. I can’t imagine what it would be like. She must have felt, last night, from time to time, as I burst out in lines of longing, as if she was in fact walking into some elaborately laid out trap.

Of course that’s not the case. This is not a labyrinth. Unless it is a labyrinth of my own imaginings. I mention snares, and nets, and quarries, but I am not hunting an animal. I am not hunting. But I am doing something. And maybe pulling the poems out of the “divorce” story will help them shine for what they are, love poems. In the classic sense of the term, I am trying to voice all the many abstract ways LOVE occurs to me.

What I know about myself, is when my life is in top form, I am writing, writing, writing. All kinds of writing. (Music, poems, techie stuff, and this divorce/dating/dad thing, here.) So I’m ripping through a lot of content these days, here and elsewhere in my life. And what I think I am doing is allowing my mind to wander into the what ifs and wants of my heart. Not censoring or editing the romantic form, but amplifying it by giving it form on the page, and an image to echo from.

I am sounding out the dark edges of my heart, here on this blog. And where three years ago the song came back harsh and hard, today the music is more lyrical and aspirational. I won’t try to imagine a woman wandering into this garden and trying to make sense of the messiness. I will let my friend find her own way with all the material. She will either pick up the songs and the poems and reply or she won’t. That part I can be certain is not up to me.

And where would I go, if the symphony were to come alive with a new lover? What new form would I need to construct to hold an arrival and collaboration? I know it won’t be to broadcast it here. ACTUAL LOVE is much too fragile to publish. Longing is much more safe.

Sincerely,

The Off Parent

image: is a still from the movie Stealing Beauty

Resources:

• The Divorce Library (reading list)
• Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
• Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
• Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
• The 5 Love Languages  (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)