On the backs of seahorses' eyes

by Cauble, Don

  Been raining for days.

  A fire blazing. Myself at a loss.

  Maybe the radio?

  "Just a little bit…!"

  A blues/black chick shouting.

  Damn, maybe that's what I need.

  Three months celibacy.

  (It gets easier, I'm told.

  Celibacy that is.)

  What the hell, this ain't jail.

  Silence.

  Only the fire crackling

  & my thoughts

  at a biological loss.

  As night descends.

  Drawing people out

  "There's no

  pretending in this world.

  It's all an antidote,

  Not a cure."

  ***

  Wordy,

  I'm too wordy,

  Becky tells me &

  lights a cigarette

  & says, "I'm in a

  very strange state."

  …..

  "Yes, I'm so literal

  here."

  And puffs

  her white cigarette

  & draws a picture

  of Here & Now

  in vivid colors.

  A childhood dream?

  A child dreaming.

  "Death I accept

  as I accept life."

  ***

  "I feel really gypsy,"

  she says.

  "Gentle, gentle!" I tell her,

  watching her hard press the crayons.

  "No, it isn't gentle at all," she says.

  "It's very harsh.

  Isn't that ugly? It's

  pretty!"

  ?

  "Are you done?"

  She looks up.

  "Oh, no.

  Going over the lines,

  that's a way of life with

  me!" She laughs,

  grapping a purple crayon.

  Becky was going blind. Is

  that what she meant?

  "I like that music!"

  (It was Doug Kershaw

  playing "Swamp Dance"

  from Days of Heaven.)

  Becky laughs loudly. "Oh, well,

  we knew what we meant."

  ***

  "It's a riot,

  that's what it is," she says,

  after going through all

  the purples & blues,

  then dumping the crayons out,

  "I think we're almost at the end

  of the rainbow."

  Becky holds her picture up.

  "It's a floating kite," I say,

  thinking of the ancient Chinese

  and their Floating World.

  "A Viking ship, too," she says.

  ***

  "The game is drawing people out."

  You knew

  Your dark, smoky eyes,

  the way you looked into me,

  you knew I had drifted and stumbled

  through this passing world,

  a little dazed,

  looking for What?

  Just to catch a glimpse of you,

  in your purple shirt & tight faded jeans,

  & your sensual body, earthy, evanescent,

  a gypsy, a sorceress (I fantasized),

  & on your right hand

  you wore two plain silver rings

  & on your left, your wedding finger,

  an elaborate, occult ring with three stones

  set across a silver band,

  & a silver bracelet

  with a single turquoise teardrop.

  You paid with crisp new dollars, I watched you,

  almost $30 of bread, meat, things that go in a home,

  too much for one person alone;

  & I with only a bottle of cheap red wine,

  a bunch of bananas,

  a box of stoned wheat crackers—

  not even some cheese

  to give the illusion of a future possibility.

  But you knew.

  Your dark, smoky eyes,

  you looked straight into mine & Jesus,

  I had to turn away, the intensity

  of time & beginnings & incandescent promises;

  & for what?

  We shall never see each other again,

  but just the same you looked into me,

  & you smiled,

  & you knew, oh, you knew.

  Thinking of Helen on an island off Greece

  A bronze statue of a slender girl with braids

  running all the way down her back,

  thin legs,

  and full, heavy breasts,

  a pensive look on her face—

  this bronze girl that captured my eyes

  in the Portland Art Museum—

  reminds me of a woman in love with Greece

  and of a time gone by;

  her dreams of a lasting marriage disappearing

  out the door

  without even a word of farewell, or how come,

  or I'll send for my clothes.

  But now she can stash her money, you see, and go to Greece.

  (What little there remains after rent and food and gasoline.)

  How fortunate her dissolution!

  Only I think she does not see it this way.

  And who can blame Helen her anger,

  her hostility?

  She looks gentle, this girl raised on a ranch in Montana;

  this woman who listens to old Hank Williams songs

  and whose house is overrun with stray cats;

  a lover of streams and gardens and climbing hills,

  an intellectual creature who would be tough,

  hard as spikes on glowing embers beneath running feet;

  but bitter, this look in her eyes now, this betrayed woman,

  always holding herself in, stoical,

  her sweet mouth tightening into determined lines of grief.

  So we will pass each other, this time around, this woman

  and I, in this dark, crazy night of the soul, each to each,

  and I will ponder (this one time only),

  what might have been,

  in a blazing noonday sun on an island off Greece.

  *****

  Did Helen ever get to Greece?

  I don't know. We didn't see each for very long. When I asked her over the phone why she didn't want to see my anymore, she answered, "I got scared."

  I know I came into her life at a difficult time. But she liked how I could see into her heart. She liked being respected and appreciated by a man, something she wasn't used to, being respected and appreciated by a man. She let her guard down for a moment.

  I don't think she had ever met anyone who could see through her walls. While we talked quietly together that first time, I looked into her, I don't know how, I just did it. I don't even remember the words that came out of my mouth. I do remember telling her about her fears, about what she wanted, about how she protected her gentleness, about how she hid her true feelings.

  "Who are you?" she asked, half-jokingly.

  "I'm a fictitious character," I answered, half-seriously.

  "In whose book?" she asked, arching her eyebrows.

  "In this book," I grinned at her.

  Most of the time, you know, we talk to each other and to ourselves through this protective screen, this wall of core beliefs (conscious and unconscious). For something new to get through this screen probably takes as much energy and persistence and timing as a Chinook salmon swimming up the Columbia River and fighting the great Bonneville Dam and The Dalles, just to get to its spawning grounds. This perceptual screen, this personal language, as does our communal language, determines, I believe, mostly what we see and don't see. Is this good or bad? Certainly we need gate keepers or we would probably go mad, so much energy data flowing into us. As T. S. Eliot said, "Mankind can stand only so much truth." Yet, to really listen to another being, to really hear another person, we must allow gaps into our screen, little passages of free-flowing energy, respectful places of silen
ce. In other words: emptiness. To do this, we must cultivate an awareness of our own personal bias as well as our cultural and social and biological bias: a sense of our own distortions. After all, who can say, except in a limited sense, what's true and what's false, as if life were a test? Seeing into Helen's mind and her unacted desires and then getting into a brief relationship with her, getting past her protective veils, I found out, were two different things altogether.

  Even with Naomi I never considered our differences, not really. Certainly not as an issue. I thought that love between a man and a woman could overcome whatever differences. If they wanted each other enough. It's kind of like the religious trap: If only we had more faith. If only we had more love. If only we had more knowledge. If only we had more of this or more of that, nothing bad would ever happen to us. We could control our fates. We could control the universe.

  Even in my romantic relationship with Alora, I sidestepped our differences. We had so much in common. Or so we did at the time. We certainly cared for each other. We had a commitment to the body between us. We both loved books. We loved traveling. We loved plants and gardening. We loved Spirit. But, most of all, as a couple, we shared an intense, common focus: emotional healing.

  Alora's the one who introduced me to the spiritual warrior teacher that would save my life. You might say I turned into one of her star pupils. Harriet Douthitt welcomed me with fire and water and earth and sprit and I had no other place to go. I had run out of places to hide. Harriet inspired me to acknowledge my fear: to acknowledge my anger: to acknowledge my love: to acknowledge ALL my feelings. She taught me to feel. For Harriet inspired me to remember. To remember who I am.

  Harriet terrified me. She saw right through my defenses and my denials. This woman, who once told me, "I took my first darshan on a barstool in Memphis," could open up the abyss inside me right before my eyes and I could not shut down my heart to the pain and sadness imprisoned inside my body, nor to the terrifying spiritual love I felt in her presence. This beautiful, willowy, blue-jeaned blonde with a Southern accent and a swaying rhythm in her hips when she walked, zoomed right past the inner child and went straight to the terrified baby inside me. The baby wanting unconditional love from Mom. And from all women. Every moment. All the time. And not finding this love available. For every reason in the world. And none of these reasons meant anything to a baby. The man-child who learned to shut down joy and avoid anger and tiptoe around his mother and father. The man-child who learned to hide his spirit force, to protect his spirit force from prying eyes, who built a hard shell around his heart and who, because he could not go the way of the predator, the conqueror, the seducer, due to his own nature and awareness, for he truly wanted connection, he truly wanted to feel love, but, and he never forgot this, he never lost this divine remembrance: love meant openness, and openness meant vulnerability and, in this world, in this heavy density of bodies and egos and power struggles, vulnerability meant attack; and so he turned his life into a search and a way out and every event into a conflict and a struggle between spirit and body and every chance encounter and gesture and look into an invitation and a dance, and a sexual flowering into the soul of a woman, for he truly loved women, he truly wanted to share power, and he wanted to live in balance, and he wanted to come home.

  Once, at a party with Alora, early in our relationship, I suddenly felt this great need to go home. The party had been given in Alora's honor. When we first met, she worked with troubled teens. Some weekends she stayed as a supervisor of a half-way house. When she quit this job, her co-workers threw her a going-away party. I went to the party, not because I really wanted to go to the party, but because she asked me to.

  At first, I enjoyed the party. Then I found myself withdrawing, getting bored. I picked up a book and sat reading alone on the sofa. Suddenly, I felt myself in emotional pain, almost in tears. Alora noticed my discomfort.

  "What's going on?" she asked, concern in her voice.

  "I want to go home," I said.

  As we walked out the door to go home, I felt comforted.

  I remembered this incident two years later when, lying on the bed in our home, my mind and heart deeply opened to the world of love within me, once again I cried out, "I want to go home."

  I wanted to go home.

  But I was home. I realized then that my desire for home, now and the time before, had little to do with the house I lived in. Alora and I had made a home together. As she held me in her arms, as I cried out I wanted to go home, I knew home meant more than this body, this bed, this house, this country, this earth. Home means who I am.

  Harriet would tell us: "If you're not vibrating unconditional love, you're in stuff." Most of the time we're in stuff. Hell, maybe all the time. Raw, sewage stuff. The stuff underneath the false smile, the hidden hand, the guilty mind. The stuff called the Other. The stuff called wars. The stuff called social consciousness. The stuff called sexism. The stuff called racism. The stuff the world is made of. The stuff called power over. The stuff called ego. The stuff we bargain with for love. The stuff we sell for love. The stuff we hide, the stuff we keep. The stuff called the search for truth. The stuff called doing good, doing bad. We might feed the poor, we might sell life insurance, we might write books and talk to God. We might save the whales; we might honor the land; we might travel to the moon; we might be right or we might be wrong: no matter, if we're not vibrating pure love, if we're not vibrating Spirit, we're in stuff, we're not real, we live in shadows, we live in fear.

  Only later, with Liana, did I learn this painful truth about romantic relationships: sometimes, no matter how much you care for each other, you can't sleep in the same bed.

  In the beginning, Liana could list ninety-nine reasons she loved me. And she did. I felt so appreciated, so recognized. Liana was definitely a great listener. Yet, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. And in the end, Liana, leaving no stone unturned, could cite just as many reasons to cheerfully strangle me.

  What's the point? I asked myself. We had tried everything. At least that's how I felt. We read books from mainstream to New Age. We read every book I'm ever going to read on relationships. We did their exercises. We discussed their theories. We took long walks. We mirrored, we negotiated, we listened, we joked, we talked, we quarreled, we prayed. We even went to see a counselor with a PhD in psychology. I did inner child work and personal channeling and meditated every day. Liana did inner child work and women's stuff and took care of her dog.

  For three years we struggled. We couldn't even agree to live together. We mostly saw each other only on weekends; or every other weekend. Liana needed lots of rest. I had no problem with that. Liana worked as a physician and she had rheumatoid arthritis. She had been divorced not more than a year—yes, I should have known better—that's not enough time to get over the hurt and disillusionment of a true love gone south—and, most of the time during her marriage, her rheumatoid arthritis had gone undiagnosed. This secret drain on her energy caused great conflict in her marriage. Now, she saw herself as "damaged goods." In the beginning of our relationship, she was an emotional basket case. She cried at the drop of a hat and she carried so much anger and frustration over the divorce and the way her marriage had ended. She was pumping it up, acting out her emotions, rather than deeply feeling her feelings inside her. That's how I saw it. But after all my work with Harriet, and dealing with the fear that a woman's anger had always inspired in me, I had no fear or hesitation about working with Liana's anger and her tears. When we finally broke up, she had regained her self-confidence. Once more, and even more than before, Liana's presence resonated a strong and beautiful and powerful woman.

  We had sweet and wonderful sex when we had sex. But when the pain outweighs the joy, with no break in sight, and when the bright star called Eros has collapsed into a black hole, with no source or center or nurture, no intimacy, no renewal, no communication—Did I say that? Did you say that? What did you say? I didn't say that, that's not what I meant, that's no
t what I meant at all—what's the point?

  So, we called it quits. Our differences had undone us. And our continuous struggle had undone something else within me, something so basic to my beliefs about romantic relationships that I no longer had the least desire to persuade or talk any woman out of her doubts or misgivings or hesitations or second thoughts. If you can't enter wholeheartedly, don't enter.

  Do what you will. It happens or it doesn't. That's all.

  §

  from Going into the darkness / Tales of past times

  (an unpublished novel)

  A bone for the dogs

  Today,

  I just want to sit,

  like the poet Neruda would sit,

  deep in his thoughts of Chile

  and the ocean and shoes.

  I want to feel the breath of solitude,

  like Castaneda in the desert at night,

  listening to the heartbeat

  of a moth.

  I want to remember the Aegean Sea,

  this ancient sea,

  before it was invaded

  by a surf of oil

  and makeshift huts upon the shore;

  and I want to walk

  along the Great Coral Reef

  and ponder a new world,

  in reality.

  I want to drink strong, black coffee,

  the way Gurdjieff did,

  (so they say),

  and sit with Henry Miller

  in Paris, in a cafe

  before the War,

  before he went to Greece.

  I want to sit like Chief Joseph,

  who traveled freely among his people

  —when this land was free.

  I want to sit like Bodhidharma,

  alone for 20 years,

  without eating or shitting or masturbating.

  (No one even knew Bodhidharma was there

  under the tree. They saw only the tree