Solace for the dumped.

Although it is true that first loves may make us cry, let us not forget that first farts also often make us cry. And scare the shit out of us. So to speak. There are plenty of clips on YouTube that capture those terrifying moments in a baby's life:  adorable little big-eyed munchkins, gurgling happily one moment and then startled out of their wits by their first experience of what will one day become a pretty ho-hum bodily function.

Oh you who have been dumped - and I've been there, too - know this! We survived the first fart. We can survive this, too. No one will stand around laughing at how cute your tears are. No one will gleefully retell the tale to your potential spouse one day when they first meet him (or her). Nor will the family erupt into hysterics around the dining table twenty, thirty or forty years from now (if they're like most family reunions, they'll be more likely erupting into farts after stuffing themselves silly). No one will immortalise your humiliation on camera and share it with millions of strangers around the world.

We survive these things, all of them:  love, farts, oh and even family reunions. Cry your eyes out now, listen to your sad songs, and remenisce about the "perfection" of your first lover. For now. There will come a day when you will treat the memory of your first love with as much giggling as your first fart.

Even if you're masochistic enough to post a video-selfie of your current angst on YouTube today, it'll still just be a fond little embarrassment to look back upon one day, because the only other people who will click on that YouTube selfie will be another generation of equally lovelorn adolescents with raging hormones and incompletely developed brains.

Now you know. You'll be safe. You'll be fine. Aren't you glad you read this? So go get some chocolate or ice cream and have a nice day. This too will pass. Like the wind.

No love in my heart.

 

And none in yours, either.  We've known for the longest time that this is not where love lives. Why are we still pretending that our emotions reside in our chests?

Perhaps it was the racing heartbeat in a moment of desire, or the warm security of a mother's breast, that first made humans think that love was somehow associated with the heart. Lovely in a symbolic sense, but we're in the twenty-first century now, we really should make better use of our brains. And after all, that is where the love is. It's all up there in our brains:  our passions, our desires, our pains.

The brain is where it all happens, so what's with all the heart stuff? Sure, it's a pretty icon in any colour, not just red, and it looks good on everything from tattoos to t-shirts, greeting cards and playing cards. A brain would be more accurate, but if I remember correctly, it's lumpy and pinkish grey. The heart's not just prettier, it's more recognised, worldwide, as the symbol for love. So should we just shut up and keep hearting the heart?

My concern is this:  are we perpetuating an untruth? How many of us are taking it for granted that love comes from our hearts, simply because our world and our media show it that way? How many children have absorbed this fancy as a fact, rather than the pleasing fiction that it is? Is it wrong to let that happen? Is it an acceptable wrong? I don't know. But I do know that if we still had pleasant fancies about falling off the edge of the world, there would be a bunch of people out there still believing that the earth is flat.

Keep hearting, by all means, if it makes you happy (or rich, if you sell Valentine's cards). Me, I shall give credit where it's due. So to those of you out there who I know and love, I have to say:  I don't heart you any more. But don't worry about it too much, because I brain you, people! I brain you!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Let him see you cry.

(For E.)

Let him see you cry.

He is a baby. He knows something about crying, already.

He will understand.

That you are cold and wet and alone.

That you hunger for something to fill the emptiness.

That you need a hug.

That you need him to love you.

Let him see you cry.

He is your son. He looks to you for answers

To questions he can’t yet ask.

He feels their absence too.

He senses your grief.

He watches both your sorrow and your strength

And sees how to become a man.

Let him see you cry.

He is not too young to learn what it is to be human.

Your tears teach him.

That it takes courage to show vulnerability.

That deep pain is only created by deep love.

That love is what matters.

That love is what lasts.

Grave conversation.

It tends to be one-sided. At least, that's been my experience, and to be honest, I like it that way. I think I'd be more than a bit disturbed if my father had had something to say this morning, when I went to visit him.

The graveyard is beautiful. I find most graveyards beautiful, but perhaps it's just because of the trees and the quiet. There is nothing to fear in a graveyard, even at midnight, except perhaps for rats, snakes stray dogs, or stray men (living ones).

The dead pose no threat. They return no greetings and answer no questions, and if they're happy to see their visitors and hear our voices, we can't see their smiles, not unless we shut our eyes and seek out their faces in a memory or a dream.

But we don't know for sure, do we? And we'll only find out when it's our turn to take a place under the earth. So I found myself babbling along, trying to remember all the important things I had to let Daddy know. Just in case. I felt a bit silly, talking to a tombstone - but surely it was no sillier than buying a lottery ticket, or blowing a fallen eyelash off the back of one's palm and making a wish ..

I would have sat there for hours to tell him all that I had to say, but the living were waiting for me at the gate, so I rushed through as much as I could, then left. Now I'm sitting here wondering if this is how we humans first created prayer: conversations with an unseen unreachable parent, someone who gave us strength, care and protection, who loved us in spite of what we were.

I suppose an atheist would see in this, the invention of God by a bereaved child. And a believer would think of Adam, separated from his Creator, calling out, yearning for that lost connection.

No answers, so all we have to go on is our faith, and on what we choose to believe, even if it's make-believe. And so I like to think that my father might have had something to say back to me this morning, after all. I worry that I left too soon, but I like to think that he understands, and that he'll get the message across to me anyway, in a language I'm only just learning to unlock.

Good night, everyone, wherever you are. Good night, Daddy, wherever you are.


(Edited 15 April 2014)

Just now.

A few moments ago, I read a ReTweet on Facebook and decided to Blog about it (yes, it's all about the Internet these days!!) This is what the Tweet said:

RT @BraveKidsVoices Never let a day go by without giving your children love, affection, attention, protection, respect. Always... 

Earlier today,  I had been thinking about how often we don't really know the meaning of the word "love", although it's probably one of the most frequently used words in the English language. In every language, perhaps. I wonder what results and statistics would come out of a research study on love, and whether any corporation would fund it in the first place. 

I suspect that most of us believe that love is that wave of emotion that hits us when we look at a baby or at someone we're romantically interested in. Sadly, I have come to learn a large part of this wave is made up of chemicals designed to ensure protection or procreation! But love has to be more than that. 

What if love is not an emotion, but rather a collection of emotions? Surely respect, compassion, protection and attention - all these are part of love, not separate from it? Because if one of these is missing, how can we be telling the truth when we say, "I love you"?  

"They went looking

I wrote this in the nineties, and turned it into my Christmas card for that year.

They went looking for a king,
and came across a baby.

They went in search of wisdom,
and came away with love.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

"If you love me ..

If you love me
you should know
how the full moon
fills my eyes and my heart.
You should know,
so when we are apart
you have only to look up
when the moon is full,
and we shall be together.

#

(written in 2002?)

This poem is written for four little boys, sons of a friend, four little boys that I love dearly but lost to time and distance. When I left Bahrain, I told them to look up whenever there was a full moon, and they would know that wherever I was in the world, I would be looking up at it too, and thinking of them, sending all my love soaring up to the moon so it would bounce back downwards to them.

By now they are teenagers and adults, but I hope they do remember whenever they catch sight of a full moon. And I wait for it every month, and send them my love, and soak up the light of theirs. My four lovely little boys - Hisham, Abdullah, Sameer and Shishi - held tight in my heart for always.

(post-script 2010: they found me on Facebook. And they remember.)

"Across unexplored distances ..

Across unexplored distances
part of our souls are entwined
in an intimacy that can't be explained.
We know each other,
but are strangers.
We may never meet again,
but we have come together.
A man and a woman,
but not as men and women do.

There is a bond,
and there are no bonds.
There is a kind of love that cannot be called love.
There are secrets behind each other's eyes
that we are beginning to understand,
and secrets we are too remote to share.

Finding everything my heart has longed for,
and nothing of all my body desires,
I cannot call him friend or lover.
He is both less and more.


(written for R,  on 13-3-95, 1.45 a.m.)

You complain that love is fickle

I suppose I wrote this when I finally ventured into another chance at romance. The only trouble is that I don't think it's entirely true that we can heal our hearts and move on. We always carry the scars and perhaps that is how it should be.


You complain that love is fickle.

I am thankful for this mercy.

I do not think I could have carried
a broken heart with me all my lifetime.

#

(wrote this in 93? or 94)

Edited 11 April 2014

"The promises we never make ..

The promises we never make
are the ones we never break
but the hearts we keep to ourselves
for the fear of hurt or hurting,
break anyway.

(written on 24-2-95)

The shortest, and the saddest.

Prayer

To be free.
To forget,
As you forgot me.

(written for B, 6 May 1989, 12:37 p.m.)