The Bridge Across Forever..

I have been consuming book after book , with varying subjects , line of thought, varying moods , and each book , has been an absolutely engrossing journey , enriching, thought provoking, enchanting ..

The Bridge Across Forever , by, Richard Bach , was one book I read recently , and am absolutely enthralled by the sheer insight , the moments of  profound understanding , delight ,awe and a whole range of thoughts / emotions which exploded in me ..as I journeyed through the book..It was strewn all along  with such lovely little pearls of  simple truths ..I knew I just had to create a little space just for this book on my blog ..to capture and share some of those rare lovely pearls I collected as I journeyed through the book! 

Some are just little nuggets ,lines grabbed from here and there in the book, some ..chunks of  the experiences the author shares -  In most of the excerpts "I"- rerfers to the author Richard Bach, and "She" refers to Leslie Parrish his partner . And needless to say , I experienced special delight going over these , thats why i chose to put them here - 

• Why should it be that the most advanced of people, whose teachings,twisted into religions,last for centuries ,why should it be that they have always been alone?

• Why never do we see radiant wives or husbands or miraculous equals with whom they share their adventures and their love ?They're surrounded by their disciples and their curious ,these few we so admire , they're pressed by those who come to them for healing and light . But how often do we find their soul mates,glorious and powerful beloveds right close by ? Sometimes? Once in a while ?  The answer i found was those advanced and perfect ones ,they can suggest, they can hint whatever they want , but it's me who decides what to do.                                                            
•  whatever enchants , also guides and protects. Passionately obsessed by anything we love - sailboats,airplanes,ideas - an avalanche of magic flattens the way ahead,levels rules, reasons,dissents,bears us with it over chasms,fears,doubts.

• *You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true.

• *To bring anything into your life, imagine its already there.

• *Chess players sketch their portraits in the motion of their chess pieces..

• *A present from the heart : I am here not because I am supposed to be here , or because I am trapped here , but because I'd rather be with you than anywhere in the world.

• *There are mistakes.The events we bring upon ourselves no matter how unpleasant are necessary in order  to learn what we need to learn ; whatever steps we take , they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go.

• *When Right, to be Kept right , When Wrong , to be Put Right - Carl Schurz

• *First , I had had a parachute failure , now an airplane crash. I thought about it and after a while decided that I had been divinely guided , protected without a scratch through moments turned a little more adventurous than i had planned . Anybody else would have see the opposite  -The crash wasn't my protection at work , it was my protection running out!

• *Everyday he changes, everyday more remote, protected , distant. He builds tests now for the soul mate he hasn't found,bricking wall and maze and mountain fortress,dares her to find him at the hidden center of them all . He's an A in self protection , from the one in the world he might love and who might someday love him. He's in a race now ..will she find him before he kills himself ?

• *Sometimes we are standing in the same square foot of space , and its interesting how far away she is .  the two are standing thirty inches apart . yet  there's no way to bridge the gulf and say hello.

• *If only we could invent a way , if only this were a world when unmet people could say you charm me and I'd like to know who you are,A year later , the one person I could trust with my work , was her , the one who I had shared a square foot of space and didn't find a way to talk to.

• *I rang the doorbell , and there she was , eyes of sea and sunshine,sparkling hello. No touch , not even a handshake, and yet neither of us thought it strange.

• *she said : "I have a surprise for you .."

• *I said : " I hate surprises , and despise presents. Anything i want , I buy for myself. If i don't have it , I don't want it . So by definition , when you give me a present , you are giving me something that I do not want.

• *she said : I am surprised you haven't bought one for yourself  , she said over her shoulder with a smile , to show that I hadn't hurt her feelings.You certainly should have this , but if you don't want it , you can throw it away.

• *There's a ripple of excitement when a conversation turns valuable to us, the feel of new powers growing fast..

• *she's so different from me , why this 'awe-full' respect for her ?

• *she said  : You are thinking something important . I said  : "Yes right absolutely right . I knew her so well in that moment , and liked her so well , I told her what it was. I was thinking , that , it is the very difference between us that makes you the best friend I have. We have very little in common ,but we're so different in every other way , that you don't threaten me the way other women do.

• *she said : Two things value a lot to me , intimacy and the capacity for joy , which didn't seem to be on anyone Else's list. I felt like a stranger in a stranger land , and decided not to marry the natives..

• *She charmed the ice out of me...and I was thinking how much i cared for her ..

• *Watching her work was watching a friend who was at the same time a stranger.Does it change the way I feel about her ? Yes. there is something magical going on.She has skills and powers I haven't learned and never will. I wouldn't have liked her less if she wasn't who she is , but I did like her more because she was. There has  always been electricity for me , pleasure in meeting people who can do things I cant . That she was one of them pleased me indeed.

• *A quick little trap of words - a net of ink and pocket notebook over the idea before it vanished  -Its fun to close our eyes and in that dark say to ourselves , I am the sorcerer , and when i Open my eyes I shall see a world that I have created and for which I and only I am completely responsible. slowly then , my eyes open , like curtains lifting stage center.And sure enough there's out world just as we have built it.Why not practice living as though we are extremely intelligent ? How would we live if we were spiritually advanced ?

• *She said " Thats a nice note . If I am not prying , would you tell me some other notes ?        I said :I am glad you understand that these are private notes ..I said it lightly but it was true. Did she know it was another ribbon of trust between us , first that she was who respected my privacy , would ask to hear the notes , and next that I'd read them to her...

*A few snippets of my thoughts -

*Look in a mirror and one thing's sure : what we see is not who we are.

*When we look back on our days , they've passed in a flash. Time doesn't last and nobody's got long to live. Something bridges time- What ?

*the best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it .

*The only thing that shatter dreams is compromise.

*After that , I thought to myself  : "How odd , I want her to know who I am " ...

• *An internal dialogue - " Who's in control ? I am ! I the rational , I the logical , screening and weighing and judging and picking the way to act , the way to be .Never did I consider I-the-emotional ,that despised minority , never allowed him to take the wheel.

• *She said " It is okay for you to feel bad or cared about someone's dying or cried.                   I thought " what kind of a person would judge against another for not wishing to control his emotions ?  A loving woman might ,one who knew a lot more about emotions and how to express them than  I did."

• *Thats what learning is , after all , I thought , not whether we lose  the game , but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before , to apply to other games. Losing in a curious way is winning.

• *Except for chess between us , there's no action. We don't climb mountains together of run rivers or fight revolutions or risk lives. We don't even fly airplanes. The most adventurous thing we have ever done is plunge into traffic down the Boulevard after lunch.

• Why does she charm me so then ?Arent we awfully cerebral ? don't we talk too much ?

• *I asked her - " Do you believe in Guardian Angels ? "                                                           *She said : " To protect and watch over us and help guide us ? Yes.    I asked her : So tell me , why should a guardian angel care so much about us ? She said : To a guardian angel ..loving is more important than anything else. What else will angels care about ?   I asked then : " Do you think it might be possible then for Guardian Angels to take human form for each other and to be partners every few lifetimes?  She thought about that  and she said "Yes".

• *She said once " You are very lucky..You have so much to learn about music. So many beautiful symphonies, sonatas,concertos that you get to hear for the first time !"

• *Hot chocolate is something most people drink , but she befriends it. I can drink enough hot chocolate to hate the taste of it for the rest of my days , in the time it takes for  her to get acquainted with one cup !

• Intimate with her hot chocolate , her music, he garden, her work ,her house . While I was bound to the things I knew by a network of silken threads, she was bound to hers by braided silver cables. To her  , nothing was unvalued.

• *Isn't it strange , the way certainty always comes before shatterings ?

• *The opposite of loneliness , is not togetherness. It is intimacy.

• *Surely , the other aspects of us , they must be closer friends than anyone..who can be closer to us than ourselves in other bodies , ourselves in  spirit-forms? If each of us spun about an inner golden thread, which strand is it in me , that runs to all the others ? I went heavier and heavier ,sinking down into the chair , and at the same time rising above it . What a curious feeling , I thought. Do not fight it, do not move, do not think. Let it take you where you will. It would help so much to meet ..

• *The armour you wear shields from any woman who would destroy you , sure enough. But unless you let it go,it will shield you as well from the only one who can love you ,nourish you , save you from your own protection. There is one perfect woman for you .She is singular not plural. The answer you are looking for is to give up your freedom and independence and to marry her.     WHAT! I choked on that thought. Don't I know what i think about marriage - even in my lectures I have always said , After War , Organized Religion  , Marriage brings more unhappiness to humans than anything else.Give up my FREEDOM, INDEPENDENCE to get married? !!  But the answer is  - " Listen to what you know , instead of what you fear".  If so , then , this will be your most probable future, though this is not your only one. You've got to learn your own way for better or worse.

• *I was also told  " It wont be easy for you. It wont be easy for her either . Hard times ahead! Fear not . If you want magic, let go of your armour . Magic is so much stronger than steel .

• *In a file marked Richard on her desk was a paper with this poem -

                          

Dawn's peaceful ,luminous blue
Intensified with the day
As did happiness ,
Blue..bluer..bluest,
White puffs of delight,
Joy over flowing.

Until sunset
Wrappped us in tender pink
And we fused in a
passionate magenta goodbye,
Earth-soul and Cosmic-soul
Bursting with beauty.

When night came ,
A baby moon
Laughed sideways in the dark
I laughed back
And thought :

Partway across the world
Your sky
Is filled with the same
Golden laughter,
And hoped that you,
Twinkling Blue Eyes,
Saw and heard ,
So that somewhere we three
Were joined in our gladness,
Each in our own space,
Together apart,
Distance meaningless.

And i slept
In a world
Full of smiles.

• *A hundred audiences I had warned : Whenever someone says they love you , look out! No one had to take my word , anyone could see it in their own lives-parents battering children,shouting how they love them ;wives and husbands who murder each other verbally,physically in knife-edged arguments,loving each other. The running put downs, the eternal discounting of one person by another who claims to love. From such love, please , may the world be delivered.

• Why had such a promising word been crucified on the tree of obligation ,thorned by duties,hanged by hypocrisy,smothered by custom ?Next to 'God' 'Love' is the word most mangled word in every language.

• The highest form of regard between human beings is Friendship and when love enters, friendship dies.

• *Alone Alone Alone. How much of our lives is single-handing. she says I distance her. I distance everybody , not just her , I don't let anyone get too close to me . I never want to get attached to anybody.

• *She asked me with a hint of annoyance: Why ? What is so terrible about getting attached to someone ?

• *I said : " Because I might make a huge investment of hope to one human being and then lose it all. I assume that I know who she is and then I find out that she's somebody else entirely and I have to go back to the drawing board redesigning again and again and after a while I conclude there no one I can know fully know except myself and that's pretty iffy. The only thing I can trust anyone else to be is true to who they are and if they are going to explode into strange angers now and then, then the best thing to do is stand back a bit so as not to get torn in the blast. Isn't that obvious , clear as yesterday ?

• *She said : "This what you are telling me - is this the highest truth you know ?

• *I thought  - There are moments , when having a mind reader for a best friend is uncomfortable indeed. Like now.

• *Then she said : Fine, Run away! you might as well..You are gone even when you are here. I miss you ..You are right here and I miss you.

• I thought - "Of course I would want to love you lady , but how can I know what you'd do If i did ?

• *I then thought  - My mission is pretty well done , with the books I have written , but there may still be a lesson or two to learn this side of dying .                                                        How to love a woman for instance - like when I had quite barnstorming , to find my true love, my soul mate , my ultimate friend across a million lifetimes..it seems like so long ago . what are the chance that everything I had learned about love was wrong , that there actually IS one woman in all the world who is meant to take me along on my journey ?

***********************************
She called me up one day all of a sudden and asked me : " I am dizzy and sick and I'd feel so much better if you were here ..
To which I said : Cant make it. I have a date tonight. Tomorrow's fine if you like.
She said : You have a date?? You are going out on a date when am so sick and weak and am asking for your help ? I cant believe..
I said : Our friendship is non possessive, open,based on our mutual freedom to be away from each other whenever we wish for any reason . I felt like I was

slipping into a taken-for-granted-marriage,felt us forgetting that we need out times apart as well as together-times. The date had to stand. If i felt

obligated to be with her just because I was in the same city , something was wrong with our friendship. If i had lost my freedom to be with whomever I chose

, our purpose together had ended. I prayed for her to understand.

She said : Arent u able to hear me ? I need you, your help this time !

I thought : Why was she pressurizing me ? The very best thing for her to say would be that she's get along fine and she hoped I'd have a good time. but

saying otherwise.. she didn't know what she was doing..

After that phone call, she didn't answer her phone the next day or after . The day after that I received this letter -

Dearest Richard ,
Its so difficult to know how ans where to begin . I've been thinking long and hard through many ideas trying to find a way...
I finally struck one little thought , a musical metaphor , through which I have been able to think clearly and find understanding, if not satisfaction, and I want to share it with you. so please bear with me while we have yet another music lesson.

The most commonly used form for classical works is sonata form. It is the basis of almost all symphonies and concertos. It consists of three main sections :

the explosion or opening , in which little ideas, themes, bits and pieces are set forth and introduced to each other , the development ,in which these tiny ideas and motifs are explored to their fullest , expanded ,often go from major (happy) to minor (unhappy) and back again; and are developed and woven together in greater complexity until at last there is : the recapitulation , in which there is a restatement , a glorious expression of the full rich maturity to which the tiny ideas have grown through the development process.

How does this apply to us,you may ask ,if you haven't already guessed.

I see us stuck in a never-ending opening. At first , it was the real thing , and sheer delight. It is the part of a relationship in which you are at your best : fun,charming,excited,exciting, interesting, interested. It is a time when you're most comfortable and most lovable because you do not feel the need to mobilize your defenses,so your partner gets to cuddle a warm human being instead of a giant cactus. It is a time of delight for both , and its no wonder you like openings so much , you strive to make your life a series of ONLY openings.

But beginnings cannot be prolonged endlessly; they cannot simply state and restate and restate themselves.They must move on and develop -or die of boredom.

Not so , you say. you must get away , have changes ,other people , other places so you can come back to a relationship as if it were new, and have constant new beginnings.

We moved on to a protracted series of re-openings. Some were caused by business operations that were necessary,but unnecessarily harsh and sever for two ,so close as we are. Some were manufactured by you in order to provide still more opportunities to return to the newness you so desire.

Obviously , the development section is anathema to you. For it is where you may discover that all you have is a collection of severely limited ideas that wont work no matter how much creativity you bring to them - or even worse for you - that you have the makings of something glorious, a symphony,in which case there is work to be done: depths must be plumbed, and separate entities carefully woven together, the better to glorify themselves and each other. I suppose it is analogous to that moment in writing  when a book idea must be /cannot be run from.

WE have undoubtedly gone further than you ever intended to go. And we have stopped far short of what I saw as our next logical and lovely steps. I have seen development with you continually arrested , and have come to believe that we will never make more than sporadic attempts at all our learning potential, our amazing similarities of interest,no matter how many years we may have - because we will never have unbroken time together. So the growth we prize so highly and know is possible becomes impossible.

We have both had a vision of something wonderful that awaits us. Yet we cannot get there from here. I am faced with a solid wall of defenses and you have the need to build more and still more. I long for the richness and fullness of further development , and you will search for ways to avoid it as long as we're together. Both of us are frustrated; you unable to go back - I unable to go forward, in a constant state of struggle  with clouds and dark shadows over the limited time you allow us.

To feel your constant resistance to me , to the growth of this something wonderful, as if I and it were something horrible - to experience the various forms  the resistance takes- some of them cruel - often causes me pain on one level or another.

I have a record of our time together , and have taken a long and honest look at it. It has saddened me , and even shocked me , but it has been helpful in facing the truth. I look back to the days in early July , and the seven weeks that followed was our only truly happy period. That was the opening and it was beautiful. Then there were the separations with the fierce and to me - inexplicable cutoffs , and the equally fierce avoidance-resistance on your returns.

Away and apart or together and apart, is too unhappy. I am watching me become a creature who cries  a lot, a creature who even must cry a lot , for it almost seems that pity is necessary before kindness is possible. And I know I have not come this far in life to become pitiful.

To be told that cancelling your date to help me when I was in a state of crisis 'wouldn't work for you' brought the truth crushing down on me with the force of an avalanche. Facing facts as honestly as I can, I know I cannot continue, no matter how I might wish to do so; I cannot bend further.

I hope you will not see this as the breaking of an agreement, but rather the continuation of the many , many endings you have begun. I think it is something we both know must be. I must accept that I have failed in my effort to let you know the joys of caring.

Richard , my precious friend, this is said softly, even tenderly and lovingly. And the soft tones do not camouflage an underlying anger. they are real. there are no accusations , no blamers of faults. I am simply trying to understand and stop the pain. I am stating what I have been forced to accept, that you and I are never going to have a development , much less the glorious climatic expression of a relationship grown to full blossom.

I have felt if anything in my life deserved departure from previously established patterns ,going beyond all known limitations, this relationship did. I suppose I might be justified in feeling humiliated about the lengths to which I have gone to make it work. Instead I feel proud of myself and glad to know I recognized the rare and lovely opportunity  we had while we had it , and gave it all I could , in the purest and highest sense, to preserve it.

I am comforted by this now . In this awful moment of ending , I can honestly say I do not know of one other thing I might do to get us to that beautiful future we could have had.

Despite the pain,I'm happy to have known you in this special way , and will always treasure the time we've had together. I have grown with you ,and learned much from you,and I know I have made major positive contributions to you. We are both better people for having touched one another.

At this late juncture, it occurs to me that a chess metaphor might also be useful. Chess is a game in which each party has its own singular objective even as it engages the other; a mid-game in which a struggle develops and intensifies and bits and pieces of each side are lost,both sides diminished ;an end-game in which one traps and paralyzes the other.

I think you see life as a chess game; I see it as a sonata. And because of these differences, both the King and the Queen are lost, and the song is silenced.

I am still your friend, and I know you are mine. I send this with a heartfull of the deep and tender love and high regard you know I have for you, as well as profound sorrow that an opportunity so filled with promise , so rare and beautiful, had to go unfulfilled.

                                                        - Leslie

I(Richard) stood looking out of the window at nothing ,noise roaring in my head. And I thought Of course she's wrong. The woman doesn't understand who I am or how I think. too bad..I crumpled the letter and threw it aside.
An hour later I thought - Why do I lie to myself ? She's right and I know she's right even If i never admit it . Her story of the symphony and the chess game, why didn't I see those? I've always been so goddamned intelligent, except about taxes , so much more insightful than anybody else , how can she see these things when I cant ? Am I not as bright as she is ? Yet if she's so smart , where's her system, where's her shield  to keep her from pain? I've got my Perf....

DAMN! Its a half ton peacock I've invented one with flounced out weird colours and that which wont ever fly!  I am terrified of marriage , did I know , I have "married " that thought?
The picture of it , a little me in a wedding photo with a twenty foot peacock ! I was married to an idea that was wrong! But..the restriction of my freedom....If I stay with Leslie,I'll get bored! About that moment , I split into two different people: the me who had run things for so long , a newcomer out to destroy him!

Boredom is the least of your worries, said the newcomer. Cant you see she is smarter than you are, she knows worlds that you are afraid to touch with a stick? go ahead , stuff my mouth full of cotton ,and wall me away like you do every other part of you that dares to say that your almighty theories are wrong! You're free to do that Richard. And you're free to spend the rest of your life in a superficial-how-do-you-do with women as scared of intimacy as you are. It wont hurt her pal, because she aint a loser. She will feel sad and she will cry a little while because shes not afraid to cry when something that might have been beautiful dies, but she'll get over it ,she'l lift right on above it. You will get over it too in a minute and half to pull your steel shutters shut hard around you and never think of her or it all again. But instead of rising above it ,you'll go straight to the bottom and wake up miserable that you were handed a fire-and-silver, a laser-diamond lifetime - and you took your greasy hammer and smashed it down to lard.
You are looking at the biggest choice in your life and you know it. She's decided not ot put up with your savage stupid fear and she's happy this minute to be free of the dead weight of your fear and your walls and shutters.

I then thought - If she doesnt like who I am - its kind of her to say so. What a pity..if only she were different , we could have stayed friends. I told her clearly who I am and what I think and how can she trust me to live, even if that is not the I-love-you fakery she wants from me . No I-love-yous from me , Leslie. I will be true to myself,even though it costs me the joy-overflowing of every happy time we have had together.

After more hours of thought , I found myself thinking - IT would be exciting to just take off somewhere all by myself in my lil airplane , change my name and run away. 
But is that what I most want ? Is that my highest truth ?

I sat on the floor, leaned against the wall.
No, Leslie, thats not my highest truth. My highest truth is , I've got a long way to go to learn about loving another person.And she is so god damn smart ,that the very worst thing that could happen to me , is that , I could learn a lot before she leaves me next.

If a person is cruel enough, I thought , anti-life enough , even his Soulmate backs away,letting him alone , willing to wait another lifetime before a new hello.
 
But what If i dont run away? Whats to lose but my hundred tons of steel plate , my armour to protect me from hurt ? Stretch my wings without armour , and I might just be able to fly well enough not to get shot down.
Could this be a test planned by a hundred other aspects of me from different planets and times? Are they gathered now behind a one-way glass ,watching me ,hoping that I'll let go of the steel, or are they praying that I hold on ? Are they taking bets on what Im going to do ? The road split two directions  in front of me. Which one ?
*******************************
 
I reached the phone , held the phone , paced left and right not knowing I moved . I called her and asked - " Do you want to stop everything ,just like that ?

She said : Not everything , I hope we'll still work together , and I'd like to think of you as my friend , if that's OK with you . The only thing I want to stop is the hurting.

I said : I never wanted to hurt you. Its not possible for me to hurt you I thought. You cant be hurt unless you perceive yourself hurt.

She said : Well..it hurt anyhow.
Do you know what I learned from you Richard ? I learned what is possible, and now I must hold out for what I thought we had. And I want to be very close to someone I respect and admire and love,somebody who feels the same way about me . That or nothing. I realized that what I am looking for , is not what you are looking for. You don't want what I want.

I said: What do you think I want ?

She said : Exactly what you have now. Many people who you know a little here and a little there and you don't care too much about . Mutual use,no chance of love. It seems like my idea of Hell- Hell is a place, a time , a consciousness in which there is no Love. Richard, leave me out of it.
I have had the greatest admiration for you. I thought you were the most wonderful person I ever knew. Now I am beginning to see things about you that I don't want to see . Id like to end it thinking you are wonderful.

I said: What am scared of Leslie is that we are starting to own each other . My freedom is important to me..as ...

She shot back : "your freedom to do what ? Your freedom not to be intimate? your freedom not to love ? your freedom to seek relief from joy in restlessness and boredom? You're right..if we had stayed together ,I wouldn't have wanted you to have those freedoms.

I said : I understand what you are saying and I didn't understand before. thank you.

I said then : Maybe the freedom I was talking about - a big part of it , maybe its the freedom to change , to be different next week from what I am today. And if two people are changing in different directions...

She said : If we are changing in different directions , then we don't have any future anyway, do we ?  I think its possible for two people to change together , to grow together and enrich instead of diminish each other . The sum of one and one ;if they are the right ones ,can be infinity. But so often , one person drags the other down ;one person wants to go up like a balloon, and the other's a dead weight.I've always wondered what it would be like if both people -man and woman both wanted to go up like balloons!

I said : Of all the people I know , I know one happy marriage. The rest are either a woman's joy and the man's weight or the vice versa. Two balloons are pretty rare.

She said : I thought we could have been that way. I have changed as much as I am willing to change. If you want to be close to me , its your turn to change.

I then found myself saying : What kind of change would you offer for my consideration?  The worst thing she could say would be something that I wouldn't accept , I thought, and that's no worse than what we've got right now.

She said : I'd suggest we consider an exclusive relation , an equation you and me only. A chance to see if we are two balloons.

It was my turn now to be silent, and hers to let the quiet stay on the line.
I thought :We are such different people Leslie , you and me. I thought I  would never be interested enough to find a word  to say to a woman , who wasn't interested in flying airplanes. She couldn't imagine spending time with a man who didn't love music. Could it be its not as important to be alike , as it is to be curious ?
Because we're different , we can have the fun of exchanging worlds, giving our loves and excitement to each other . I can learn music from her , she can learn flying from me . And that's just one thing , that's just a beginning. I think it would go  on as long as we live.

I then said : But its so hard, marriage has such limitations ..

She said : I think theres another kind of marriage that sets us freer than we can ever be alone. There's very little chance you will see that , but I think you and I could have been that way.  An hour ago I would have said there was no chance. I wouldn't have thought you'd call.

I said: Oh come on. You knew I'd call.

She said : Nope. What I knew you'd do is throw my letter away and fly off to somewhere in you lil airplane.

I thought that moment  : Mind-reader!
I said aloud: I wouldn't fly off without a word ..I wouldn't leave with you mad at me.
She said : I am not mad at you.

I said : Hmm..Just mad enough to stop the nicest friendship Ive ever had.

She said : Richard, I am not mad at you , really. I was furious the other night , and then disgusted. Then I was sad , and I cried. But after a while I stopped crying and I thought about you a lot and I finally understood , that , you're being the very best person you know how to be , and that you to live with that until you change and no one is going to make that happen except you. How can I be mad at you for doing your best ?

I thought: What a difficult , loving thought!
I said : What if i wasn't doing my best ?
She said : then , I am mad at you! almost laughingly ..
If you are afraid ,you're afraid. I've let you go , and I feel good about it , I really do . Lets leave it at that. We're friends OK ?

I thought : I was so used to being right , so used to prevailing in any debate, but here, try as I did to find threads broken in her thinking , I couldn't.Her argument collapsed ,only if she were lying to me , , only if she were out to hurt me , or cheat me , or destroy me. And I knew it was neither of those.

I said : We're like nobody I've ever met.

We talked on that way for hours as though our equation were a terrified fugitive, leaning wide-eyed on a twelfth floor building , set to jump, the instant we stopped trying to save it.
Keep talking I thought. If we keep talking , it wont push off the corner and plunge screaming to the pavement. Yet neither of us wanted the fugitive to live unless it turned sane and strong. Each comment , every idea we shared , was wind blown at the ledge  - sometimes our future together teetered out over to fall out over the streets , others it trembled back against the wall.
She had once said : The secret of finding someone to love, is , first finding someone to like. We had been the best of friends long before we had come to this point. I liked and admired her and trusted her,trusted her! Now all that good .. tilted in the balance!

She said to me now : you don't need your walls Richard! If we never see each other again ,cant you know that those walls don't protect? They isolate!
Her voice broke..and I heard her press the phone to a pillow.

I thought : What if we are soul mates ..as she sobbed ..What if we are the ones we've been looking for our whole lives long ?

She then said : I am sorry . I wish I had your control sometimes. You handle everything so well, as if they don't matter at all.

I said : Its all in deciding who s in charge, glad for a change of subject. If we let our emotions run things, then times like these are not much fun.

I then said : Leslie , you are right. I would want to change . We've tried it my way so long and it didn't work. Lets now try it your way. No Perfect Woman concept , no walls around me . Just you and me. Lets see what happens.

There was silence on the line.
 
She said : Are you sure? Or are you just saying that ? Because if you are saying that just to make now feel better, its going to make it much worse. You do

know that , don't you ?

I said : I know it. I am sure. Can we talk about it ?


She said : Yes,of course we can.

After she hung up , I said to the empty house - ' I love you Leslie Parrish.'
In absolute privacy , no one to hear , the words that I had so DESPISED , that which I never used , was true as light.  I felt light as a mountain summer , as light as a sailplane launched for the stratosphere.

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I was not so successful with my tests as she was with hers.
From time to time , for no reason , I'd be cold to her, silent , push he away , without knowing why. Those times she was hurt and she said so.
This happened time to time , between walks and music and flying and candlelight- from habit. I built new walls , hid cold behind them,used old shields against her. She was not so angry then , as she was sad.

She said : Oh Richard ! Are you cursed with a demon that so hates love? You promised to lift barriers and not dump new ones between us!

I thought , I am not cursed with a demon. One thoughtless moment, and she says am cursed with a demon. Why must she overreact?


I said : Leslie, whats so wrong about getting away from each other once in a while ? Thats the murderous thing that happens in most marriages ..
She said : Please do not list that line of reasons you've got for not loving...I know you hate the word love, and its had all its meaning mangled out of it ..you've told me a hundred times you never want to use it..but I am using it right now ! I find it illogical  you have reasons for not loving anyone but the sky and your airplane .

I thought : Why should the idea of being out of touch for a while be so threatening to her ?

I said : These things matter to me , and that s the truth for me , and I happen to live by this. And please watch what your saying. You are free to say what you want , but I don't have to listen..

She said: Oh you and your stupid pride!

I said : If there's one thing I cant stand , its being treated without respect!
 
She said : If there's one thing I cant stand , its being ABANDONED!
 
She choked on her words , pulled herself into a rigid curled ball and sat on the couch. I sat down with her on the couch , pulled her rigid curled self to lean against me , She didn't uncurl , and couldn't stop her soft sobs.
Leslie had as a little girl seen her parents divorce and felt abandoned . She had rejoined and loved them both , but the scars from her childhood would never disappear.She had fought her way to where she was all by herself, lived her life alone . Now that she had let herself think that because we spent so many happy months together , she was for the first time free from that part of her independence that meant alone..She too had her own walls, and I was inside them right now.

I said : I am right here with you.

She uncurled and sat far away from me on the couch , but there was the weight in the air of so much disagreement between us , such a distance between us two islands.And then a strange thing , I knew this instant had happened before. A baby moon laughing sideways she has written. Now the same moon,just a few turns later, dim and mourning.

I had a brief experience of how my choice of letting go and flying away somewhere alone  would look like - ( I am not including that here .. its best read when read with the book) .
 
At the end of which , I opened my eyes, with tears in the,  to find her still on the couch.
 
She asked me , Are you all right ?
I simply said : I never want to leave you. I love you.

She said : You what??!

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I said to her : Remember my old definition ? That a soul mate is someone who meets all our needs most of the time ? Then I don't guess we are soul mates..
She said : Why not ?

I said : I dont have a need to fight.

She said : How do you know ? she said softly..How do you know that's not the only way some lessons can get through to you ? If you didn't fight in order to learn,you wouldn't create so many problems! There are times I don't understand you till you're angry..and aren't there times when you don't know what I mean until I scream ? IS there a rule that we cant learn except in sweet words and kisses ?

I was startled . I said : I thought being soul mates was supposed to be every moment perfect, how can soul mates fight? Is it, even when we clash , its magic?When a clash materializes understanding between us that hasn't been there before?

She said : Ah..:) life with a philosopher.. :)
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We drove to my parents house in the suburbs , the place I had lived from the time I was kid until the day I ran to fly away. I slowed the car on the one driveway that was familiar to me .
Wont they be surprised! ..said Leslie .. and she reached forward , her fingers touched the wooden gate.
At that instant , I froze ,time stopped. Her hand on the wood, the new ring gleaming ,the sight of it burst down through my mind , vaporized thirty years in the blink of an eye. The kid had known! The kid i was had stood at this gate and known that the woman that he was born to love would one day be here. For a flash of an instant I saw him standing in the dark of that deep past , standing open-mouthed at the sight of Leslie radiant in the sunlight. The kid had known!
My wife pushed the gate open and went forward to hug my dad and stepmother.

Don't forget! I shouted wordless, across decades. Never forget this moment!

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One reason I had sought out beginnings years ago, was that I hated endings.

I said to her : Its all subjective isn't it ?
She simply said : Yes it is .. All at once knowing what I was thinking about .There was no technique to our telepathy, it just happened , often , that we knew each other's mind.

• Life sets consciousness free to choose no-form or infinite forms , any form it can imagine.

• Consciousness can forget itself , if it wants to forget. It can invent limits,begin fictions; it can pretend galaxies and universes and multiverses, black holes, white holes, big-bangs, steady states , suns and planets, astral planes and physical. Whatever it imagines, it sees, war and peace,sickness and health, cruelty and kindness.

• And any instant it wants it can remember who it is , it can remember reality , it can remember Love. In that instant , everything changes.

• Because this one I love today...because she and I have died a million times before, and we're this second ,minute,hour , live together again!

• Deep within us everyone of us knows the laws and one of the laws is this : We shall forever return to the arms of those we love, whether our parting might be overnight or over-death.

• The only thing that lasts is love!

• We're the Bridge Across forever arching above the sea,adventuring for our pleasure,living mysteries for the fun of it , choosing disasters ,triumphs,challenges,impossible odds,testing ourselves over and over again,learning love and love and LOVE!

• She said : Did you ever  feel , that , you were missing someone you had never met ?

• When I want to understand someone swiftly , I need only to look at their bookshelf.

• When we listen to somebody's answers , we're not really listening to somebody ,are we ? We're listening to ourselves  while they talk ;its our self that says this part's true and that part's crazy and that part's true again. That's the fun of listening.The fun of saying is to be as little wrong as we know how to be.

• A soul mate is someone who has locks that fits our keys , and keys that fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks , our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are ;we can be loved for who we are and not who we're pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person,we're safe. Our soul mate is someone who shares our deepest longings ,our sense of direction. When we're two balloons and together , our direction is up, chances are we've found the right person. Our soul mate is the one who makes life come to life.

• During our talks together on stage , one person in the audience got up to ask - Do you both agree on everything ?

To which Leslie  said   : Most times. He turns up the radio and I find that he's the only other person I know who is enchanted by bagpipes music. He's the only other one who can sing "Alone Am I" from Tubby the Tuba , word for word , with me , from childhood memory . And there are other times , we couldn't have started farther apart from each other. I am a war resister , and he , Richard was a Air force Pilot .
But at the end , it doesn't matter, whether we agree or not , or who is right. What matters is what goes on between the two of us .. We are always changing..We are growing and loving each other more.. Thats what matters.
I said : To add a word - Things around us - houses , jobs,cars, they're props, they're settings for our love. The things we own, the places we live, the events of our lives, all settings. Its so easy to chase after settings, and forget the diamonds! The only thing that matters at the end of a stay on earth , is,how well did we love, What was the Quality of our Love?

• So much of what we said may have sounded Crazy , but none of it was False.Is High energy physics interesting because it's true or because it's Crazy?

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