BED & BREAKFAST

Chapter 14 - We're ALL in the bloody rainbow!

This then was the answer? The crux of what I'd seen and heard and tasted and smelled and touched and... felt?  So LOVE was no pinnacle to reach and then descend- nor was LOVE to be found amid life's lowly things? Love existed above? And to be in it, you had to have wings and the daring to hover alongside it; hover above the reach of anything not requiring both sacrifice and daring?

Oh, I went deep. So deep, some days I don't recall living at all. Yet I had to have done so, to get here. It consumed me, this love from above concept. (It came after the 'wings' word, what can I say?) How one found it, how one kept it, how one kept oneself from trashing it. Because of the bloody rainbow. (I'll get to that in a sec.)

And of course, I saw brightly lit, all my attempts at trashing what I had. Instance after instance where I invited dislike, introduced upheaval, contention, even adolescent petulance- anything to make him take steps back. (Disguised as needing him to take steps forward, no less.)

But, I saw too, how this is no longer enough for me- this love in my computer. (It ought to be. It's the best - perhaps the only true love I've known - surely this gives it status?) Yet it's not. It may be all I ever get- given geography, time and circumstance and I may in time accept this inevitability. Doesn't mean it's enough though. (Ye ye I know, why am I wasting these precious years on compromise? "Get your own man"right?)

And yes, the grass too, (this pun unintended) is ever greener over yonder (despite all the above). Yes, there's plenty here within what he and I call love that others would spy from outside and long for. Then, there's the whole 'rainbow effect theory' I have concocted: How at any time, we ALL stand in the rainbow?

Let me explain: You see a rainbow ahead (and if you're like me, you always look for the shimmer at the very bottom, where it touches land?) and you might for a moment pause to envy those within it- within that shimmer? Because of the damned pot of gold! Your brain actually believes that crap, and, since you know you can never actually reach it- there's some irrational unfairness/injustice floating in that rainbow- seen from where you stand.

But some way behind you, there's another person. And they too are looking at the same rainbow- only (and don't ask exactly how this whole rainbow effect works, I know nothing) they are seeing YOU in the shimmer! And they believe what you believe and they're feeling what you're feeling seeing you in turn ahead, and envying you in it... and behind them, there are layers of others- you get the idea. We're ALL in the bloody rainbow! We just can't see ourselves in it.

Meaning I guess, we're perpetually at any given moment, in the best possible state we can be in, allowing for the unpredictable nature of circumstances. Even if we believe we're rock bottom, someone else is always worse off. Meaning... we should be grateful- even for our adversities because there are infinitely worse ones stretching behind us others are enduring. (There are entire religions and philosophies based on this notion- I am NO pioneer.)

What does my rainbow theory have to do with love? Well, there's my problem! I should be bloody grateful for the love I have now and every moment, in the moment- since what stretches behind me is endlessly, terribly worse. But I am looking ahead at what could be instead- night after night visualising scenarios of a different, a better seen-from-where-I-stand reality I assume others are living. (Damn you Marie.)  And now that I've caught a glimpse of it - the damn pot - I see it ever ahead!

So I am now waiting for life to catch up with this realisation: Despite many decades of living and being, despite understanding fully the futility of losing every present to the imagined, I still need that LOVE. I may never get it, but I will die expecting it.

(What utter fucking crap above! I'll leave it in, I won't edit.)

... The real moral of all this? The LOVE? It is not a person. It is not a thing. It is not even the verb we turn it into- you can't 'do it' or even 'make it'. You can only ever let it do you, make you. And it will do you/make of you as it finds you in the moment. Love IS every moment. No matter how wretched, how horrid, how unjust- love IS that moment. There is only one true emotion between people, the rest are mere footprints left on the way to... or from LOVE. Once there- once two people connect and thus become one, then there are only two options: Accept LOVE and abandon walking for flying- abandon everything, risk everything for... everything! Or. Abandon LOVE and live thereafter, a life lived regretfully.

I met two who had chosen the former. I and my love live the latter. That's just how fucking simple it is. Black or white. Left or right. We (I...) un-simplify it because we think we should. Our arrogance (really our disguised inner cowardice) is never more pronounced than when we declare "I love you" to one we refuse to have, or even attempt to have. Thus we live amassing regrets. And thus LOVE still lives, as it finds us.

Trouble will come to one- when the other is no longer there. It will come in the form of ghostly moments: being in a particular moment and receiving an echo from the past... and the regret trailing it. Everything everywhere will echo regret.

Or will it? What of all the 'highs'? Exhilarating moments- excruciating moments... moments of deep exchange, thought after thought... what of the warmth-infusing moments when everything else falls away... everything is condensed to-

(Doing it again... I should have stopped back at the 'moral'. The rest is me justifying- or projecting threat. Both a waste of clacking.)

LOVE has you, people. No matter how lonely, how desolate, how desperate- love somewhere... (whether in the past, in this moment or ahead... since time is irrelevant because it is everywhere) it has you. You just gotta adjust to thinking the footprints are leading towards, not away from- despite all evidence to the contrary. And when you get there, to the moment you have to decide, and you do - even choosing the latter of the two options - LOVE will still have you.

It takes great courage to be a coward. As much as it takes to not be one-

(Now that is definitely insane. I am stopping here.)

THE END