coming of age for the aged--the meat of it

Last night, shortly after the film, after the above-mentioned has been mentioned, the conversation bled into the events of the past year-- since I have been back in the Bay Area from Los Angeles-- and my next move to the east coast in a matter of weeks. In the past months, I have embroiled myself in...(how shall I put it?)...short, high-impact relationships, (go ahead, call it affairs, collisions, flings, but always at a cost, as they always do-- come on don't kid yourself.) Along this path, a significant part of me has become obscured by a notion of couple-hood wherein a deflated expansion happens. Understand of course that these people are people of substance--by that I mean, I recognized a depth in character and for most, this was not only exposed but explored and thus, gave the notion/illusion of intimacy, of a kind of recognition of two selves re-discovered in the weaving of a delicate contact. Now, as I am extricated from such alliances, (notice the passive voice) not rejected, not ejected, but unknotted, I look to what I have lain aside: my raw material, the strength of knowing what I know about myself that comes from not looking out but looking in. Understand as well, that I am no relationship-hopper. For a significant period I have stayed at my corner of the ring, kept to myself and steadied my life on the notion of the work I am capable of doing. This is who I am. Again, definitions are important, don't you find. So. Now. To once again find myself in the world of men and women, amidst questions of need, of self-expending desires, I traversed this road on clunky wheels; in short, it was a mess of a ride. Yes, there is beauty in it. I prefer Gioccometti's idolatry of life to art. He's right in my book: between the two, I'd pick life each time. As I seem to say these days: let these 'artists' starve themselves of the sun in order to approximate the image of light in a darkened room; I'd rather point my face at the burning orb with eyes closed watching the red-splotches of veins in my lids. Or, I'd prefer touch the veins on Fischer's arm and smile a bigger smile than nodding at Michaelangelo's David. These are the pleasures of breathing.

But onwards...the point of it is this...point...ah yes, no...yes: a balance must be struck about the gifts we give each other in that precise moment of recognition and the recovery of what we have forgotten about who we are in the boredom and quiet of our room.