Tag Archives: love story

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… contact …

on Mar 3, 2015…. Carol writes back….
“hi there… 
You know, i am very happy that you decided to contact me, drunk
as a skunk or not, and for several reasons:
The possibility of being friends with someone you deeply cared about,
and still Do care about, lends such hope and depth to one’s existence. 
It provides for the healing of the wounded and regretful hearts
involved, as well as makes wonderful use of the tremendous
investment that was made during all those months and years.
I mean, if you were really so attracted to someone in the first place,
and put so much time and energy into the relationship,  isn’t it
logical to not throw the entire thing away?
I have stayed friends with a couple people with whom i was involved,
and it sort of makes sense… duh…. that you might have a few things
in common, and a few vantage points to share!  
So as far as I’m concerned, I’m ready to enjoy and share what we can. 
You write with such passion, such conviction, and you do indeed
have something to say.  I only wish, as I always have, that you would
someday allow me to edit, punctuate and space your thoughts.
If you want readers to share your thoughts, please don’t make them
work so hard… spacing and punctuation really helps phrase things
in more the same way that happens when you speak.
I understand your method… it just pours out…
and you Should write the way it works for you.  But afterwards,
they can be made more palatable to the masses!
I have no illusions… you cannot hurt me anymore.  I allowed myself
to be hurt, and after a good amount of time…
……………..much longer than You, I might add…
I was able to move on to the next phases in my life. 
I am over the past, and free of fantasy, longing, confusion and
attachment.
I loved you deeply and for a long time Alcir… and now I do still
love you, but from a very different place.  It’s actually a purer
flavor of love.  But it will always be there for you.
That’s the way I am… once I really Love someone, it never really
goes away.  If it does, then I know it wasn’t really love at all,
but a mixture of other feelings and emotions and needs. 
I have always enjoyed your mind… crazy and unique as it is,
you have most amazing thought processes, and your life
experiences are incredible…
You have great taste in film, something i have a passion for…
yes, i saw that film long time ago, (“All is Lost”), and thought of
You.  I also was grateful I was not on it with you!  haha!
Your sense of humor is one reason you have survived, and
maintained some sort of perspective in this insane world.
Your drive, your will to live, is admirable, and your joi de vivre is
one thing that drew me to you in the first place.
Also, you were awfully cute at 29….
So… feel free to write me.  We can even talk sometime on Skype…
i will need your Skype number in order to call you, and although
i do have a little credit for foreign calls… one of my best friends
is in the UK… i would prefer your calling me.
Oh ya !    … and you Still owe me for that Metal Detector that
I bought you years ago, on good faith!  What a Rat!
My Skype is ****************
Our timing will be strange… my Skype is only hearable when i am on the
computer, so maybe an email to warn me, so i can open my laptop…
BE Well…….. Stay safe………. and BE Happy!
………………Carol
                    ___________________

 

On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 9:26 PM, Carol wrote :

“What an extraordinary day…. Smiling now.”

____________________

…and on Mar 3, 2015,  Alcir returns :

“To You with all my…… you know !
Thanks for being so generous !”

____________________

 

by

… reflections on a week …

Journal musings…. January  2006 in Rio

“You have to really Want this, for this to work,”  he says,
and the words echo through the convolutions of brain cells,
concentric circles from a center…. created by a leaden heart.

It felt so heavy.  All of it.  Sad….. Dark.

Confusion had set in, and too much thinking could be dangerous.
Yet to not-think was unthinkable…. Hmmmm.

She’d been given the front veranda upon which to sit, to get
away from him, from the constant TV, and his moods.
….which actually was quite remarkable, amazing really,
and she could view the wandering streets and flashing
cloud storms and island comings amidst the constant breezes
with a sort of detachment that she needed… desperately.

“This is My House”, he would announce to no one in particular,
at no particularly special moment…except
to her I guess, and the dog, and his Mother upstairs,
and to himself most of all.

His stubborn willfulness had served him well at one time,
most of his life more likely.  But now it felt like stacks of
concrete pillows, between the two bodies lying side by side.

Was she to be like the desolate dog, if you could call him a dog,
that was allotted two small spaces within which to eat, do his
duties, be quiet and cower.

He addressed him as “Get the Fuck….” as the poor wretch
jumped up, desperate for a touch, for tenderness… and the
man would cringe, because he hated the dog.
It was the most disturbing thing she’d witnessed so far, the
distain he held for this shit eating dog who had so thoroughly
disappointed him and his visions of what a dog should be.

Maybe the dog was just trying to clean up his jail cell,
she thought, maybe he’s really trying to be a good dog…

Was she to be the “other twin”, protruding from his ribs, ever
connected, never her own, never as large or as individuated?
“Be by my side” now had it’s double meaning.

Did he even begin to know how to let anyone in, even one
he claimed to love?  Was he even in control of the little door
that swung open and closed, daily…
There’s the light, and wait…. oh, and now it’s gone…

Did the most courageous man she’d ever known cower
at the possibility of real love?
For this was love becoming real, going far beyond the
fantasy he loved so well and could keep in control.
Beyond the heroes in books he’d emulated, the ones
who would run off to fight another dragon.

No pretense holding distance… This was so real it was
palpable, in the air and sifting like dust to the surfaces
of everything he touched in this cell he shared with her.

“I’m going over the Abyss”, he had sighed one morning,
a couple of days ago.
……………..”and do you know Why?”

She looked long and hard at his face, now miserable
with confusion, yet here he was, the little door opening
just a bit once again …

She motioned to herself…. and slowly he nodded,
…. sadly, tenuously, as though for that moment he had
risen out of his automatic self and was viewing it all
with clarity and a mildly puzzled perspective.

“What do I do?” …..

After a moment, her own answer came, as it always had,
since more years than she cared to remember.

“Jump and Trust…. that’s all you can do…….

“OK….”, he nodded, and it was done.

 

____________________

Aside by

ImageJanuary 1, 2006

Rio de Janeiro, on the island in Guanabara Bay…

Sunday morning is a disaster.  I was demolished, maybe slept
an hour at best, and can hardly begin to sort out my feelings.

Our fabulous NY Eve had turned into near disaster, with him
so drunk, more so than I’d Ever seen him, crashing into people,
passing out for 4 hours, leaving me in a strange country with
no idea where to go or what to do.  Thank God for the kindness
of Brasilians, all Two Million of them along Copacabana Beach,
for there were a few who knew 3 words in English and helped
me while I waited for Mr Wonderful to wake up.

When he awoke, it was dawn, and he was still drunk, and
kept asking me if I still loved him.   Once he awakened on the
street, we found the bus, walked home up the hill, and collapsed.
The same thing went on all day Sunday, him all pitiful and so
hungover,  but somehow we got through it.  Not pretty.

Monday, no one was working, so we stayed home, and I got sick.
Throat sore, coughing, sinus ache… tired… We slept a lot,
watched movies, and slept some more.  It was a good way to
avoid facing our reality from both sides, I suppose.

Tuesday we went for a long walk to the town area and stores
where we could get groceries, and I bought a great set of
stainless steel pans to replace the toxic antiques he was used
to using.  Here I was buying organic produce, and he was
using aluminum and teflon, with no idea what he was doing
to his gorgeous cooking.
He was a great cook, having learned at his Grandmother’s
side, and I remember fondly the way he would make cross cuts
on the half onion in his hands, using a small paring knife,
then make slices across to make little squares for his sauces.
He’d do it the way old people used to do, and beautiful hands
he had…brown and graceful and elegant, as he laughed and
stirred and tasted.

I am sick with fever, and after we walk home through the
old delapadated suburbs and put things away, he goes out
again.   He doesn’t just go out… he comes back and goes out
again, getting drunk, snorting god knows what, and getting
drunk again.
The third time he wants to go, he tells me not to let him,
to tell him Not to, so I do, and he lingers.
Finally I say…”want a massage?” and he melts.
“OK”…  and he falls upon the couch pads.
He falls asleep during the entire back side massage, and
sleeps deeply, quietly, the way he almost always does…
How can a man like him be so peaceful in sleep?

He wakes up speaking Portuguese, and I guess talking
himself awake from a dream leftover.  I laugh…
He does amuse me.

 

_______________________________________

Dead Man Awakening

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Back but Not …

This blog started as a running commentary on Dating sites.
Then it went in a direction that was not planned, yet one
that was in the card catalogue…
You know… that thing that you know some day you will write about………Someday.

And then that Someday became a train that I hitched a ride on
for quite a while….

Time was,  it was Time to get off that train… for a while at least.

Perspective.   That is what matters in life.  And perspective
depends on your locale, no matter the Bardot, the Time Zone,
the Chakrah….

So here I am, listening to Brasilian Jazz for the first time
in a long time…
I have avoided it… I did not want to go back to it….
go Back to it, to the emotions that the music lead me to. 
For many years, I used Brasilian music of all sorts to
take me back to that magical place that I had attained with
this person who had come into my life. 
And now, for years, I have pushed all of it away….

It’s called Survival.  It’s called Healing…
It’s also called something … oh,
and Right Now as I write, Jobim has come on Pandora, the
station that will be my slave and play whatever mode I choose…
And like I said, I am allowing Brasil to re-enter my reality,
because… although it represents Him… it also represents
the culture that I fell in love with many years ago, and
opened such beauty and rhythms and sweet language sounds to me.

Please…. I am a girl from the sixties, and I loved those days
when Samba entered our culture, and became a part of Movies that
are Dated by the Samba notes that are played as Party background.
I mean, check out Peter Sellers, and an early film… “The Party”…
which, if you haven’t Seen it… oh you Must!
It’s one of his Best, and Samba and those times just envelope
the film. It was a heady, sweet and naïve time, before Reality
struck. I am so glad I got to be there… But…
I am a girl of the times, and all those notes, those feels
go straight to my soul and to my Netherparts as well…

So now Jobim … and his brilliance, his iconic purity…
reminds me that Brasil is more… so much More than Alcir and
all he happened to bring to me….. I fell in Love with Brasil,
and was lucky, privileged enough to really get a taste of a
culture that mesmerized me for so, so long.

So I guess I am saying a few things… I still love Brasil. 
I am still in love with the Music that falling in love with a
Brasilian took me to…. and now I seek to, on one note,
Separate one from the other, and on another level, Allow me
to feel some positivity towards finishing my story about
my love affair with Brasil, and with this crazy Brasilian
who really in all honesty, fucked me over big time…
whilst bringing what I wanted, which was a true real visceral
experience of uniting with this culture.

And yes, still, I feel there are things that need to be
confronted, completed, shared, and yes, even enjoyed,
before this tale is over.

OH… and ps… I am now Listening to DEAD MAN WALKING
soundtrack, and yes, You Alcir know what that means…

 

————————————————————–

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… a sonnet from the heart …

Mine is a story yet half done
The Telling of it Saddens one.
For Romance true and Beautious be,
but just as True is Cruelty.

So True Love starts and fills the Half,
As well as Kisses and the Laughs…
But then the world both Past and Fore
Undoes what once was……  Nevermore!

And so and thus you know the Plot…
We near the Halfmark, told the ‘What’.
But now Before us lies the ‘Why’ and
‘How’ it is that Love should Die.

_____________________

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… the manicurist …

So…. I pick up where I left off…. I have arrived in my little coastal
town…the one where we had first met so many years before…
I am greeted by friends from every direction, and being northern
California in the fall…. well…
…it Is called the Harvest Moon, and yes indeed it was.

I had work 7 days a week, such abundance that is hard to imagine…
I stayed in cabins, I stayed in the camper shell on a little pickup…
I stayed on couches, I lived in a luxurious trailer.
I went here and there, working with friends for a while, then
moving on … bounty beyond belief.

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I had access to my friends warehouse where they stored all their
art studio stuff, plus tons of things from the past… the place was
packed, with isle running through and between desks with computers,
half finished art work, collections of materials ready to be turned
into magic.  A Surreal Retreat, amongst the spacey days of work
and changing company.
He works in Holography, she in sculpture and casting, creating
very glamorous Art Deco style awards for huge companies and
corporations, as well as art pieces for famous individuals.

I slept in their little bedroom, dark like a cave, draped in soft cloth
and shoji screens, quiet and shut away from the world…
…and once I’d dug in for the night, I’d turn on the soundmaker,
dial to the Sea, and dream-image being on the boat with Alcir….
…it was sweet.
I’d call him from there, and describe the toss and weave of that
boat we were on, the feel of our togetherness in that nether world.

“Oh that’s beautiful,” he would say.

I was offered a room for a while in my friends’ home, that you see
above… warm and exotic, warm colors of mirror cloth and shimmer,
from other worlds more fantasy-filled than ours.
Waking every day to good work, good company, good food
and music, and nice cold cash…

And Always with the promise of a trip back to Him, to Alcir, who
was alternatively thrilled and terrified…
I think he couldn’t believe I’d really come back, and
I know he was scared that I would.
His life was tenuous…difficult…complicated…
and though he wished for better, that was all he had to offer.

Because of his past as a Revolutionary, and later in the Foreign
Legion, it was dubious that he could leave Brasil and come
to the states, especially with the current administration and
the wars… security and scrutiny had so increased…
although he often thought he might just somehow do that…
He talked of getting a boat and sailing over to Hawaii or the Coast.
Always the romantic dreamer, ready to be the Hero…
…and he had loved his 10 years in the US, back in the eighties.

Much of this story is already written, leading up to this time…
If you want to catch up, click on Brasil or Brazil in Categories,
and start at the beginning…or jump around, I don’t care.
It’s a fun story, very romantic, very sweet, very beautiful, and
yes of course, sad.
Love is sad…. because…it’s always something.

 

————————————————

by

…boat dreams…

She watched the sea, a still, steel blue calm of a background
to dry golden hills.  Hills that brought back days of sonoma
and chatsworth, the SoCal days.

What a strange time in her life, a time of throwing herself
to the wind literally.  A kite without a string.
Exhilarating and terrifying.
She longed for her man, the male counterpart she’d
waited for, for so long… in general, yes, but
also quite specifically.
She’d called him this morning, and he’d been napping…

“Oh, I hate it when someone takes me out of my dream.
When I go to sleep, I always think I may dream of my boat.
And when I do, and a call takes me away…”

“Well….Sorry!” she mocked…
She knew it wasn’t just that way with her call…

“Oh Nooo…but to trade a dream for a dream, that’s ok…”
he soothed, coming more into the present.

“So…you were dreaming of your boat?”

“Yes…. it was so goooood…”

The longing tide that crouched in her belly sang songs
of sun and warm skin.
Soft brown warm skin there for the touching.
She loved reaching out for him in the the night, and just
resting her fingertips against his borders.
The borders of him, inside him, him really there…

Now she could not succumb to it…… No..
The tide must rest, like some pacing tiger
in the closet of her heart…
Can’t come out yet, she thought….
……..or it will surely Eat me.

 

 

by

…i’m leaving babe…

Journal, March 8, 2005…..leaving Rio tomorrow.

“She tried without success to see beyond.  To find the path leading
to the future, to their future.  But all was dark, cloudy, full of foggy
mist, tiny lights flitting in when she least expected it.
Lights leading to hope, hopes of a life constructed of dream upon
dream, until it walked in and bit her.  Knocked her in the head
with its head.

That’s what he used to do to introduce himself to someone new,
when he was young… and a few passed out.  She hadn’t passed out,
but Lordy, he surely took her breath away.

She remembered her darling Carrie, who in the last episode
(Sex and the City), had said something wonderful, something so
her feelings…
“I believe in Love, inconvenient, all encompassing, can’t live
without it Love”

And now she’d found it, dreamed it, created it, and it completely
overwhelmed her.  It’s power, the knowledge that no other man
could ever again walk into her life and possess her the way he did…
this one man.
He was the love of her life truly, and the swept away feet off the
ground, the heart over head of it creating waves of pure emotion
without name.   And he had made it clear that it was mutual.

It was completely new territory, another universe, their own world.
.. Wasn’t that what he had said in that first poem….

“Meet me in a timeless world where we can be ourselves.
Where we are who we are..where I can be a true man who’s capable
to love a real woman, without limitations, without lies…
Free to become the most of our possibilities…”…”

 

The Present, May 2012… the story continues…

Reading this journal entry now makes me very sad…
sad for that girl there, the one with such overwhelming mind
stopping emotion and connection with this man.

At the same time, I feel such sadness at having lost it, for I do
love being in love, no matter how impossible it may be.
I believe in it.

The connection between us was real, and still is real.
I know it…he knows it.
He may have tried to move on, but the indelible sting of the
connection between us does not wash away, no matter the effort,
no matter the turning away, no matter what kind of elements you
may try to use, to dissolve away the stain.
Love is like grapejuice stains on the heart…

It’s something in this lifetime that doesn’t get to play out here,
on this particular plane of existence.
Too much territory to cover to get us to a place where who and
what we want is baked long enough and ready for consumption.

But… I think I’ve said this before… I do believe in other realities,
other dimensions, simultaneous places that we sometimes visit in
our dreams, or even at moments where this reality and the other
sort of cross wires, and things bleed through.
Strangely, I almost never dream of him.  And that’s odd, because
I have quite vivid and emotional dreams with other people with
whom I have deep connections.

But there was a magic to the entire thing, with loud and blaring signs
of breaking through the illusion, those signs of that Jungian Web thing,
where everything’s connected, timings, words, clicks,
and simultaneous thought.

These things happened from day one, and although I have pushed
much of the joy and pain altogether, out of my day to day, still
when I review things like I must in order to write this story…..
still there are wellings up, waves of memory of what might have been,
what could be somewhere, sometime, somehow, in another life.

Soul connections, mapped out long before we got here, work to be
done, energies to be shared, knowledge to keep.

We tasted paradise, we drank it in, we cradled it to our hearts, and
we will never be the same because of it.
And isn’t that just great…. and can’t that be enough?

 

 

by

…on the road…


The days were speeding by, and soon it would be time to leave.

The near month had passed quickly, and her mind overflowed
with information……..her heart with feelings as yet unsorted.
The memories of what those last two weeks held tumbled
into view, as she anticipated leaving Brasil, and Him.

Soon after the daughter went home, and half their time together
had already passed, he took command and as Captain of the
little Gervel ship, deciding it was time for him to show her the
world out there, beyond the gates.
They packed and planned for a grand getaway into the hills
behind Rio, and he did his military thing, with a checklist,
and assigning her her duties.

One very amusing aspect of this trip was their musical choices…
She had brought some favorites from her now vast Brasil collection,
and chose carefully,  packing up a little zipper bag of her very best
ones.  For years, as she’d listened to so much music from Brasil, and
she’d wished he’d been there to translate….and  now…!

He, meanwhile, packed up His bag of favorites, and once in the car
and showing eachother what they’d each brought, they had quite
a laugh….
There She was with Jobim and Veloso and Nascimento, and
Here He was with Willy Nelson, Neil Young, Janis, the Stones,
Van Morrison, and Sade ….  funny stuff.

Well, at least they had a good selection, although facts were he didn’t
want to listen to Brasilian music at all…. overload perhaps….?
so they dined on the USA all the way.

His bitter disgust with Brasil in general had a lot to do with that,
but more so, she thought, it was his nostalgic love of the past times…
Ten years…… of living in the States.
He had issues with the politics, but he loved the freedom
and free thinking West Coast of California.
He actually envied her having been a hippie in the sixties… and
knew that if he’d been here, he would have been right beside her.
And she loved his taste in music, especially Neil and Sade…

Since she had seen little of Brasil, besides the freeways and this
quaint island in the middle of the Bay, she found it hard to imagine
what lay ahead, but his excitement overflowed onto her.
Ever the Adventurer, he would now be in his element.

The Gervel performed like a little jeep, and once they were on the
backroads of red clay and gravel and sometimes cobblestone,
sometimes stones,  they moved back in time, through layers of
this convoluted land.
There were times when the views from rainforest mountain
tops were completely 360,
…Nothing but forest in every direction.

Thrilling, mesmerizing, terrifying, waves of every feeling and
emotion passing over her through the hours and days they took
into the unknown.
They didn’t see another car for hours at a time.  Mostly Not…
They were truly into the wilderness, and with wild and treacherous
landscapes.
Still, she trusted him implicitly, and knew he would take care of
her, no matter the circumstances.


It seemed like every turn revealed yet another Waterfall, a
Cashoeira… such glorious beauty, with flocks of loud and colorful
birds scattering into the trees and across their views.

One day, it took Two Hours to go Two Miles.  It was a varying
combination of dirt, then large rocks mixed with deep ruts, then a
little patch of road of some sort, then rough gravel over old
cobblestones, then drop off to big rocks and ruts…. the little Gervel
performed like the trouper she was… climbing and plunging,
crawling and struggling, yet always proceeding onwards…
…Sort of like Him.

This was on what was called The King’s Road, and he told her that
this was where all the Gold in the country had been carried over
the mountains on the backs of slaves, eons ago.

“…and don’ you think one or two of them hid some gold somewhere,
when they stopped to pee?
Don’ you think some was dropped, when they fell down and
were being beaten ?
“Babe!  if we had a metal detector, we could come back up here
an hunt for gold!”

There were vistas breaking through of groups of the Pau d’Arco tree,
covered in brilliant pink flowers, a medicinal wonder whose bark is the
strongest detoxifier known, and used for thousands of years as an
anti oxidant, anti bacterial, fungal and virus cleanse.

Valleys and hillsides covered with a very special, now protected tree,
because it had been so ravaged by cutting and burning…
the Parana Pine, the Brasilian Pine… stately, elegant, beautiful,
and spreading plentifully across the vistas before them.

How to describe driving for hours through places that
No human, or anything related to Human, is visible, and then
suddenly coming upon the most incredible mansion, farm,
villa or vineyard, just there all by itself in the glory of
wide open varietal rain forest hillsides.

Passing by little villages, she saw  a cart being pulled
by a donkey,  people relaxing amongst the bundles.
Brown skinned families walked peacefully along the grassy paths,
and it could be that they had time traveled into another century.

One night they stayed in a small town, Santa Clara,  that had a
hoppin’ bar and some simple street life, an art gallery, although it
was probably all of a few hundred people total who lived there.
Little street vendor spots, where she bought herself a beaded
bracelet, in opalescent blues and lavenders.
They were like cute little hippies, young and smiling, loving
to say the two or three English words they knew, always looking
as though they were having the most wondrous time of their life.

The two of them got so Toasted….and notice that’s with a capital T….
Oh, Good Lord as he would say, beyond belief…
…so much so that when they’d had their fill of dancing and kissing and
running hilariously hand in hand, they jumped into the Gervel, and
suddenly realized they Couldn’t remember if the motel they’d found
was up the hill, or back down.

Taking the gamble, they headed up.  The little backroads went on
forever, it seemed…  and remembering all the little dirt roads, all the
turns… and it was all very spinny for her, and she wondered just how
on earth he was driving these little dirt roads to what seemed like
nowhere, with so many turns and so many choices to make….
back and forth, and it was crazy shit…and she would began to slightly
panic, as much as she could maintain any continuous state of mind,
with such an inebriated brain, whose thoughts changed every five
seconds, with all the laughter and singing going on.

He just trudged on, and wait….There….around the turn, Lights….!
Turning into the driveway now, where that beloved bed awaited, all
soft and inviting, their exhausted and confused bodies.
Hello…..!!!!!

“How did you Do that?” she wondered at him, completely
Beyond Belief, over How the heck he’d they’d even landed …

“I have no idea…!”  he laughed….

His internal gyroscopic compass was working just fine somehow…..
Out they tumbled … quite literally… and fell upstairs to deep sleeps.

The next morning …..she realized she couldn’t find her shoes……..
And now….. where the heck was her bra…!
Very strange… what the what?…. where…?
They turned the room upside down, under the bed, along the walkway.
At last,  she trudged downstairs to the car, and …..
There they were!!!…in the car….!!!

Apparently she’d taken them off in all that hilarity, and had no
recollection whatsoever of having done such, with the top down and
their oblivious semi consciousnesses, trundling along blindly.

“It’s a wonder,” she thought, “that I didn’t throw them overboard,
the state I was in… !  That would have been interesting, cruising the
roads, trying to find my bra!”
“Excuse me sir, have you seen a green lace bra on your walk?”
….and they laughed all the way into their next delight….