Tag Archives: romantic story

by

… one month in …

Journal, January 31, 2006

“So much has passed this week, big ups, big downs, and I do my
best to take stock.  There are times when I literally write two lists,
positives and negatives, because I am so confused by him.

Today is a new day.  Hes’ UP, he’s moving, and maybe can I say it?
Excited.
Went for a walk last night… our Second evening walk… and I
mentioned why not go to NorCal and do a crop?  We could
buy a boat, doing that.
Also as we walked along the water at the Park, I say that I’m glad
we are too old to do the kid thing…
“Why?” he asks…”I would like to try one more time to do it right”…
and yes, I understand, I tell him, but then we’d just get caught up
in things to argue about , even more than now!
Then I bring up a Project, a Collaboration… and say
“This is what we do instead of a child”  and suggest that we do the
Life Story that he’s brought up so many times, that his life and the
telling is the most viable place to start.

So today he wants to start on it.    He’s washing clothes, organizing
closets….he’s Moving.  I tell him he has to open  his Faucets…
Let the Energy flow.
Money is Energy, open it up!  He’s started walking every 2 or 3 days,
and although he won’t let me walk with him, he is seeming more alive.
Cooking, Eating, Sex, he is into these, so there’s still hope… there’s
always hope, and when I came, I told myself I would stay until there
were no doubts, one way or the other.
Things can change instantly, they can!

The days merge into eachother, and all I can remember are the
issues, which perhaps is as it should be after all.  The progression,
the swings, the ups and downs, as we journey together on this path.

Each good day gives me hope that we are going somewhere together,
and can figure this thing out.”

 

—————————————

by

… the journal continues …

It seemed a continual pendulum swing, from highs to lows,
from close to push away, from together to alone, and
obviously that was what it was.
Why the mystery?  Onion layers…

Two people, old enough to know too much, to think they’ve
seen it all and enough more to sink a goat, now thinking
they can each transform themselves into the Fool stepping
into the Abyss, as he called it.  And why not?
What more was there to do, but complete the circle,
and begin again.

But new borns cry a lot.  They throw tantrems, they are
afraid.  Nothing makes any sense, and they want to be held
and rocked.
They want soothing songs and nonsense stories
to swim them into themselves, where being is
a Dolphin dance of knowing without words.

The Issues…….and the Methods…
She thought deeply on this one, because just now it seemed
like the “fight” wasn’t about the issues at all.  It was about
the style used to prove a point, about winning, about being right.
At least to her it was, and that was all she knew, of course,
like all of of, each of us.

Consider the life of the man.  Beaten as a young child by
both parents, isolating himself for protection, proving
himself again and again, yet the only answer he ever
got was from himself, like when the father threw him
into the ocean to teach him to swim.  Sinking to the bottom
revealed his abilities to hold his breath, and the complete
and utter joy he felt when he realized he was at last safe
and in his element.  Alone now seemed a strength.

And War.  Always at war with all  of it, but when the real
thing came with the Legion, he saw a path to rightousness,
recognition, and power.  He could be a true Hero.
He hadn’t figured on what it would do to his heart.

So fucking alone.. he was completely alone, wrought with
past cobwebs, ropes, the scars from war…the hardest fucking
plastic known to man wrapped around his heart.

Old ways are not set in concrete, but they Are set in neurons,
pathways, grooves so deep, so repetitiously run.
And new tracks can be near impossible to dig out.

 

________________________________

 

_______________________________-

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

It’s now Thursday, five days into my visit to Rio, to Alcir,
and we’re home, and he’s drinking.  I have never known
anyone who can drink like he can, and yes I know it’s a
bad sign, and yes I know Brasilians drink more beer than
any other country, and yes in that tropical heat, that half
frozen freezer stored refreshment cannot be beat, but…

This man has such high tolerance to everything, since
maybe birth, and so it’s a gift and a curse.  I have seen
him put away liter after liter, go to the store, buy eight
more, I drink one, he drinks the rest, and while he’s out
he’s done shots of Scotch at the local garage bar.

Yes, along those winding urban streets there are countless
bars in garages, little gatherings of men sitting on cheap
plastic chairs, smoking and bullshitting.  It’s a part of
Brasilian culture, the men just go out at night and drink.

So Thursday he drinks, we cuddle, he asks me not to
let him go, and then sneaks out when I fall asleep.
Friday there’s the usual hangovers, denials, and Mr
Bad Mood.  Sullen isolated shit head.
We go grocery shopping at the giant Mercado that we
usually walk to, sometimes holding hands, but this day
he drives us, because his elderly Aunt Maria needs to
go too.  He goes to a chair at one of the little mall stops,
and Maria and I go in with our separate carts and get
what we need.  She is not a happy person in general,
but when neither speaks the other’s language, it’s pretty
lonely.  She cooks, and I can’t even ask her about
ingredients or where something is.  And he’s back in the
mall drinking beer, and beginning to refer to
us as “you people”.    This does not bode well.

I’d so looked forward to getting out and shopping for
things, finding new fruits and vegetables, people watching,
and now he’s just mean and doesn’t want to be there.

When I’m in line, which is always endless… I mean, take
a book or some playing cards when you shop here…
he comes by long enough to load the cart up with beer,
and a big Scotch.  Oh, and I’m buying.
Of course I’m buying… I’m a rich American and I’ve
intruded upon his space, and I will pay.

Maria and I are now pretty much the same, in his eyes.
Irritating women who want something from him.
Never fall in love with a man who hates his Mother.

 

_____________________________________

… not even a week ….

by

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…

 

————————————————————–

by

… harvest 2005 …

OK…so where were we…?
It was 2005, and I was landing in a small Northern California
town, one I’d lived in earlier and for 20 years.  I was going
there to work with friends, save a bunch of money,
and fly back to Brasil.

I’d taken a month early in the year to stay in Rio with an old
love of mine from long time past, 1987-8, and figure out what
this Thing was between us.
Neither of us had forgotten the other, forgotten the passion or
connection that was undeniable.

There had been great wells of tears on my part at the time of
leaving.  He held me close, and remained steadfast, while making
sure I was coming back.
His hand gripped mine, as his great male calm denied his need.
Yes I was, I told him, and as soon as I could.  We were engaged,
we were determined, and we were in love.

Romantic, yes?  Try falling deeply in love, mutually in love,
and in nearly an instant.  Then wait 18 years, find eachother,
and spend a month together again.
Out of time, so much touch and eyes, eyes, taking in what seemed
like reality but just couldn’t be… our brains could hardly grok it.

After I flew away, sobbing into my kleenex  the stewardess had
brought to me, I settled into my seat, journal in hand, and
continued to record the saga as it unfolded, pouring out the
emotions as they rose up and fell, like the tide itself, the ebb and
flow of all that feeling.
He drove away, arrived at his favorite street bar, and got
completely wasted, went home, and continued on for
what I suspected were days.

We talked on the phone.  He pulled away.  He came back.
He opened, he closed.
Notice here that I am focused on the He of it, and yes I was.
His moods, his openings and closings, his near and far, virtually
directed my emotional path for many months, try as I did to not
only understand him,  but to hold on to that connection at
such a great distance.
Some people find it easier to hold on to something so etherial,
and others…. well, he was and Is an in-the-moment guy, pulled
and distracted by mind and body, and thoroughly in the now.
Which means…anything could happen.

Waves of fear and worry came and went… alternating with those
beautiful and poetic times that are almost impossible to convey
to anyone not There…
Those are the moments I did my best to hold on to, to get down
on paper before they faded into the ethers…. because such beauty
should never be wasted.

The Magick between us had always been there, and it still lived,
couched between time passing, and the different paths we each
had chosen…
He wasn’t ready for my return, so I went to Hawaii for a while, and
then prepared to arrive in NorCal just in time for Harvest, readying
myself to fly back to my darling one, and figure out how we could
be together forever…

The story has been partially written, and if you want to catch up,
go to Categories, then Brasil or Brazil tab, and start at the beginning.
Or jump in wherever…
At some point you’ll understand…

It’s a fun story, very romantic, very sweet, very beautiful, with
such poetic moments, full of sound and fury, and signifying …
something very deeply profound,  eternal….and yes of course, sad.
Love is sad…. because……..it’s always something.

—————————————

by

…babe…

It’s March 9th…2005

We’re at the aeroporto… we cling to eachother like frightened
children…. or frightened old people…..
we’re too quiet to be children…

I can only hold onto him, hold his hands, touch his borders,
until the very last minute, knowing full well that time just keeps
moving on, and soon all this will be gone…the now of now
will soon be the now of the future, evaporated
but for foggy memories.

He sits beside me, and we are quiet together, our last moments
before the long distance once again pulls us to someplace else.
I lay my head against his maleness, holding to his arm,
head on his shoulder, my hands absorbing all I can of him.
He feels solid, grounded, calm, sad and resolved.
He says nothing… there is nothing to say.

I cannot hold the tears that fall down my face, and onto our
mutual hands…… and he looks long at me…

“Oh…I think thees separation ees going to be harder on
you than me…..”
He trails off …… I hold tight.

He takes my journal, borrows my pen, and writes
one last message to take home …

I remember turning to him for one last look, after I walked away,
before I moved into customs, and readied myself for the long trip home…

I may not see his face again for a long time… and for all that life offers..
….and for the way he is… it could be never.

The old panic buttons send their blaring sirens off into my nervous
system, for the so-many-times he’d left before, all of it coming up
like a slide show carousel on the dark wall of my brainscape.

I remember boarding the plane, and asking the assistant to please
bring me some kleenex…
“I am leaving my fiancee,” I tell her…” and I know I’m going to cry…”

And I did.  I cried as the wheels left the runway, as the plane banked
for the last time over that city, over that bay, and away from that
magical place…my magical place…..until I could no longer see
that city, that bay, that coastline, or Brasil at all.

And then I wiped my eyes, sat up a bit, pulled out my book and
began the long journey home.

 

 

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….