Love, Lavender and the Toenails of a Black-Poodle

by Emily ALP

From 2003:

The Second Half of a Midnight Stream of Conscious:

It is such a sad thing because I know what it is like to want to "have" someone. Sometimes I still get the urge to "have" someone. This is such a mistake because in the act of wanting to "have," I am placing myself in a bind, there is no room to breath and the roots of any love will suffocate and the growth be stunted and the joy soon turn to a stale moldy rot of a feeling that was once so fresh and sweet. Suddenly, both, or at least one, of the members of such a tragedy is left with a feeling of loss and disillusionment. What happened to such a perfect thing that was once in the light of day shining and full of hope? How did everything get so confused and tied together and just when did all of my reason and God-given talent get swept under the rug of my sentiment?

I guess this is the lesson, hard learned, that has brought me to a new definition of love:

Love is not a cage or even a room with huge windows.

Love is a yielding and worn couch in the middle of an endless field of soft warm sand … the scent of lavender is everywhere and the air is breezy with soft rays of sunshine brushed occasionally by clouds. It is a comfortable place for people to sit and rest and be themselves. It is not divided or loud. It is not a place for endings but only beginnings and beings. It is a place for joy and sleep running and standing still joking and crying. It is a place where all things come and go freely. Discomforts are soothed by the sands and memories of cold rain subside in the sun. They belong in the sand and form each grain, each thread of the cushions of the couch, each warm gust of wind and each ray of sun. The memories can only relate to experience and the experience can only yield knowledge of that which is perfect, nature. And knowing nature can only be one step closer to knowing God. And knowing God is knowing Love.

I’d like to say a few more things about this lavender scented place called Love. It is dotted with trees and small children run freely there. The shy eventually relax and the hyper straighten their necks and reside in the feeling of acceptance and self-attention. Balance reigns in the disorder fed so frequently by modern medication. Love cures it all and spontaneously leads to the right of way of a combining of human force that can only manifest Love and so on and so on. So when this all lines up, we have a perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich that anxiously waits to be eaten by a king who wears knickers and has a black poodle. They stand together at the edge of a step in front of a large red chair. The king laughs and the poodle scratches to get down. As the king releases the poodle, its nails hit the floor echoing a sound through the king’s chamber. Suddenly all eyes are on the dog, which sits calmly on the cool floor. The dog, content, stares at me. I look away. Why would the dog want to come to me anyway. The king wanted it and I don’t really want to deal with his jealousy if the dog wants me more so I look away. The dog creeps toward me and I just look away some more. My eyes role downward in the direction of the king. He looks vehemently at me and at the dog. “Why should I worry?” I suddenly wonder. “What would he really care if the dog liked me more than him? Why should he care?!” If it were me, I wouldn’t care. I must understand the complex pattern of reasons why this king cares if the dog likes me more than him. I don’t know the whole pathway, but I do know that insecurity and fear are the fences of such a feeling – jealousy. So I lean in toward the dog and simultaneously coax the king’s jealousy toward me. I provide a compass for his most natural reaction to rejection by a small animal.

He is so powerless against the fences of fear and insecurity…such fences that would burn down in love. Yet he has not enough spark to make it happen so first I must show him where his fences are. Then, we will look at them together and then we will make a move. If he is scared to look, we may not get much done. If he, however, sees that the fence is what holds him and dares to climb over it and mess with it, we have hope.

This is the mission in each case. Our mission to overcome such a fence that ropes into a chain reaction of emotions.

Back to the feeling of wanting to have something. It is the same chain. It is the same fence. It is the same path and it is so different for everyone, yet so the same. The difference is, we are not all kings, we don’t all have black poodles and we are often not so lucky to clearly see things right away. It may take many tries. It may be such a foreign concept to some and it may be that we only want to buy fence posts from a consumer society and build more reasons to fear and doubt and block love. It may just be that for sure. Mom was right, good things tend to come out at such an early hour of the morning. Good Night.