relationships are like flags in the wind or charmed by another season

from the sea (5) –secrets by freda karpf

Except from riding the waves:  a tale about being home in the world by freda karpf

  The ocean was moving from left to right when Mrs. Scattergood woke and turned toward home.  Her first experience of long lines came with the horizon but for a while all she thought of was the limbo line of sex. She would be under the limbo line and sit up or stand up too soon and break it.  She was a clumsy dancer. There’s no doubt about it, she agreed with herself. 

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     Some relationships are like flags in the wind.  They have their telltales and you can use them to indicate your way.  Her inner dictionary of what this one meant or that person meant would have to be something more certain than the limbo line.  Even in the water, a current comes along and you know that’s an ocean stream.  It’s like a small town with a tram.  You get on, you get off.  She knew it would come along and she’d feel the difference in temperature; the sense of something moving in the water that was also water but different.  Now, if there was love she would know.

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     She released the question if she’d ever have it again. Now it was a question of being in the ocean.  If you’re in the ocean, there may be streams or rivers in there with you.  Knowing that was something solid.  Solid is good.

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     She spent almost an hour going away from then coming back to a phrase that modeled what she thought could be a great metaphor for her relationships. The sad irony was that she couldn’t remember the phrase. And walking home, again she forgot this phrase. It’s the idea that love is reiterated when you are in love with what pulls your attention. The object of your love gains from the exposure of your attention; feeds on it and loves you back. 

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     Peak experience. That’s it, that is what Maslow meant by peak experience.  How often is a person fortunate enough to find these things?  They come, they go, but keeping them near is hard.  They take on a life of their own with walking away legs.  The last time she couldn’t remember the words ‘peak experience’, like this time is because it means so little unless you’re in the experience.  It’s just words.  Just a line like the horizon unless you’re looking at what you love; at what folds you completely into the experience. 

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     It wouldn’t be surprising if some spiritual practitioners would say it was maya.  Maya, that great cloud of illusion that can now be predicted way in advance of being awake in the morning. Weather forecasters, knowing Mandelbrot’s math can go out five to ten days and tell you which way the maya is going to blow.   

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     Spring is just such an illusion. Early spring more so than late but in general spring hasn’t sprung until it’s nearly summer and then forget about knowing if your pansies will survive, holding their throats till they choke in July. 

~

     Mrs. Scattergood spent a half hour clearing her nightstand, making a cup of tea, dusting and so on before it struck her that she was looking for the words ‘peak experience.’ She had no hope of feeling it again.  Not then.  Baubo knew that if she could be charmed by the season she could also be charmed by another.