A Love Called Man

One love, and I became a man possessed. Having had a taste of it, I searched for it in everything I saw. No, no, it wasn't about sex, it was love, the ideal, the sublime. It was the apex of all feeling, the summit of all existence. In it I moved and had my being.

But no, I was still far from being its personification. Very far. I was in love...once, and love was what I wanted to be, long ago, it never left me. But when it came to me, I was lost. It became an obsession. No, it's not supposed to be that way. Love is a giving, complete giving. How can you be love when you want something, or someone for yourself. For love is a sharing. Obsession is a prison, both for the 'obsessor' and for the one obsessed.

Vainly I sought for it in every encounter. And the more they came the more disappointed I became. There was no meaning in those meetings underneath the sheets or elsewhere. The momentary touches (for that was all they were) gave very little pleasure, if any. You rise a tiny bit above yourself, you reach out, but find nothing you can truly hold on, that can give a semblance of permanence or a union more sublime, a merging of the spirits in complete giving to one another. Ah, to feel an embrace that fuses more than the bodies, but more of the selves, and then again it is a coming together in a forgetting of the selves such that you are no longer aware of who you are nor of the other and that somehow you meld into the eternal now, not knowing nor caring where one began nor where they ended.

Yes, I became obsessed by that ideal. I sought to lose myself into someone, but couldn't find her, tried to lose my self in love but could not find completion, fulfillment. I had to journey out of that obsession.