Open, again?

Dear stranger—I would like to take your perfectly slender, long hand in my strong but relaxed hand. For we are not strangers. We never have been, even as we have not yet ever met. We draw close, and closer. It is a matter of time.

And time is made up, an invention like cars and asphalt and dirty things that do not matter.

I have freckles all over—almost—wherever the sun shines.

I have a big chocolate hat, but I prefer my vanilla straw Stetson.

I love my Made in Canada wool socks. Homemade, not storebought. Thick enough that I do not need slippers in my cold-floored old fir morning house.

You will visit and you will visit and I will travel with you and someday you will smile and I will smile over my blue-glowing laptop, as I tap away on it like an entrepreneurial Chopin.

My favorite café still plays old jazz and older classical, and not just fun new stuff. I like to work to music without lyrics, so my brain can fire its arrow truly.

You grab my brick red shirt from across the table and kiss me. But you would have your own writing: we must be able to work together. Remember that you are here for you and I am here for me and I am here for you and you are here for me and, most of all, we are here for our children and all others and their children. We are here for humor and equality. And we are here for the animals, and the earth.

 

Trungpa Rinpoche said that we all have talents and ego misuses those talents. You are good with words. You write beautiful words instead of opening. Opening is hard, and not always beautiful.

Your beauty and laughter and half-openness attracts handsome men like flies. But I say you have nothing to prove. So, when you are read—no rush—stop proving you can attract handsome men. Stop writing instead of opening.

Start writing and opening, both. I have not now closed to you. I have only closed to this time now and that is because you have filled this time, already, with a handsome man. There is no opening for us. And we will need a lot of space for our passion and play.

You should play your game, games are fun. I have played many.

You are younger and I am older, yes. You will see how much strength and softness and life and tiredness and fire and fire is in me, and you will see it is not a problem. And if it is a problem, then our paths will drift. But I can feel it and I think you can, too.

There are many books in my café.

“Do you draw in your books, underline the bits that stay in your heart?”

No, I care for my books…unless they are unimportant to me. Then I destroy them with love: in the bath or hot tub, and I have to duct tape them. Either way, I read the hell out of them, cuddling them in my many chairs and bed and couches.

The women and men in town do all know me and smile as I yell boisterous hellos across the counters over the cologne of ground coffee. Many do know me, and yet you are right: we shall know one another differently. A skipping stone settling into the flow of a humming sparkling river.

So run your fingers through my long soft auburn hair. It is darker and thinner than when I was in high school in Vermont. And my coarse red beard is thicker than when I lived in Boston.

I love to buy new mugs and add them to my many large to-stay mugs made by potters, not machines. And I do love Victorian crystals hanging in sunshine over plants. My mom raised me right: a love for tiger oak, not Ikea.

I will teach you to ride. I have a guest bicycle you would love and look good with: black, like a filly. I am warm and patient at teaching pool or bicycling or bouldering.

I will touch you and hold you and bend you and rock you as you will me.

I will never be through making my dent in the sad or the wrong in this world—but I will laugh along the way. That is Sugata—the highest noble path. To serve and learn and to enjoy, simultaneously.

As Allen said,

to ease the pain of living—everything else, drunken dumbshow

That is a good life’s mission. It was commanded to me. I have no choice.

My laugh is full and hearty and loud and light, and sometimes it is boyish. You will feel it all the way in the base of your body.

I would like many children, but only after I have fallen in real love and traveled around the world, once, with her. If we love through that, we’re good to go. If we can make wrong turns and laugh through our mistakes, then good.

But I will wait until you are ready.

When you are ready you will hold space for full love. That could be soon. As soon as you wish.

Colorado, snow, mountains, fires, drinks, bicycles, coffee might be good for the first. I think this last close call was but a preview, a rolling of a boulder up a mountain. Next time we’ll get to push it over, together. We were so close this time.

 

I will offer you a pair of white woven slippers and his white and red spotted paws will rest upon your feet.

You will see my face in the doorway, familiar, smiling, busy, if and when you are ready.

Do you truly want me to pull you inside, to me? I do not think you do, yet: I need to ease you there and you need to hold the space. Open. Trungpa Rinpoche said that Dharma can not occur without respect: container principle. Our true love is true, it is fun, but it is not a game.

My eyes wrinkle and twinkle. And when the sun shines in them and they look at you, they go light and catch fire in copper and hazel.

I stand proudly, not defeated. I am a warrior, who breathes through his pride. I climb and my shoulders, when tired, may collapse but I have learned to take care of myself.

The kettle howls in our future home. I am comfortable with love: I have no fear of love with space and humor in it. I am not however interested in myths of love and realities of other dates and games. I am done with games. We should date other cute boys and laughing girls until we are interested in full love, and then give it a go.

 

“I am afraid of love, I am a little afraid of knowing you.”

There you go. That is red orange lacquered Forbidden truth. Now I trust your heart.

Yes, again: I have oversized soft tees and many lovingly spun mugs for you? Here. I am comfortable with my body and others bodies. I will be incredibly comfortable with yours. I would like to show you my red black and white collared jacket, covered in snow. It is there, hung beside yours. It is bigger than you, and I will put it on you when you are naked and laugh and lie you down upon and within it and open it and burrow into you.

I will meditate and chant at dusk and you could join me. You need believe nothing.

I love Chopin, he is good to us. I love elegance, for it offers no room for resentment.

“I would like to make space for you.”

Would you?

Do not say mere words…words hold meaning.

Do you mean those words?

Are you brave in your fear?

Bravery through fear provides space.

Space provides room for love to flower and burn hot without hurting.

I too would like a lover who can love me when I am tired and want to be helpless and turn off and relax and draw within and read my books in my bath.

“I would like to know if there is an us worth knowing.”

You already know.

“This is the greatest love story I’ve never had.”

Yet.