liberating Eros

Last week I began a radical food plan. Since then, food plays a very small role in my life. For four days I was really suffering; hungry, depressed, grouchy. As I was detoxing and sugar was leaving my system, I really couldn’t remember what else was a source of pleasure in my life. Sad, I know. Yet it brought up some deep questions about what I truly value. I had to explore deeply how I had made sugar and food one of my major sources of enjoyment. Since then I’ve discovered something magical. Now it may not be news to many of you, yet to me it is a revelation.

For a few months my husband has been writing very erotic poetry about encounters with women he had when he was young. At first I felt mildly put off, jealous. Yet then I began to get curious and it awoke two powerful memories within me. The first was about a long term boyfriend and how I loved him passionately for years. I wrote a poem about it and remembered the shattering love I had for him. Yet I wrote it to reclaim my wholeness, to disidentify from how pathetically co-dependent I was. After my husband’s fourth or fifth erotic poem, I began to consider it from a different angle. I had been reclaiming myself yet disowning the passion, bliss-wrong! 

I remembered one of the most powerful experiences of my life. It lasted less than 24 hours and I recall it absolutely clearly many decades later. The energy I felt burning through me in that encounter,  is still so alive and vibrant today. I wrote a poem about it (below) and allowed myself to relive those ardent emotions. I was irresistibly drawn to this man. Even writing about it now I feel my body tingling all over, vibrating as I relive it. Before my husband wrote his poems, I would have felt guilty for those feelings. Yet writing about it freed a current of aliveness that swept me passionately through my day. My daughter and I went on a walk and everything was speaking to me. The clouds were magnificent, the trees were running sap through me, the pond was a source of golden light. (Photos from the walk are on Flickr). When I initially ended the poem, the last line spoke of my yearning to reconnect with that particular man. I realized that that was an error in thinking that has totally limited my life. I have tried to box eros into an acceptable container, made rules about where it can and can not appear. I have disowned my own life force, my chi, prana, whatever word you want to use. Allowed it here, not there. So I changed the last line and reclaimed that exuberance. It is mine, yours. It is a current electrifying our lives. It is everywhere and I need to let it free, take it out of the cage of old beliefs about loyalty and honor. I just read an article by Martha Beck that leads me to believe that it is common to assume we need to imprison passion/eros to be faithful. No! This ebullience is a gift to all around me as my husband’s increasing eros is a catalyst for more vivacity in me. IT CAN’T BE CONTAINED and I no longer want to try. Away with the rules and old beliefs! Let the mojo flow. Does that mean I don’t believe in monogamy-no. I do absolutely. It means that I want all the juiciness in life and it is all around me. Now I recognize more and more sources of pleasure. I have always celebrated beauty and texture, now I am also delighting in my creativity, anything that awakens a burst of passion. Of course sex is a primary outlet, yet I need not act it out to feel it! I can embrace it in so many moments of my life. I give credit to my husband for awakening me from those false beliefs- he woke up awhile ago. 

Several years ago I uncovered another belief that was zapping my life of any joy; I believed that life on earth was hard, a struggle, and I wanted to go home, beam off this delicious, gorgeous earth. Imagine what a downer that was! I have worked for years to release that and now nectar is gushing. Here is my poem honoring eros:

Super Chief

It was one day like any other

I sit eating the microwave chicken on plasticware

Glance up

Eyes catch and freeze

Across two tables our eyes meet and lock

Lightening flashes between us

I can not look down

My uniform no defense

I stare paralyzed

Heart pounding staccato rhythms

Mind blank

The dark landscape passes unheeded 

Mountains dim in the moonlight

The pull an ocean tide unstoppable sweeping me to dark water 

I want to rise and grab him

Meeting again after eons apart this stranger I never knew

My heart swears we’ve known each other across millennium 

I want to swim in his eyes and drown

Finally I remember who and where I am

I can not approach him

Know I’d be lost forever

Job hurtled away in impatience

I haul myself to the back of the train pacing

Forget my duties as supervisor of the staff

Meaningless

How can they quench this firestorm?

Stay in the back of the train

Afraid to actually come in range 

Sleepless I finally cross into dangerous territory 

Checking seats for his sleeping form

Breathless when I discover him

Peer at his hatcheck in the dim light

Going to Lamy, no doubt onto Santa Fe

Breath easier knowing we have almost 12 hours 

to be within a crossable distance of each other

Morning light I prowl

Steps jerky and controlled

Unable to cage myself any longer I rush through the train

He sits in the lounge car

Eyes penetrate

“I’ve been waiting for you” he says immediately 

We steal into a unoccupied room and talk for hours

Every secret revealed

The bond a connection solid as stone

One I have never known

The seconds tick away

Squeeze a lifetime into a few hours

Heart beats over 30 years later remembering

Molten gold pours through me in awe 

Trees, tunnels, mountains pass in a blur 

His stop approaches

I hit the ground with him

Every muscle straining to fly away together

My feet move after him

The call of job, boyfriend absolutely worthless

What stopped me

Question for years why I didn’t ask for phone or address
Yet still feel the connection across time and space
Now I pause and savor the nectar

Feel the magnetic pull of the moon
Delight in the cool slithering water
Expectant with wonder
Joy, dancing, poised to blossom in this moment