Give or Take a Second Opinion

(To the tune of “Dirty Work” by Steely Dan)

Anyway, I’m not crazy.  I started reading Why We Love (Helen Fisher)*.  I am not a weirdo or a psycho.  I was in love with Julie.  I don’t know yet if I still am.  I saw her.  The book has told me, so far, that what I have felt toward her is normal.  I hadn’t seen her since she left Twin Hickory three months ago.  I suppose it was normal, too, for all the blood to rush to my face.  The book will probably tell me that in the chapter on unrequited love.  It was more than simply the sight of her that pulled my blood against gravity; I was trapped in a classroom at the county’s training center.  For fifteen minutes I didn’t learn a thing (the class was “Emotional Intelligence”) as I stared, through a window, down a floor, and fifty feet beyond the building, at that black-pea-coat-draped back.  Though her hair was mostly hidden under the coat and her back was to me, I knew it was her, even before I recognized Jennifer beside her, probably because I expected her to be there.  She and Jennifer work out together at the gym there, and I saw Jennifer going in when I got there.  I didn’t hear a word the instructor said, either while the two of them chatted on the sidewalk before parting for their cars, or a few minutes after seeing Julie’s car cruise past that spot a couple minutes later.  I was enraged by my impotence, the missed opportunity, though what I’d have done with it I don’t know.  I prayed for a break in class, and when it finally came scorched off a couple pages of Twickory.  At that point, I hadn’t begun reading the book.  The writing helped–I returned some of my attention back to the class–but I was antsy to get out of there and write some more.  I didn’t know I’d feel that way when I saw her again, and I didn’t even see her face.  But that’s okay, right?  “When one’s love is spurned…the brain links this motivation with negative feelings, such as despair or rage.” (page 76).  The inability to express myself to her, the frustration of trying to engage her, drove my rage.  When it came to a head (how many times was that? four?) it exploded in an impulsive act that would finally get her attention.  It was not (once she clued in to my affection toward her) good attention.  I finished My Brilliant Career and sent it back to Glen Allen with a postcard on which I’d written “I hope love finds you unafraid.”  I should be so arrogant.  Could I handle what I’ve asked for?

I am also not wrong to consider this love an addiction, according to the book.  At this stage, it might be the most accurate designation of how I feel about her.  I’ve been just hanging in there without her, pretending and distracting myself away from the idea of her; but the sight of her was a mainline into my heart.  I’ve relapsed only slightly, though, I think.  It helps to know that this is normal.  Is it normal to have lasted this long?  Is it normal to feel the need to buy more postcards and check out more Glen Allen books?  (Maybe there’s a chapter on “Delusional Self-Permission.”)  I’m not crazy, anyway.

* Thanks, LL, for the book suggestion from your site (Unrequited Love).

The Price

I gave Julie both magnets, placed them on the door of her overhead storage compartment in plain sight on a day she didn’t work.  She saw them the next day, when I didn’t work.  She said nothing to me the next day but approached me the day after as I sat alone at lunch.  I was spooning yogurt when she asked, standing across the table from me in the breakroom, “What do you know about the magnets on my over head?”

“I put them there.”

“Why did you put them there?”

“I don’t know.  I just did.  I didn’t expect anything from it, if that’s what you’re worrried about.”

“Well, you know I can’t accept them.”

“I don’t know why not.”

“I just can’t.  It doesn’t feel right.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t want you to give me things.”

“I saw them and thought of you, thought you’d like them.”

“Well, I appreciate the gesture, but I can’t accept them.”

“Okay.”

She walked away.

I seethed the rest of the day and emailed her the next morning.

I’m angry and disappointed. I’d had those magnets for some time before I gave them to you. When I bought them I thought of you, but thought you would misunderstand my giving them to you. Then I thought I’d give you the benefit of the doubt, that you might accept them in the simple spirit in which they were given. I expected no reaction, wanted nothing from it. You thought otherwise, and that was disappointing. You didn’t, as you said, “appreciate the gesture,” or you would have accepted it without confrontation, as you would have from any other coworker. It was not a diamond ring.

I’m angry because there now seems nothing at all I can do that you won’t construe as a come-on. Which one of us is not over this? I’ve had to get over making the biggest mistake of my life–falling in love with you. What have you had to get over? If you can’t accept a peace offering, a housewarming gift, can you accept anything at all? Do you like things this way? Do you like being afraid of me? Do you like thinking I’m still carrying a torch for you? Do you like worrying about encountering me at work? Do you like that stress? It’s time to read another magnet of yours: What attitude does our conversation follow? The workplace is toxic with our attitudes toward each other. And please don’t pretend to believe that you’re only doing it because you thought I wanted it this way. Who would want it this way? I’m not dying to get away from Twin Hickory, but from you, because things won’t change as long as you believe I still hold affection for you, and whatever proof you need to believe otherwise is beyond my reckoning. I’m tired of being the one who cares that we get along. I’ve stepped up, I’ve tried, however awkwardly, to mend things, but it is not, as you once said, “all up to” me. How often is that your answer to conflict? How often do you just wait for bad things to just go away? Or, how often do you walk up to them with that facade of smug bravado you’ve been perfecting all weekend and accuse them of having feelings for you? Don’t you want things to be better than this? Is there nothing within you power to change it? Your power over me is not sufficient–and waning. If you want to get along, try. If I don’t at first seem to appreciate the effort, it will only be because I don’t recognize it for what it is, having lost hope of ever seeing it. Believe it or not, I want things to get better between us. Why wouldn’t I? I’ve just gotten weary of trying. If you care, please come halfway.

Immediately, I regretted sending it.  Not a word seemed true, only mean and accusatory.

I found the reply in my basket.  I put off reading it for several hours, afraid for my heart.  I made sure I was ready to get on my bike to leave work before I removed the staple and unfolded the single sheet of copier paper.

First let me say how upsetting I found you email.  I can’t understand why you would send me what I felt to be a bitter, mean-spirited email at work.  It seems I upset you by refusing your magnets.  You accuse me, among other things, of not being able to accept them in the “simple spirit in which they were given.”  How was I to know what you intentions were as you did not approach me personally.  Maybe, if you had handed them to me and explained youself, I might have accepted them.  Instead you chose to leave them anonymously on my overhead bin with no note, no anything.  And I was supposed to know your intentions, how?  You equate your gesture to that of any other co-worker but it wasn’t.  Would you have done the same thing for any other of our co-workers?

For the past two years I have had to live with a work situation that I have found uncomfortable at best.  After I initially told you I did not return your feelings, you proceeded to make your feelings a work issue: Telling people about your blog, informing others that you had a crush on me, taping my photo to your bicycle.  You wrote about me in your blog with no regard for me or my feelings.  You kept reminding me by your words and actions how you were ”in love with me.”  I did try to not let it interfere with our work environment and to maintain a cordial relationship with you but you didn’t seem to accept that, you seemed to only want what I couldn’t give you.  If I remember correctly I made it clear I didn’t want it to affect our working situation.  And the most distressing part was that you continued to write about me in your blog when you knew I did not appreciate it.  Now, all of a sudden, it’s my fault we don’t get along, that I’m the one who isn’t trying and I’m afraid of you or like thinking you still carry a torch for me.  If that’s what you think of me, then you know nothing about me at all and I wonder how you can even imagine you were ever in love with me if you believe that’s the way I think and act.  I have no desire to have power over you or anyone else.  Your past actions have made me uncomfortable with you and I do not and have not for many months felt comfortable conversing casually with you.  Now you expect me all at once to forget that and be friends.  Yes, maybe it’s a failing on my part that I can’t do that on demand, but how would you react if you were in my situation?  I certainly don’t claim to be perfect.  You betrayed my trust and that is something that has to be earned, not given for the asking.  And the tone of your email to me certainly hasn’t improved the situation.  Quite frankly, I don’t know now if things will ever, as you say, be better between us if this is the approach you continue to take.  And to answer your question about what did I have to get over?  Well, that would be the death of my mother.

It has been a very long night since then.  I have forced myself to read the letter a few times, forced myself to not react in angry denial of this perception of me.  I try not to react at all, but the weight of shame is crushing.  I sent Julie flowers last night.  She should get them at work before I come in in the afternoon.  The note with them will read, “Everything you said is right.  I’m sorry.  Please accept these flowers and my apology in the spirit of peace and goodwill.”  I realize, now, that she will be embarrassed and have some uncomfortable explaining to do to coworkers.  That was not my intention.  It’s simply what I thought to do.  I didn’t consider how it would make me feel, either, but that doesn’t seem important.

The magnets, which Julie tossed in my basket after reading my email, are on my overhead now.  I should probably remove them, remove them from any chance of seeing them again, which could make me bitter again, but that seems inevitable, anyway. I only hope that whatever I was meant to learn from this takes hold first. I only hope that Julie can forgive me and that I can forgive myself.

Mad Scientist’s Lament

There’s a monster I created two years ago that I’m now refusing to feed, yet I’m the one that’s starving.  My obsession with Julie fueled a passionate torture machine.  There is still torture, but passion?  Or is the passion there, too, and it’s inspiration that’s lacking?  The pilot light’s on, but there’s no reason to turn on the burner.  What I put myself through over Julie sprang me a quantum leap to a new level of self-expression, but it was a level of maddening futility that reflected the worth of the object of my obsession relative to my soul’s needs.  As I try to rise to a new level of not just self-expression but maturity I have to leave behind this Marley’s-chain I call Julie.  Whatever purpose it served it has served it.  Whatever it is I feel for Julie, it is not love. That’s the first link unforged, the first meal denied the beast.  How could it ever have been love?  Sometimes I think that falling in love is no more than getting carried away on a wave of hope, swept up in a fantasy that overwhelms all rational faculties, blinds and deafens us to reality.  Yet it’s what we want.  It’s still what I want.  Even pride is subdued.  Until she says, “You’re a nice guy, but…,” then it unfolds from it’s depths and wreaks a terrible vengeance.  But I shouldn’t apply a universality.  Who do I know but me (if him)?  That’s another battle among my many.  Maybe it’s the whole war.  Can I handle another rejection?  Do I dare even risk it?  That’s wy it’s easier to believe that love will just find me:  I can’t trust myself to find it.

I’ve lost my way, in this narrative, in this mission.  What am I trying to say?  What am I trying to do?  These are daily questions.  The efforts toward survival offer little room even for thought, and attempts at it yield confusion.  I’ve thought all the thoughts and am still on the brink.  Thoughts no longer have the power to keep me from taking that last step, that step into…? See?  I know so much, I’m oh so smart, and I’m powerless to help myself.  I know what goes on at work, how staunchly Julie and I avoid interaction, how we do it, and how I feel about it; but I feel that to write it out would be to justify it, and to justify it would make it too real, would give it a life that would once again claim mine.  I don’t want to own that madness again.  That’s not the inspiration I seek, and if that’s all that fuels my writing then perhaps I need to be inspired to not write.  Emotions will have their way, but they can’t write themselves.  Do they have their way with me? or can I choose which ones to express on paper?  I try to choose, but the omisisons often seem to make lies of what I’ve chosen.  They say I’ve made the wrong choice, and they are probably right.  After all, this writing is an exorcism, very likely of itself.  The monster Frankenstein created can’t live, doesn’t want to live with all of the torture and none of the passion of humanity, but the doctor drags it to work with him.  But at the library the choke-chain is around the other neck.  Nothing is funny and music is angry, and breathing is intermittent and emitted in sighs.  To offer more detail would be to feed the beast.  I can think what I wan’t–the beast can’t read my mind–but to write it would be to place the dish in front of it.  But pride is sustenance enough and there’s no short supply of that at work.

I tire of these metaphors, as I tire of the incessant quarrel in my head that comprises my work day and consists of flare-ups of bitterness at the sound of her voice, followed by talking them down with reasoning, which is then slapped down for having already been heard–to obvious ineffect–a million times.  All.  Day.  Long.  Is it any wonder I’m practically a zombie at work?–that and being awaken two hours before the alarm by the argument’s resumption.  There’s your monster–a three-headed goon that won’t shut up.

If Julie ever talks to me again or if my pride allows me to talk to her first (again), I’ll let you know; otherwise, details of our days together, footholds for obsession, are best withheld.  With nothing to hold onto, maybe I can let go, but there’s been nothing for a long time, yet I cling to the Julie that inspired, unable yet to replace her.  Which comes first? the letting-go or the replacement?  The question is all the more unanswerable for the seeming umpossibility of either resolution.  The monster, the machine, the chain:  The metaphors are all much more real than resolution.

More Than a Kewpie Doll at Stake

She wore a short denim skirt and white panties.  The skirt I noticed when she walked through the library security gates, the panties when she knelt to find her hold on the shelf–a bright triangle between shiny tanned knees.  She stood empty-handed.  I followed her legs to her face, reaching it as she turned to me at the circ desk.  I locked onto her eyes, smiled, and silently invited her to come talk to me.  Her smile accepted.  Her hold was not where she had looked for it because it was waiting at the window for her to driveup for it.  I recognized her name when I scanned her card and knew that she picked up all her holds there, though I’d never actually seen her at the window.  I got it for her.  The title was something like When Food Is Love.  As our engagement was mutual, at parting I gave her the test:  How long would she maintain eye contact as she left?  She dropped her eyes to her book and slid it off the counter to her other hand, and as she turned to the entrance her near eye swivelled to me and smiled.  If the same light hit my eyes, I suppose I returned the same.  I’m sure I felt the same.  I watched her out the security gates then turned back to her name, still on the monitor before me, and clicked on it.  Fifty-four years old!  You’re kidding me!  I was pegging her for five years my junior not three years my senior.  She suddenly became even more attractive.

Such an encounter as that is now my goal for my hour on the circ desk.  Accepting that that won’t always happen doesn’t tempt me to lower my standards but to practice as intensely as possible.  And that I don’t practice on every woman but the ones I find most attractive shaves my opportunities to the bone.  (I’m a picky guy.)  But I’ve stumbled onto something–speed dating at its quickest and least embarrassing.  Simply, it’s first-eye-contact.  In that moment is the most significant moment of the relationship–in fact, the moment that decides the possibility of that relationship even happening.  And if that moment tells me it’s not happening, where’s the rejection?  Brilliant!  It starts with self-accepting the initial attraction and then conveying it.  I saw this woman (whose name I will withhold for compromising her vanity) before she knelt in front of the holds shelf, but she did not look my way until she didn’t find her book.  I was already attracted to her; now I had to let her know by looking in her eyes.  That she returned my smile with her own did not necessarily mean she was attracted to me–I could have just been a friendly face willing to help her–but it did mean she was willing to accept my friendliness.  That’s all I can ask, isn’t it?  It’s easy to discreetly test the waters from that point, as we are now open to each other, relative to being strangers.  After the initial positive connection I do not fear tripping over my tongue or saying something inane or innappropriate and have little trouble maintaining eye contact; plus, I will do anything she asks and offer to do yet more.  But how can I be sure I’ll see her again?  I can’t be sure I’ll be on the desk the next time she comes in, or on the window when she picks up there.  That’s why I have to intensify my practice.

Matt invited me over for lunch Memorial Day.  Being a bachelor (or just being me), I accepted the free meal.  “Oh,” he added, “Chris invited us over for a cookout later.  Do you think you’d wanna come?”  “Yes!  To tell you the truth, I would hope to see Jackie there.”  I told him about seeing her at the yoga studio.  (He doesn’t read my blog.)  “I really could use the classes,” I told him, “but I haven’t done anything about it because it still feels like a pretense to see Jackie.”  Well, guess what?  It must have been.  My hopes were already in the way when we got to the cookout, so my tongue was tightly knotted.  When someone asked, “Jackie?  Where’s Brian?  Is he working?”  i knew my game was over, but I was as relieved as I was disappointed–and I no longer felt the nine-mile trip to the yoga studio was worth my Wednesday morning.  At least I hadn’t committed myself to the hope and inflated it beyond proportion.  I could easily have done that in the months since I’d seen her, but unlike the months it took me to ask Julie out, I wasn’t reminded of my hopes by seeing her every workday.  If I’d been paying attention when we first saw each other at the cookout, I’d have already seen in Jackie’s eyes that our interests were not correlative.  My day wasn’t ruined; it’s knee wasn’t so much as skinned; it didn’t so much as cut itself shaving.  There was no lament or woeful wail, but a shrug and “Oh, well.”

I play on.  I keep looking, keep looking into eyes, looking for…what?  A connection, then a deeper connection.  It’s there, somewhere, in someone’s eyes.  It’s not a game–I shouldn’t call it that–and it isn’t play or sport.  I might know what I’m after, but getting it doesn’t get me the broken tape and the top step on the tri-level dais.  No medal will be hung around my neck, but a millstone might be lifted from it.  This is serious work and might amount to a life’s-work in the end, but…but the thought is too complex for me to express adequately, and, despite my normal analytical bent, I get the feeling that I should accept it being so, that even an understanding, much less an explanation of what I’m doing is not only unnecessary but detrimental:  Codifying what I do is what makes this a sport, a game for its own sake.  I want to see beautiful women; I wnat to meet them and talk to them.  I want to fall in love; I want to love myself.  That I feel good doing what I’m doing only means I believe I’m doing the right thing.  Whatever comes of that must be what I deserve, and the only way to accept what I deserve is to know I’m doing right:  There’s my circle.  I have to trust it not to be a snake eating itself.

I Didn’t Land on Razor Blades, But the Fall Was Farther Than Expected

Melissa wrote me back.  No, no exclamation point, either of despair or elation.  “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I know for sure that Sandra is only interested in friendship right now.”  I wrote back, “That’s not such bad news.  Thanks for getting back to me.”  That was the best I could do–mask my disappointment with blandness.  Melissa went on to suggest that I “friend” Sandra on Facebook.  I doubt I’ll do that.  I may not have gotten my hopes up high enough to make the news a crushing blow, , but to readjust my hope is tantamount to accepting the second choice, and I just don’t do second choices.

James, upon finding that Kristen, the most recent woman he’s fallen in love with, is gay, has seemed to have accepted both the impossibility of a romance with her and the possibility of a friendship with her, and has struck a rapport with her.  Whatever it takes to be able to do that I don’t have.  The best I can do is know that and not inflict it upon anyone else.  Perhaps in time I can grow that special ability of James’, but in the meantime I can at least hope to find someone whose flaws are complementary to my own, mutually neutralizing and sympathetic.  I s that really what this about? a balance of flaws?  A balance of flaws must also be a balance of strengths, and that is a completeness.  Haven’t I always known that?  I know a lot of things.  I have accepted very few of them, stubbonly clutching contrived principles to my chest as if I could press them into my heart.  The heart knows, but I don’t know my heart.

Maybe it’s backwards; maybe it’s about what will work for me; but I want to find friendship with a woman through love.  Is that the first acceptance I have to make?  The first principle to let go of, then, would be the one that states it works the other way round.  I don’t know how my heart feels about this, but I can’t let my head simply invert the principle.  I’m already thinking too much about it. 

I have not fallen in love with Sandra, and I may never attempt to make her my friend, but it is not a connection I’ll sever.  It wasn’t such bad news, after all.

Risking Life In Limbo

I followed through on my two vows.

I talked to Julie.  It was nearly as difficult as the time I asked her out, but I finally spit out, “Julie, how is your mom doing?”  “Not very well,” she answered, turning to me.  “She’s in hospice care.  All we can do is keep her comfortable.”  “How are you holding up?”  A patron interrupted before she answered.  I let it go, but when the patron left, Julie said, “I’m hanging in there.”  No more was said by either of us to the other while we were out on the desk.

I was right about how I would feel–relieved, a bit righteous, humble, hopeful.  I wanted this to be the end of things, the beginning of better things.  I had put the ball at her feet and wanted her to play.  Four days later, I still don’t know if anything has changed.  Until yesterday she still wouldn’t meet my gaze and when she finally did today it was with that defiant glare I’ve come to know all too well–chin tipped upward, jaw clenched square.  Yet yesterday she had opened and held a door for me and my cart of juvenile non-fiction.  I looked at her, thanked her.  She smile and replied, and I stared at her.  Still she smiled.  I’d missed that smile more than I realized.  I devoured it.  I missed the doorway and banged the frame.  But now?…

I wrote Melissa on Facebook two nights ago.  I have not heard back, and the worst assumptions grow in my mind:  My message didn’t go through; or she knows that Sandra doesn’t care for me and doesn’t know how to tell me.   I can’t imagine a best-case scenario, and it’s difficult to even consider the realistic, neutral possibilities.  The longer it takes to hear back from Melissa the less worthy I feel to be in a relationship.  I’m steeling myself for bad news.  But as I imagine, with apprehension, waking up with morning breath beside someone, I also think of those things I said I want–someone to talk to and be and do things with–and there’s that hope that the positives, if they become real, will melt the negatives.

I hope they would also melt my feelings for Julie.  Listening to Belle and Sebastian last week, I nearly convinced myself I was still in love with her.  I can’t quite trace the mental path that brought me so close to that conviction, but I think it began with the character May of my novel, who is modelled after Julie.  I’ve begun to feel very close to the character empathetically, and I think I began to wonder if I could feel that way without being in love with Julie.  Then came that defiant glare of hers yesterday, and I just became angry.  Whatever my feelings for Julie, I would expect a meaningful relationship with another woman to extinguish the most passionate of them and leave me with, at least, indifference.

I am out of vows for now; until these two are reacted upon I don’t know what to do.  There are no contingencies.  I hope my life means more than waiting for women to talk to me.

Unless Maybe a Bed of Razor Blades Cushions My Fall

Matt and Hinckley both have exhorted me to not let my attraction to Sandra lapse in inaction.  Coming from two men with no more romantic experience than myself, the advice was surprising–until I thought about it.  Matt and Hinckley (James from now on) were speaking from experience, but from an experience of regret of having n0t done what they now urge me to do.  As I have been reticent to attach importance to my attraction to Sandra, so was I reserved in telling my friends about my New Year’s Eve encounter.  But I told them, so my coolness did not fool them, because they know I don’t speak to fill a silence or hear my own voice (or to read my own words, in James’ case).  Matt and James support me as friends do–with the greatest, most honest empathy.  Their hopes for me are my own.  Matt has been married more than twenty years.  James, twenty years our junior, has not been married, but has been passionately but unrequitedly in love twice in the nearly fours years I’ve known him.  Matt doesn’t want me to play it so cool that it grows cold.  “If she is attracted to you,” he said, “the longer you wait to try to find that out, the more she’ll believe you aren’t interested in her.”  James told me, “If this is to happen, you will have to take at least one other step in the direction of making it happen.”  Faith isn’t going to do it.  Zen isn’t going to bring Sandra into my orbit.  I found Sandra on Melissa’s Facebook page, and I looked at her photo self-portrait on her page.  I lingered on it.  It was all I could see; her page was private.  I didn’t solicit her online “friendship.”  This was before my friends’ double-barrelled exhortation to action.  I’m still not prepared to contact Sandra.  What I am prepared to do is contact Melissa and ask her if Sandra has expressed any interest in me.  Not daring, but  a step forward and no chance of rejection–for the fear of rejection has been at the heart of my reticence:  I wasn’t sure I could handle it.  I’m not sure still, but the longer I wait to do anything, the higher hopes climb and the greater the difficulty in reaching them.  If I jump now, the fall can’t hurt me.

To BFE of the Soul

All I wanted to do was write about love, but I find I know nothing about it.  It’s an ideal, a goal I have no idea how to reach, a goal I’ve tried to tell myself I’ll reach in good time.  I’m thinking it’s time to stop being so rational.  I’ve had concerns about my mental health, but I awoke in that rare noiseless hour of the morning to realize, somewhat comfortingly, that it was my emotional health that needed the most immediate care.  In that quiet I grasped emotionally for a connection then egotistically rejected it as a loss of self.  I am emotionally frail, and rather than admit it, I’ve chosen to claim a mental imbalance.  How far the ego will go to hide frailty!  I’m not afraid of frailty so much as concerned with how it outwardly manifests.  I don’t want to appear frail.  It turns women away and alienates me from men, who I desperately want to admit are just like me.  I can’t talk myself out of the idea that men have to be strong for women, but I can’t talk myself into being strong.  How strong is any man?  I wonder if I should even call it frailty, but I tire of semantics.  If I’m lacking strength, it’s to hold up the facade society seems  to be asking me to keep before me.  Poking out eyeholes was not enough; it has always been a barrier, and I’ve always held it unsteadily.  It’s just too heavy.  I’m sensitive.  I take rejection badly–that is, personally.  I set myself up for it with high hopes, hopes well beyond a one-off good time.  The higher I climb. …  So it takes me a long time to try, when my hopefulness finally crests my fear of rejection.  There’s my vicious cycle.  I like attention, but I embarrass easily except with close friends, of which I have only a few.  I beg for attention as I beg for love–quietly and desperately.

Every layer has another below it.  Mental health to emotional health to…spiritual health?  In search of answers, the spirit realm is the place I am most afraid to explore.  Each successive layer seems more deeply ineffable than the previous.  There’s less and less I can say, or want to say.  Words don’t reach all levels.  Perhaps that’s what scares me:  I may be going someplace I can’t talk my way out of.