A beautiful, instantaneous, transcendent, meaningful, fateful, timeless connection from a first, visceral and galvanizing ecstatic dance with a powerful, vibrant electric goddess of a woman was where it began for me.
We were inseparable for months. We fell into the uncertainty and unavoidable magnetism of our connection. We felt something more than attraction, but a kind of fate in our draw toward the other. What can be done with meant-to-be but to be, surrendered?
We both knew we were in a time out of time, and how long before we found the constraints of time again, we couldn’t know. We held to each other among the trees, and in the dances. In the sweetness and sensuality, we held on for a dearer life. And we both gave each other dearness.
Deerness. Like meadow grass and river water, we fed each other’s deerness. She the grass and I the water. Buck and doe. My antlers grew in her presence. They unfurred and hardened. Into the father of Bambi, king of the forest, she called me, as was her prerogative as Mother of the Wood.
I called her Sweetgrass, so rich and ever verdant, and her spirit called mine into more than it had yet been. Her Bushman, her apewolf. I stood strong and steady and huge of love, so she could breathe big with her eyes finally closed a while, and let herself unclinch, leaning her weight into my broad flank. I’m forever grateful that we both gave this to each other.
She gave me this pendant soon into our unavoidable partnership. She knew I was meant to have it. We were on our way to SOAK together, and regional Burning Man festival. We had such a beautiful time together.​ The beginning of a new me, and she showed me that. She gave it to me as she gave everything, instinctually and without doubt. I knew it meant depth and recognition of what we both were feeling for the other. It was pregnant with unavoidability and a flair for the fire we stoked while swirling together. We were forever dancing, never more ourselves than when dancing together. Will I dance like that again?
Time did swirl back in, found us at last, and our histories pulled us out of orbit, satellites to each other’s stars no more. I miss her pull. More me now than ever before, thanks to her voracious, unyielding life force. I miss that time of untimed living. I don’t understand why, but curse the stories that pulled us away. The humanity of time crashed in. Or our timed humanity crashed in. The train cars we pulled behind us wouldn’t stop, and they hit us from behind when we stopped hard to touch each other. And yet, here I am, more myself after a long nearness to her, and how can one regret or wish otherwise than what was?
I don’t believe in meant-to-be, but what else could have happened, but a grand supernova? The physics were unavoidable. Our stars parted, and I have so much that she gave me which can never be torn out of me again.
What is regret when you were all in? A lie and an ignorance speaking misunderstanding out of a pain that won’t accept. I hold this pendant because I miss her. She may be somewhere missing me. Or we have learned to lay new love, which we taught each other, onto others. And who can be disappointed by this? We gave love into each other’s Universes, and since there is only one Universe, we gave love back into the One, of which we are both part. We each purified the corrupted humanity we were given, and gave it back less soiled. The Universe heals itself this way.
