Then How Do I Begin to Tell You This?

 Then how do I begin to tell you this? How when all the millions of words I’ve spoken suddenly are rendered meaningless. 

They have all been spoken to others. All wasted, everyone. Not for your ears, not in praise of you. Worthless inadequate and futile. Poor lonely words, poor mistimed caresses. Eardrops not falling on waiting petals.

Oh yes, pretty in their own right. Sweet and soft and deft. Amusing and warming. Words to please, to delight and cajole a smile. Rendered irrelevant and defunct.

So, how then do I begin to tell you; who you are, intrinsically, and who you are to me?

Perhaps I begin by saying things about myself. Introducing myself. A tour of the patio from which I survey the world around me. Or the bridge of the ship on which I navigate life’s waters. Or float on wilful seas.

Or I might be a sample bag putting myself about. (eclectic metaphors!) You see this brightly coloured, attractive bag that aims to please and interest. The object that seeks to communicate, interacts to be held, carried or looked upon.

And, of course the bag reacts and the contents of the bag, the essential me, also responds in a way. It is to be expected. Why, if the package is moved about, some of the contents move about as well. But no one really gets to see or have the contents. They are mine, me, alone. I reshape the contents for myself. I make them comfortable or exciting or interesting. Or agonisingly hurt.

No one gets to see this. All they get to see is the overall package. Mainly, only really, the outside.
So the contents, the essential me, is untouched and not really being. Only existing. It plays at life and living by proxy; using the external charades and poses of a constructed personality. One that is comfortable and provides a reasonable medium, useful for negotiating this reality that is external, ever changing, but in a way, also static, and in to which, of course, I never quite fit.

How can the show bag, the outside, and the contents, the endless untapped variety within, simultaneously exist. Well, of course, you recognise the desire to acquire the art of transcending the paradox. Of accommodating pluralistic dimensions and traversing, being in, around, as one, with the universe. Of obtaining awareness or an evolutionary enlightenment that makes all perfect and easy and all right.

Well, of course, to a degree, I have done or become this. And I can sound awfully evolved and complete. Knowledgeable and wise to the max. Sometimes I even sound like I have it all. But, you know, in this inner world capsule of mine, how can I really be complete? How does one who feels nothing, and who does not carry within him the spark of life, transcend? Transcend nothingness? Into what? More nothingness? So one needs to be filled with something to provide relativity, meaning and substance.

And what would this something be? A sop to my ego? A satisfying scratch of a periodic itch? Or it might be adornments I can strut and flaunt or admire in a mirror.

But when one is without love and a soul lacks lustre then it is only a gift that another heart can offer that is useful.

Useful. Like a drowning person finds a life jacket “useful”. Like breathing is “useful”.
So, then how do I tell you who you are?

Do I say you have reached inside my sample bag and rearranged my variety of sweets and showground novelties? Do I say in your sight my life has begun?

Do I say you are my world, my universe, life itself? Do I say the love your tenderness and gentleness has piped into me like the soft cream of a chocolate covered profiterole has made me whole? Has given me peace unto sweet gladness?

All this, naturally, and more. For this revelation, this flowering of perception, the first tentative steps into exquisite reality is only a beginning. For this is my life and, for the first time, the beginning of tomorrows. And each tomorrow brings new light, new love and breathtaking discovery.

But then, what vocabulary do I use? It has to be something that is mutually recognisable or understandable. It must be based on experience and be associated with familiar objects or events. How can this be when I have never known this which you have given me? I say words now to you and they are contextually different from words I have ever uttered. How can “hello” mean the same when I say it to you? How can any words except those of adoration, exaltation, affection or loving be suitable or appropriate? For you are, to me, love itself. Even those precise words, used in a story written in that lesser, singular life, are now somehow lacking. Bit of a problem, eh!

Well, it might be not be, ‘how do I begin to tell you this’, but, ‘how do you begin to hear this’. For you might need to put away the cautious inbuilt emotion checker. This filter that equates or ascribes all new conditions to experiences of the past. Poor heart, dear gentle heart. Not cherished as needed. Not given its due. How can a fearful, or at least wary, heart listen to fresh words?

Well, of course it does. The delicate heart is also fiercely courageous and brave, so it hears. As it prevails.

So I begin to tell you. I love you. A million times at least, to begin with. But it doesn’t seem adequate. Why and how do I love you? Let me analyse this. Now, this is a bit tricky, a bit dangerous. You know what happens when we analyse, don’t you. Yes, the theorem. Plausible and validated but situationly and perceptually.

Nothingness transcended? The spark of light that makes it meaningful to try.

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