Stories: Love
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Lost, found, lasting or fleeting; for people things or places ... 'Tis the season to tell your stories of LOVE. Just share it ...
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Ah, love. When I was 20, I thought I knew what it was. But I was wrong. I didn't think I was capable of really loving someone. So I had a lot of sex instead. And then when I was 28, I fell in love with a man who was eminently unsuitable. He was a drinker, and I hated drinkers. He was emotionally stunted, and I was emotionally articulate. He wanted babies and I didn't. He asked me to marry him when he was drunk, and stupidly, I accepted. On our wedding day, he was tipsy. And then the crunch came a year or so into our marriage. I didn't want to do it anymore, and I told him, so he stopped. A few years later he still wasn't drinking. I was so proud of him. And then he got leukemia, and his chances of living were very poor. We did what we needed to do, together. I washed his shitty pyjamas, held his head when he was sick from all the chemo. I did everything you were supposed to do, because it made me feel needed, and potent. He lost his job not long after all of that drama, and so we struggled through his unemployment. He got another job, but the firm went bankrupt. And so finally he decided to work for himself. He did that for 7 years until one day, he told me he couldn't do it anymore. So now he doesn't work. It's been a sometimes turbulent 19 years, but here we are washed up on the shore of almost tranquility. And I love him 100 times more than when I married him. That's what they never tell you when you fall in love with someone - that if it's a love that's going to last, you will never know, unless you stick around.
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Lovely story, Jackie. You are a remarkable person.
Come August 17 2010, I will have been married to Josephine Maplesden for 25 years. I have the date down in my new diary as we have a tendency to let such milestones (not 'millstones') slip by. Much longer than my first marriage, which is rather a tragic story, in a rather dusty file.
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I need a walk to deal with that, Jackie. Very good.
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Oh, Jackie, you are a lovely woman. Would that we could all have that.
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Much longer than my first marriage, which is rather a tragic story, in a rather dusty file.
Yeah, so hard to talk honestly about romantic failure. I still don't have the courage.
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And I love him 100 times more than when I married him. That's what they never tell you when you fall in love with someone - that if it's a love that's going to last, you will never know, unless you stick around.
So true and a remarkable story Jackie that makes my marriage sound quite ordinary. Yes if we stick at it through all the ups and downs our love for each other becomes something else. I love my wife much more and in different ways than when we first met over 30 years ago and it feels odd whenever we are apart for any length of time. It's not always easy but worth it in the end.
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As an update to this, I was away from my partner for our anniversary this year, for the first time. He sent me a single red rose - tied, with florist's ribbon, to a packet of salt and vinegar chips. I adore him.
I fell in love for the first time when I was thirteen. Looking back on that relationship now with all the benefit of hindsight and 'maturity', it was love, as it always has been for me: intense, passionate and unquestionable.
Which makes me sounds like an unbearably smug goit. Carry on.
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Of course this has be done. How can we not have a post about Love without Tom T Hall
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My 40th birthday party was pretty much perfect. An unseasonably warm winter day, friends, furniture outside and a lunch catered by my friends Jimmy and Tamrin.
Then we watched the All Blacks beat the Springboks, and I led an expeditionary party to K Road, where things wound up a good 15 hours after it all started. Those who know me will attest that that's how I like to roll.
But the most special moment was during the afternoon, when Fiona unexpectedly stood up and spoke about "our 23-year conversation" (we've known each other a loooonng time) -- and, the emotional valves having already been somewhat loosened, I burst into tears.
It was just such a perfect evocation of what we're about: we still talk, we're still deeply interested in each other ... and we still make each other laugh, every day.
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Beautiful, Russell.
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I'm filling photo albums of you
in many guises
and I'm hoping that
when I look back
you'll be there
to laugh along
not just a memory
playing the harp strings
of my heart
in two dimensions
from a fading photographWrote this 4 years into my only long term relationship, which is still going strong in it's 18th year. Now the albums are filling with the three loves we created.
The stuff above this is lovely by the way. Thanks.
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At the beginning of the century I met a young lady, pursued her, won her and then as it became obvious I wasn't the right one for her reluctantly let her go. We remained good friends.
A few years later she met the right man, and early last year I was proud to attend their wedding. They were inseparable, you couldn't mention one without also mentioning the other.
In 10 days time, between Xmas and New Year, less than a week before her birthday, it will be the anniversary of their deaths in a horrific motorcycle smash.
RIP K, always in my heart.
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A while ago, I and two friends paid some money to attend and event in Parnell. It was a strange sort of event filled with executive types and artistic types, the kind of people with whom I hardly ever have any contact.
There were canapes, good lord I'm a scientist, our events are lucky to have sausage rolls, although my friend is a doctor and he assured me that they were indeed canapes. I also remember sushi being made which was kind of cool, I ate a lot of sushi.
There was an auction of all sorts of weird eclectic items some of which clearly had value. I tried to bid for some of them in the way of auctions. But sadly (or happily) there were others with deeper pockets than I who wanted to bid more.
And there was music, a bit loud for me but then again I'm that straight guy in the corner trying to talk while others are partying.
And then the music stopped and some bloke got up to talk. He said some words some of them very clever, but I've heard him speak before so I know he has a way with words. But that night was different, that night he spoke about his son and his family. That night he let us all know just how much he loves his son.
Thank you Russell
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Oh Robert, that is just devastating. I am so sorry that your friends died. Sometimes life just sucks, doesn't it?
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My mother has been regularly reminding me of the story of Philemon and Baucis for the last ten years.
"They also requested that when it came time for one of them to die, the other would die as well."
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And then the music stopped and some bloke got up to talk. He said some words some of them very clever, but I've heard him speak before so I know he has a way with words. But that night was different, that night he spoke about his son and his family. That night he let us all know just how much he loves his son.
Thank you Russell
Ah, yes -- you got the seriously frank version that night. It's quite strange having a fundraiser organised for you, and I decided that if it was going to mean anything, people should hear something straight from the heart.
The only problem was that, having given it all in the speech, I was ready to just relax, have a drink and talk bollocks -- but quite a number of people were so moved by the speech that I spent the next hour having people come up and pour their hearts out to me. I had to hide in the end!
Anyway, now that school's out, I'm finally going to write a kind of update to that speech for the Humans site.
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The intertwining trees bit interests me, and always has. Kahlil Gibran, in his text The Prophet, when speaking of marriage (which you can translate into longterm relationships I would say) talks of two trees also, but in his instance they stand apart.
Then Almitra spoke again and said, "And what of Marriage, master?"
And he answered saying:
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
I've loved those sentiments for the longest time. But then love means different things to different people. And we all show love to each other in our own very unique ways.
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My favourite poem on love:
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread
and you beside me singing in the wilderness,
and wilderness is Paradise enoughNot incidentally because I used it to talk the lady who is now my wife into bed with me (chicks dig that poetry malarky...)
Omar Khayyam also wrote:
The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.Which I think is as good a way of any to say thank you to our host for the most significant event of 2009 - the provision of an edit button. Thanks Russell!
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Anyway, now that school's out, I'm finally going to write a kind of update to that speech for the Humans site.
Yay!
(I'm meeting with the Ministry of Ed people to get The Truth about standards, and I'll report on that sometime too)
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I love the intense red on green of pohutukawa on a sunny blue day.
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A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread
and you beside me singing in the wilderness,
and wilderness is Paradise enough"For a cheap date, that guy could really write"
-The Wizard of Id
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I love the intense red on green of pohutukawa on a sunny blue day.
If you are not near the coast, feijoas in flower are as good. Also the flower spike of my Poor Knight's Lily, which emerged for the first time in 8 years (they can take 10 years or more to first flower).
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I love my kids coming home at holiday time but I also love seeing them go again.
I love the sound of my Fender Precision bass-it's what a bass should sound like.
I love sitting in our boat talking shit with my father as we troll for trout on a sunny day in the middle of Lake Rotoroa with the dark green beech clad hills all around us. -
This is probably a little too self indulgent so please do excuse my ongoing therapy.
I’m a shitty friend and a lousy lover but there is a bit of me that gets cut quite deeply by the unfairness of life. I suspect there are a couple of Broken Flowers moments here if I ever find the time, place and courage.
Love
Emboldened after my travels across America I returned to Britain and set about life with élan. At one stage I had three jobs and an array of pursuits to enjoy. Set in to a renaissance for me, was a life changing affair with a student on exchange from RMIT. Time then for me (we ?) to burn bright, lighting the way to a richer life forthcomming. For my relative youth and extraordinary naïveté this was a high affair. Sometimes sordid and slutty, her fingers in my mouth, my hand up her skirt, stacking bottles in a bar full of people. At other times risky, in an old historic Abbey during daylight hours, finally not caring who walked past. Warmed and trusting with a well placed cupped hand to wake me. Occasions for us to remember no doubt, but not what I recall most often. What has stayed with me most are the moments more cerebral. A journey into architectural space at Blenheim Palace, a long expedition to the Haywood gallery to explore more space and Eisenstein, she was an architect you see. Discussing block work, friezes and mock up’s, over time I found in myself an artist and sculptor, along with images I will draw on for the rest of my life.
We burned out, there was a limit to the number of classes she could skip and I could no longer be allowed to fall asleep on the toilet at work again. My response to this was poor to say the least. My obsession was greedy and mindless. In a modern time you would probably call it stalking, in those days it was just plain unpleasant. We have not spoken since those car crash weeks, I presume she left the country possibly a little disturbed. I warm myself with the thought that she is somewhere on a yacht, having a really good time. For me however there is the uncomfortable recognition of how poorly I behaved and the sadness of knowing that I have never said sorry, though I would truly mean it now. Moreover I haven’t had the opportunity to reveal all the good that grew out of those heady days, which to me seems so unfair. I can think of no way to convey this to her without bringing with it the upset that I must have caused.
Later
Sometime later I entered into a near cliché platonic relationship with another bold soul. Not as clever as Pretty in Pink but lived with an intensity that convinced many that we could not possibly have done all that and “just” have been friends. Cycle touring along the English Riviera, sharing a tent, we didn’t. She, held gently in my arms drunkenly feeding a kebab to my white dress shirt, we still didn’t. Sat on bollards marking a crossing space in the middle of the road, we laughed at each other and laughed at the sky, then went to work. Curled up in the Sun by a riverbank asleep, asleep, asleep. A trip to Surrey and a mother to see, no hints there either. A holiday in Spain I nearly kissed her but didn’t. Many massages later we still didn't.
In between times we both shared in others but always came back. Then I went to University to change my life again. I never called, I never wrote, I am awful like that. When I don’t see people regularly they live in my head. I speak to them often in my mind, but rarely communicate beyond the fog of my day to day preoccupation. In the first year I came back, we caught up, she made me cheesecake, bought me presents and showed me her love. But I, in my brutal self absorbed way, never saw what was before me. Wood from the trees ? I looked past a whole forest of her. We caught up twice after that. She travelled two days to catch up with me in Bath, I visited a fragile and diminished her in London, we haven’t spoken since. It seems stupid to suggest that I really wasn’t ready, I just didn’t know, didn’t get it. In between times after some fifteen years I got it. Twenty years later, she tracked me to New Zealand and invited me to her wedding. Deeply pleased or even bloody happy seems weak against the pleasure it gave me to think of her finding a life-long love. She now has children too. I couldn’t go to the wedding and wrote nothing, didn’t won again as she and those words are trapped in my head. Didn’t, didn’t didn’t into sadness.
…and Regret
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but here we are washed up on the shore of almost tranquility
Yo Jackie, That there is pearls :)
Whilst I am here, I would just like to say, ( thru my snivelly nose, having just read the above) ,
A friend of mine recently lost his mum,
Within 24 hours of cremating her, his brother died also.The only date we could get for his cremation was my friends birthday. He went back to work this week. I love my man, coming through the flip side. you are my crazy diamond. Priceless :) xox
Oh and I love our dog Stella. She is just soo popular about town.
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