Use Advanced Search

A Note from the Garden Journal  Volume I.III

September 07, 2003

This week's Journal will focus on an aspect of life more familiar perhaps to most of us. The human quest for the most significant of human companions. It is shown to us in amazing detail in the lives of Solomon and his true love, that chick formerly known as the Shulamite. Some find it fair to point out that Solomon had many wives. And so, they reason, it is not a very romantic story at all. Others counter that perhaps his true love died, which would explain his seemingly cynical foray into a life of veritable animal husbandry which closely resembles the lifestyles of so many professional athletes today.  

But on to what makes the Journal the Journal: a perspective based on my own personal experiences and reflections. I.e. the gooey stuff you really want to read. Or possibly not in this quantity, but count it a privilege- I'll explain more of why in a bit.

But first, has anyone ever experienced True Love? How would you define it? What would you say it is – and is not? Blogbat is going to share something that only his very best friend knows. The parents have long-since forgotten all of what they knew of the story I am about to tell or the recent events upon which I shall soon expound. Blogbat does not often write (and share) about his "interests" nor does he weary his friends with ceaseless kvetching about matters of temporal curiosity or unrequited love. So this is a treat, gang; hang on.

The past couple of months I have been considering the matter of True Love---a lot, admittedly. Not because really I am afflicted by any form of Frühlingsgefühle (spring fever) or any such nonsense. I am most aptly described as a practical romantic.

Recently, a whole bunch of things have been popping up and reminding me of someone whom I had known and seen (rightfully so) as the one person who truly matched and complimented who I was completely. A true soul mate (yes, unlike the leprechaun, these are actually known to exist). For years I have tried without success to find even a friend so close. Though I have dated a lot and have many friends and some life-long best friends (please recall the “social butterfly” clause in my profile), no one else has had that perfect something. 

Sports fans, there is something really quite remarkable about a person whose effect on you lasts for 15 years since you last saw them. Mark it as even more profound when the one doing the remembering actually has led an interesting and engaging life since. I have yet to decide what the end-effect of knowing that girl is to mean in the long run, but maybe I shall. I do know that she literally altered for the better my course of life in many things and I question if I would be here, had I not been there, first.

I met Erin in of all places a grocery store in Plano, Texas. She was also an avid horse-lover and so we immediately had something over which to connect. And it grew to the extent that we wondered if we were long-lost twins, save our more interesting broader interest in one another, though that was (nobly) innocent enough.   

But we were soon parted at the end of that summer when her family moved to Houston and then quite by accident we lost touch. Since meeting and having the honor of knowing Erin, I have tried to find that same or similar something, part of which was this intangible joi de vie that was incredible in its uniqueness. However, without much success, I regret. With Erin, everything was an adventure, every conversation incredible and full of life, creativity, imagination and pure life-passion.

It's ridiculous for one to live in the past, so I have not. For most of this time, I have relegated this memory to someplace in the back of my mind. All of my comparisons to my girlfriends thereafter were almost purely subconscious. I truly believed and do so still today, that there is someone, somewhere who possesses that certain something (I know, that sounds ambiguous, but I know precisely what I want, as has been the case). But without that I have learned it must always be a “no deal”. By dating I discovered that it is far more undesirable to attach oneself to a poor match than to live alone in order to follow your unique calling. After all, a partner without a purpose is like a dinner jacket without a dinner.

I think a great many of these qualities are often omitted from the valueset of our modern American culture. Particularly as portrayed in the media of entertainment. There we find love on the shallowest of terms executed in ways that would tear to shreds the tender heart and destroy that which would be meaningfully committal. Not always is this the case, but more often than Blogbat would like. The media many times also do not rightly portray the ebbs and flowing of life's many different seasons.

Recently I managed to stumble across someone fairly new who might be having the effect of shaking things up a bit with respect to my sentiments. So in this, the latest chapter of the Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, I find that this new interest, just as so many more I have not ended up dating was here and gone in about a week's time, leaving the next interest to be wondered about. As I first struggled to regain my sensibility, I seemed to be witnessing a violent coupe d'état inside of myself, but only in the superficial sense. And thus as a result, I appear to be caught between two affections. Appear, I say, because I have found that the words Longing and Desire are indeed two different words. Two words which represent two different ideas, though they ideally co-exist. Each idea in my life today represents where my affections are: one which has spanned years, shining like a distant light and unhindered by the momentary flashes of the present, and one which may be yet another such comparative flicker. Or not. Such that it may be, I do make note that though faced with somewhat similar ambivalence before, I have not felt compelled to write about it particularly in this fashion, or ponder it so earnestly. What this could mean, I know unfortunately not, except that now I am fully conscious of my deepest heart's longings and thus the interplay dynamics that occur following the emergence of a new "interest". In every such conflict, whether brief or long the same side always wins. No one can compare and I doubt they could ever.

The rest sadly belong to a now rather long list of “not-quite's”. Not to go on like one of those who is fashionably disillusioned—particularly fashionable in this town, but I simply am in a place of trying to get back in my game, as my Ukrainian friend pointed out to me on Friday. He is right. Nevertheless, I think for the moment I am seizing upon most reasonable and sensible opportunities. So we will see where this goes.  

I am 31 now. Erin had a rather unusual last name, hard to spell and hard also to pronounce, and which I have summarily forgotten at some point far back. I wish I had not done that now, but what's meant to be is meant to be.

So how would you define True Love or how would you know when it hit you squarely, as opposed to askew-ly. Is it what is shown to us in daily fiction as something akin to two large wildebeests quickly mating in an empty, uninhabited prairie, soon to forget they knew one another in favor of lush vegetation or is it something far more substantial? Can we even know it for any length? Finally, is True Love mortal. Is it subject to the laws of nature more than the laws of angels. Blogbat too is searching this out and will let you know when he gets word from the Shulamite, et al.

Song of Songs 2:7

Post script: I still find The Count of Monte Christo one of the most evocative movies...

-Blogbat a.k.a. Martin

Reader Comments