Powerful And Dangerous

I’ve felt a bit mute lately, a bit dumb. I feel these days as though I’ve been patching together a kind of life that leans heavily on just existing, is defined by a deep sadness.

One of the reasons is that my grandmother died. As a symbol in the dream that is my waking life, my grandmother was powerful. She was powerful and dangerous magic. She was a symbol of power and love and resistance. Her dying has shaken me and freed me too. Without her influence, however distant, I feel disoriented though curiously not lost. I have never, since I was four years old, idolized my grandmother. I have never idolized her as an adult and I refuse now to engage in the kind of idolization of the dead that mourners typically engage in. I honor her memory now by refusing to allow her to not continue to be as human after she is dead as before she died. I honor her memory by refusing to allow her death to be her ticket to sainthood.

However, having said that, I also honor her memory by recognizing that the symbol that she has been in the dream that is my waking life has changed with her death.

My grandmother lived her life on her own terms and she was tough and complicated and unyielding. She rarely got close to people and through her choices and actions she drove off people who would otherwise have been a comfort to her. She did this by choice.

I learned how to do this from her.

In dreams, death isn’t an end, but a change. We fear change, so we fear death. We may fear change even more than we fear death, but that is merely an observation. It doesn’t mean anything except what it means.

But--her dying means that everything around her now has to change. The people who loved her and who she loved have to change. That means that I have to change. I have to go on with my life a changed person because one of the most powerful symbols in the dream that is my waking life has changed.

It affects everything that is related to love in my life. And that happens to be everything in my life.

For example:

I am in love.

I have been dating a young man who I met at The Kaisha. A temporary student, this is his last week at the school. Tomorrow is his last lesson. Next week, he leaves Tokyo to begin the next stage of his life, training to run his grandfather’s company in a northern port city. He will spend several months studying the business side of the company, then will begin a long ascent into experience handling the ships that the company uses.

I am in love with him and he is leaving and there is absolutely nothing to be done about either of these things.

I love him and if he thought there were a future for us, I would pack my bags and quit my job and go with him to the northern city where his future is waiting. I love him enough not to create drama around our love and our being together and around a future parting. I love him enough not to pressure him for what he is unable to give. I love him enough not to expect that he can make a serious decision about the future of a relationship that is less than a month old. I love him and will mourn his leaving, just as I loved my grandmother and mourned her leaving too. I love him and I know that exploring the boundaries of love takes time. I love him and I am delusional about there being boundaries to love. I love him and I know from my grandmother’s death that love crosses boundaries that I can’t. I love him and give him that love to carry with him into a future that I don’t understand. I love him even knowing in my heart that loving him is just loving him. That is a hard lesson but I know from years with David that love doesn’t conquer everything and that love isn’t a cure-all. I love him and love him and love him and will continue to love him and that is all I can do.