Unequal task! a passion to resign,
For hearts so touch’d, so pierc’d, so lost as mine.
Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state,
How often must it love, how often hate!
How often hope, despair, resent, regret,
Conceal, disdain do all things but forget.
But let Heav’n seize it, all at once ’tis fir’d;
Not touch’d, but rapt; not waken’d, but inspir’d!
Oh come! oh teach me nature to subdue,
Renounce my love, my life, myself and you.
Fill my fond heart with God alone, for he
Alone can rival, can succeed to thee.
How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
— Alexander Pope, from “Eloisa to Abelard”
I have often felt “unequal” to the task of “resign”ing “passion”, of one kind or another. At times, it is the hardest thing in the world to do. Amputees talk about feeling the ghost of their missing limbs and there have been times in my life when whatever “passion” I was trying to “resign” came across to me like the ghost of an amputated limb. Where is it?? Where is it?? I miss that passion … I can still FEEL it alive in me … and yet the dream is dead.
Trying to find “peace” again – peace of mind, peace in the soul, whatever – is strenuous. Sometimes I have thought it was impossible. I would throw up my hands in defeat. “Okay. I cannot get over this on my own. I will always miss this person. Always.”
And there are those in my past who, yes, I will always miss. The amputee never stops missing the foot, but he gets used to living without it. That’s the best analogy I can think of.
But while I am in the midst of the passion, or in the midst of trying to ‘resign’ a passion, trying to make my mind “spotless” – my sense is that: The perpetual loss of this person is going to sap the rest of my life of joy, peace, love. It is tragic. It feels tragic.
Time usually does away with such extremes.
I miss certain people. All the time. All the time I miss them. And yet it’s okay. For the most part. It’s okay, and it’s right that I miss them. They had a huge impact on my life, I loved them dearly once upon a time, and so missing them is part of the landscape. It’s bittersweet, yes, but it’s livable. It does become bearable.
I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last night. I was engrossed from beginning to end, on multiple levels but afterwards – afterwards – came a bit of a meltdown. My brain full of thoughts. I felt heavy with thinking. So much, the movie brought up so much. I had intense dreams all night, woke up with no memory of any of them, and then sat at my kitchen table from 6 am til 8:30 drinking coffee, and writing. Writing out my thoughts.
I’m still not even sure what my thoughts are.
I’ve got a couple of insistent ghosts. You could probably even sense them around me, if you were attuned to that kind of thing. I’m not saying I’m unique at all. We’ve all got stuff we carry around with us. The detritus of life. Flotsam, jetsam, whatever.
This would be all the stuff you bring to the “memory-erasure” doctor in the film. I’ve got a nice big shoebox of letters which I could hand over. It’s all there.
At the moment, in my life, I am not sitting around living in the past. Regretting stuff. At least not how I used to. I don’t sit around over my shoebox of relics, and mourn the days gone by.
However, there are times, times when I least expect it, when I am ambushed by a memory.
Memories are interesting that way. They’re connected to the senses. (Mostly to smell. This is why you can get a whiff of apple pie baking, and suddenly be transported back 30 years in time.) I can work to resolve whatever residual issues I have with this or that person, I can forgive them, I can forgive myself, I can talk about it with friends, decide what happened, try to figure out the problems, but it is an impossibility that the mind will ever become “spotless”. Stuff does not just vanish. Sunshine is not eternal.
I’ll be strolling down the street, minding my own business, and hear a snippet of a song from a car and feel like I got the wind knocked out of me, a memory rushing back, a sense of a person long gone suddenly right there- all from the sound of the song.
It happens very rarely. But it does happen.
It’s not exactly a pleasant feeling. I certainly wouldn’t say that those moments were pleasant. It’s a reminder of the amputated foot. Of all that has been lost along the journey.
But I wouldn’t choose to have those memories completely erased (if I could, I mean, like in the movie.)
Sometimes, in my irrational moments, I’ll think: Jesus, when will it end? Will I be 70 years old and having a freak out every time I hear Lady Marmalade? When the hell will it end?
Well. Maybe that’s just who I am. Heart of glass and all. Not too many people get in there with me but when they do it is impossible for me to get them out. Love does not turn to hate with me. It just doesn’t. I have wished that it would. I have thought: “God, it would be so much easier if I could just despise this person!” So perhaps that is just one of my lots in life, and I should just take note of it. (For example: “Tell DJ to leave ‘Lady Marmalade’ off play-list at my wedding reception at all costs. Refuse to pay him if ‘Lady Marmalade’ is heard at any time.”)
Yes, I have a memory of hugging a certain man, and touching his face and his eyebrows and his cheek-bones, “memorizing” it. Because it was a good-bye. I felt like my heart was breaking.
But I also have a memory of sitting on his lap, and talking about JD Salinger, and laughing like maniacs.
Both exist. Both memories say to me: HE. The agony of the good-bye – and the hilarity of our conversations, the accord I felt with this particular human being.
I had never really thought about it all that much, though. I don’t think too much anymore about certain things, certain people, because, like I said, I do not want to live in the past, and spend too much time regretting things.
I am fortunate to have loved a couple of people with all my heart. I am fortunate. (Say it again, Sheila, maybe you’ll believe it the third time.)
There’s another good-bye memory. In the airport in San Francisco. I was boarding the plane by myself, and I turned around and saw him, standing back there, watching me leave, and because of how the light was, he was completely in shadow, and looked like a black-paper-cut-out, with his hand raised in farewell.
I saw that and thought I would not be able to bear the pain. Whatever you want to call it. The psychic pain. My heart pushing up out of my chest.
However. I did survive it. Of course I did.
And when I think about that man, my first boyfriend, the first image that comes to mind is certainly not the black-paper cut-out. It’s the uproarious laughter, it’s the making up songs, reading books together, talking late into the night about movies.
I don’t mean to sound Pollyanna-ish here. “Embrace the bad with the good! There are so many good things in the world!!” I’ve had enough agonizing good-byes, frankly. I don’t want to have another such good-bye ever again.
So much does the heart re-bound from such things that, again, I feel: If I had to go through another such good-bye, I might not survive.
Funny. The heart doesn’t learn. At least mine doesn’t.
The ending of the film packed a huge punch for me. I felt a weird tragic hope rise up inside of me, and I thought: God. Life just beats people up, doesn’t it. Heartache just keeps coming. It never ends. You either say Yes to life or you say No. You get busy living or you get busy dying.
I will always miss those I have let go of. This doesn’t have to be a tragedy, I suppose. I guess it can be a massive fierce gift. I could not “subdue”, I could not “renounce my love, my life, myself” – even though sometimes I have yearned for that. I have yearned to renounce “my love” because I wanted some peace of mind. God, just let this end! Let me sleep at night! Will I miss this or that person forever?
Maybe it sounds like the movie upset me. I suppose it did, but not in a bad way. It stirred shit up. Sometimes you can get too rigid. Too inflexible in how you tell yourself the story of your own life.
I was completely wrapped up in the journey of these two characters. I was rooting for them so hard I didn’t even realize I was, until the very end. It seemed to matter to me, so much, that they give it another go. I took it very personally.
And then, when the movie ended, all I could do was think about my own life.
The proof of a meaningful piece of art: when you walk away from it and you start talking about yourself. When the work of art reveals something to you about yourself. Makes you think about your choices, who you are.
I spent the morning amongst my ghosts. Reacquainting myself with them, the memories I love and the memories I am glad have dimmed with time … Cherishing all of them, though. All of those memories.
I would not choose to have any of them erased.
Some hurts, I think, are forever. You may move past ’em, but the scars (for lack of a better word) remain and occasionally give you a twinge or an ache, like old injury on a cold night.
I don’t mind the scars – they’re a roadmap to my past, both the highs and lowss, as well as a sign that I survived and moved on.
I’d like to avoid acquiring any more scars, but I don’t think that’ll happen. And perhaps for the best. I mean if you reach the end of your life without any scars, then you haven’t really lived. Passion is the stuff of life, but it has its price and man sometimes that price is steep.
Oh, Dan, you said it. Yup. Steep prices.
Now I can see that when I was younger I was more willing to pay those steep prices. Now I’m not so sure. However, life is full of surprises. I say I never ever want to have such a good-bye again.
There’s this great quote – I think it was Rilke. He said something like: “If I try to shut out all the demons, I end up shutting out the angels too.”
Sheila-
That was good; this movie also made me think of relationships past- what I liked most about it is that it totally nailed that post-breakup feeling, when you jump back and forth between remembering the good things and regreting the bad.
That, and Kate Winslet saying “look at my crotch.”
And I freak out when I hear “Lady Marmalade” too, but only because it makes me think of Christina Aguilera in Dee Snider-like hair extensions in the video for the awful “Moulin Rouge” cover.
I’m talking about LaBelle’s Lady Marmalade. The original, baby.
Yeah, when he and Kate were under the covers, in the memory, and he was kissing her saying “you’re pretty you’re pretty you’re pretty” – and suddenly you heard his panicked whisper: “Oh no, let me keep this memory! Let me hold onto this one!”
I just might have to see this movie. Everyone I know, both in real life and via blogging, is raving about it.
Re: steep prices. I’m not sure if its as much an unwilling thing as an unable thing. I think each person only has so much of themselves to give – that’s it possible for the well to run dry – and that as you get older you try and spend this emotional capital wisely.
Dan –
This goes back to that quote from High Fidelity.
“If you wanted to REALLY mess me up, you should have gotten to me earlier!”
…he says screaming out a window.
Come to think of it, maybe I’ll have that on my tombstone as an epitaph.
Dan –
Exactly. He’s screaming that out a window. Ha!
Discovered passions
Lying in wait
Like sleepy tigress eyes
Sees me, through and through
Thrills me and speaks to me
Pricks me and bleeds me
Stare back damn it!
Do not turn, do not blink
She will slip away
or eat me whole
Ponder passion and karmic quirks
Pray it does not overcome me
obsess me
Let it teach me
Rest contented in my soul
And look out through me
Like sleepy tigress eyes.
I’ve spent a large portion of my life in a self-protective shell, attempting to avoid scars and steep prices. Of course, it doesn’t work. You’re going to be hurt in life no matter how hard you may try to avoid it. I’m a really slow learner, but over aeons, I do eventually learn.
Today’s racing reference for red:
Here’s to doing an end-over-end flip at the end of the straightaway, throwing the pieces of your battered and broken car onto the trailer, hauling it home, and eventually piecing it back together so you can race another day.
Sheila, you can try to armor your heart, but it shows itself in all your writing, for which, on my own selfish behalf, I’m grateful. As is my brother — I sent him your post on your visit with Cashel, and he wrote back, “That was FANTASTIC.”
About that Pope sonnet: I’ve read almost none of his work, but there’s a very interesting comment on him at http://www.godofthemachine.com/archives/00000485.html. I recommend it to you, and to anyone else interested in poetry. Sharp stuff.
Michael –
Thanks for your words. I love that you passed on my post about Cashel! That warms my (armored) heart.
And that Pope essay is fascinating. I had no idea.
I love a lot of Pope – although it is true he is nearly impossible to read in his entirety. At least I think so. But some of his lines are astonishing.
I just reread the Pope lines that I called a “sonnet.” Oops.
No more late-night poetry analysis for me.
It’s important to love, but at the same time there are millions of people out there that we can love and be happy with. Relationships are as mortal as life itself. You’re always better off moving on then living with memories.
Dellis:
Intellectually, I know the truth of your words. But they are (for me, anyway) easier said than done, unfortunately!
Besides – I do love my memories. It’s a fine line between living in the past and honoring the past.
And if I am ever in a relationship again, it’s not like I will be a blank slate, where the new guy in my life is suddenly 100% in my brain, my heart, etc. I am in my 30s. I have a past. I have been marked with indelible ink. The memories of the other guys will never be X-ed out. I couldn’t X them out if I tried!
Oh, and I’m just not sure about the “there are millions of people you can love”.
I love people very rarely – at least in that way. And it’s rare that they love me in that way back.
The whole falling-in-love thing is very specific for me. At least, it has been in the past.
Honey…again I’m late to the conversation, but the best thing you can do is just surrender to life and not try to avoid pain. Like everyone seem’s to be saying here, it can’t be avoided, nor should it be. It’s the painful experiences that can teach us the most about ourselves.
I think I’m at that point in my life where I’m trying not to worry so much about getting hurt and just enjoy. That’s where the real passion is, in the joy of just living. It’s what makes little kids so wonderful and fascinating, they haven’t really learned to fear the pain of life, they just plunge in head first.
I say, love yourself with the kind of intensity you seek from another, and it will come back to you. It seems like a corny, “Dr. Phil” kind of thing to say, but I’m starting to understand how much our lives are mirrors of what we put out into the world.
“I say, love yourself with the kind of intensity you seek from another, and it will come back to you.”
Er, um, am I the only one with a dirty enough mind to read that as something other than high-minded wistfulness?
Emily? ;-)
High-minded wistfulness is what I need, I suppose. I’m having an existential crisis.
Hey Dave, if that’s where you’re at, then that’s what you’ll take away from the statement.
And there’s nothing “high-minded” about cultivating self-love, unless of course you’re the extremely cynical, purient type. And Sheila can tell you that I’m not some candyassed, flower child spouting new ageisms while sipping chamomille tea and smiling vapidly. I take names and kick ass (not bragging, just the truth), but I also know that until I’m happy being me, love everything about myself (good and bad), and stop wasting energy wishing this, that, or the other were different, then love from another is a) never gonna materialize in my life, and b) if it does, will never be entirely satisifying.
Sure it’s easier to poke fun at the idea of it. The tougher part is to try to put it into practice. All I can say is try it Sheila and see if it works. What do you have to lose?
Fee – as you know, that’s been something I struggle with. Not looking to someone else to fill up that void, or to … make me happy, I guess.
Still struggling.
But the struggle is good. At least I’m acknowledging I’m struggling – as opposed to being in total denial, chirping, “I’m fine! I’m fine!!”
And I know all about the struggle too. How about this, why not embrace the void…for now…instead of looking to fill it? Why not just acknowledge it and not be discomforted by it’s existence? Trying to fill it up sometimes only seems to make it worse because then it becomes an issue of what to fill it with.
Know what I’m sayin’?
I read this Zen quote that goes something like this “If you call into the abyss, it may answer you.”
Well do drinks soon. The impending warm weather will bring out the sights at our favorite watering hole!
Peace and hairgrease!
Fee
“Hey Dave, if that’s where you’re at, then that’s what you’ll take away from the statement.”
Fee, you REALLY need to lighten up, pronto. Do you actually intend to come across as a condescending, “sophisticated,” self-righteous, self-important schmuck, or are you oblivious to the fact that you do?