Falling Stars

I remember the moment.

We were under the open sky; I seem to recall us standing just outside my bedroom door, and suddenly there it was; the first shooting star.

Look! we said, and we reached for each other's hands.

And as I clasped yours in mine, I thought to myself :

I wish this could last... for a little while longer.

*****
This is the kind of ramble that only happens late at night, perhaps only on select nights when you've stumbled upstairs hoping to catch a glimpse of something special, and come away unsurprised by a hatful of sky, and a skyful of clouds instead.

I was so young once.

There are so different many kinds of love. In my youth I knew I had blundered onto a powerful experience - and being the black and white thinker that I was, the logistician, I knew 1 - that was love, and 0 - other things were not. Perhaps I even judged the people around me by that same scale, if I did I was stupid for it.

Love comes in so many different flavours, I see it now, coupled with so many different ways of saying I love you.

There's a wondrous kind of love, the soundtrack of which might sound something like this :

I love you? I love you. I love you! I... love you? I love you!

It won't make any sense to anyone who hasn't walked that path; but it's a very young, very fragile, very childlike thing. Very simple, and perhaps in its own way, pure. I did it once, a world and countless timezones apart from a wonderful girl, and we shared a feeling that, in that point in time was special.

It melted away for me; it wasn't the kind of love that a cynic like me can maintain, or cherish and nurture, and in hindsight the dark side of me likes to laugh at myself - love? You didn't even begin to know the meaning!

But I don't think it melted away for her, in that she found it again, and so did her man, and I'm happy for them both now :) I think perhaps some people can hack that kind of thing, forever.

There's another kind of love, which is just words. I love you. Space fillers, the words spoken in comfort, in consolation, without any real feeling behind them.

I don't need to say much because we've pretty much all been there; I was there once, the second relationship of my life, stumbling through the darkness - I think it's how we learn - by making mistakes.... and for some people it's perhaps a mistake never to be learnt but to be lived by; for myself it's a mistake terrifying enough to run from, and never look back.

I can't live a lifetime by someone's side lying to myself, and to her. A lifetime... means too much to waste on lies; a lifetime better spent alone, in truth.

There're many other variants, I've lived quite a few - not because of any innate appeal to the opposite sex, but simply because I'm so old now... so, very, old. laugh. I've had a few chances, that and the fact that my relationships have by and large been short, dysfunctional affairs, and the concept of "long-term" to me is anything encountering the two year headstone, which is where everything usually falls apart.

There's a kind of I love you which is powerful, very, very dark and wrenching, very taiwanese soap opera; I laughed at Areya once upon a time (more fool me) and thought in my head : that's not love! as I watched her with her... taiwanese guy (laugh) and I saw how they brooded together.

And then I remember my hand on her (not areya. pfft!) cheek, sunlight streaming in the window as she slept, on her brow, my eyebrows creased wondering when the end would come, and knowing it would be so very soon; I remember silent I love yous while she slept, I remember the sense of loss even before the event; I remember knowing when she had betrayed me, before the fact; I remember after the fact and before the confrontation; I remember perhaps even knowing well beforehand that it would pan out this way.

I remember the tears slipping out against my will, the gentle sunlight forming a halo around her hair and face. The feel of your skin on my hand. The heaviness, and pain.

I could never hack that; I don't know what kind of psycho nutcase can, but taiwanese soap operas are enough to do a guy like me's head in.

And I can forgive, but I can't forget. I can in my weakness forgive so very much, but yes, she was right... things had changed. It's not that I would have made you remember... it's just that we were too different, you and I - I can't forget things by not talking about them, I can't un-make things by ignoring them. I can't let the world slide.

We were too different, she and I - she wrote "...I'd just tell him, I would really love for us to be friends again, a friendship with no hidden agenda, just two people who still ...enjoy the company of each other without the complications."

I would have loved that too, but to me friendship can only come to life with a mutual truth.

The "fuzzy friendship" thing that eluded her hinges on truth. Friends first, lovers second - friends who do not deceive. Even if the second follows on from the first rapidly, within weeks. And if it never does, then there's always friendship.

In the absence of truth, all that remains is lovers.. and I love yous that burn to remember, but fade with the breeze.

There's one more kind of ... I think it's love... but I'm really not certain anymore, and reluctant to put words to it.

It's that thing, that thing I knew once that I had pegged as the be all end all, that ridiculous roller coaster thing that in hindsight had been so obvious...

... only it's not. It's something that you mustn't put words to; it's something important that's just the moment, and it really doesn't matter anyway.

It's something that almost excludes the words "I love you" - not until you're very, very, extremely certain, because everything just means too much - This gleaned from a conversation with sasky...

And perhaps it never even reaches the words, perhaps it never reaches the stage... it doesn't really matter.

Perhaps it doesn't matter that there are no words that can capture it, none whatsoever, holding onto someone, or touching her face and looking at those eyes holding your own.

Perhaps there's a reason everything means too much to say things or make committments, and its a reason that's so simple it's selfish - because there's just too great a risk, too far to fall, to much to hurt if...

... and yet that doesn't matter either.

All that matters is now.

*****
I can imagine him, in mind's eye. Laugh.

Pointing at the sky with his stubby arm and saying, dramatically, And that's the Gemenids...

... and behind him cascades of stars beginning to crash through the canvas of sky...

*****
Meteor shower tonight! - ladygrey

I wish I could have been there, not here in the hospital, looking out at the clouds at three in the morning...