What drives you?

I'm a magician, yes, I create imagery and fantasy, there's no denying, but what to do with a snap shot in time,  a smirk or gesture captured, some set intentionally on display like a theater backdrop projecting simultaneously the wonder of all images and yet not too disturbing a sensation, a muted beauty. This is my selection a thousand 2 dimensional mannequins to project upon, with faces similar to all human faces, I categorize based on the memories of the loved, the memories of swapping testaments to personalities, sometimes while in motion,  tears, the memories of smiles and laughter, gossip and existential theories, sometimes bandaging wounds and sometimes ripping them open, I graft them to these wannabe models these blank canvas, these aliens. I graft them so precisely that its hard to see the lines where once there was unknown, blended concealer, here is an afterthought, here is a conquistador's adventure,  here is a quick dismissal, here is a game-ender, here is a clown's ambition, here is a wounded warrior and somewhere here is a true beauty.


I have found myself having trouble in my admiration. When I am with certain people, I find cute moments attractive, I find innocent moments attractive, I find intelligent moments attractive, I find funny moments attractive, I find sad moments attractive and sometimes even dramatic moments attractive. In the moment I can recognize the root sensation, something like "wow that is fascinating" but my head reads that statement with whatever visual and non visual cues as attraction, as beauty almost like physical beauty regardless of the visual at the time... its sort of fascinating, but I worry it sends the wrong signal. If my response to every stimuli is "beautiful" or "pretty" or whatever, am I reducing that person to a magazine ad? a work of art? a flower arrangement? when what I mean somewhere underneath is how majestic, how cosmic, how overpowering... and if I compare the variables in flux, the shifting landscapes, starscapes, the biomes within and without, the fated and well-met, the Celestine spirit the tao between the miraculous to this, me sitting with you, enjoying, does it prop you up a pedestal higher, based solely on my desire and create an imbalance where there shouldn't be.


A few weeks ago when I was reading that book about Men and Masculinity, the author wrote about how some men, or perhaps all men, can sometimes feel attraction and desire as a painful experience. Like a physically or perhaps psychically- somatized painful experience.  I wonder if other people feel that.  Sometimes I do, sometimes its like a drug that I have a hard time removing myself from, like just one more please, sometimes like a thirst that I can't quench.Sometimes it aches in  my heart, my joints hurt, can't breathe, sometimes my stomach caves in.
Becky asked me if the relationship we had was unfair in essence because she went on with her life while I was expected to be ready for her return (whenever she wasn't in a relationship). Aren't all my relationships like that? Isn't it somewhat natural for a mixed gender (heterosexual) friendship to have elements of it?  Anyway, I wonder if my desire to be in the presence of some people is entirely based on my addiction to my attraction for them. Like it doesn't matter how brutal the relationship is, I need my fix. Especially when all these other things boil down in my brain as attraction, a joke attraction, a thoughtful comment attraction, an uncommon gesture attraction.
I think this is one of the things that I worry about, at my root. I think I worry I will hurt people, do the wrong thing, be a monster because of this weird reduction of a vast quantity of sensory experiences to just one, and one that drives me, allows me to be reckless abusive and violent, panicked and sick, submissive and abused, manipulated and strung along, like an innocent, like an animal, like a monster, like an angel.
The Iliad is the story of nations going to war over attraction and the natural (read masculine) pride that accompanies it. They were adults right?
But this is more like a teenager, the star crossed teen angst, the suicidal and chaotic.
I've spent my time in repentance, almost all of it, a monk or the voyeur, in fear of the conquistador.

Because

I once had a nightmare about the things inside me meshing with the things inside someone else.

No, that isn’t right, the things inside me twisting in their yearning like snakes, they exited from the unclenched and vulnerable areas of my skin, and tangled their way into the comfort of another. 

And when I am near you, sometimes the yearning is the same, it’s palpable, I can see it, especially within a close distance. It’s like our magnetic shields incorporate each other, and I am pulled near,

I would say its almost violent, the way it grabs me. Latches on and won’t let go, like your every move becomes my essence, even if we aren’t enmeshed, your jokes, your thoughts, your glimmering eyes and smile. I stop being able to see anything but beautiful, even in the awful.

Its awful, I can’t seem to hold things against you, I forget so easily the wounds and repercussions, because though I am drawn in,

Sometimes, I think you, are repelled. 

and is this the natural way, I wonder to myself while looking at photos. Those of the loves I know, and those of the loves I wonder if I will one day meet.