love at first sight or a moment of potential

Stories and songs make much of the idea of love at first sight. But what I’ve found most amazing, even miraculous, is the potential in that moment you first meet a future lover or partner. I keep recalling the day I met my husband with a sense of absolute wonder. I had no idea that this was the person who would be my perfect match and my future life partner. He was a complete unknown. Given how compatible we are, it almost seems as if there should have been some indication. The thunderbolt. A flash mob singing the hallelujah chorus. But there was nothing theatrical, just attraction, interest, and curiosity.

I’m so glad that our relationship is unfolding just the way it is. I think of love at first sight as being a kind of assumption of knowing or even faith, which implies a lack of curiosity, a lack of openness to the possibilities. It almost seems as if you’re putting that person in a box before even knowing them. Isn’t it best to make as few assumptions as possible, especially while you’re getting to know someone?

The experience of falling a little more in love all the time is just amazing. The ever-increasing, ever-escalating emotion and attachment, the strengthening of our bond over time… it’s beautiful. The more I get to know him, the more comfortable he is around me, the more he trusts me, the more I love him. When I show him some new less-than-stellar aspect of myself and he accepts it, my heart breaks open just a little more. With each new revelation of some aspect of his character, of his self, of his thoughts, I have more to love.

While there are many moments of overwhelming hormones and emotions, of love exploding like a volcano, I think one of the best things about our relationship is how it keeps building over time, like layers of lava creating new land.

falling in love

“They sat together in the park

as the evening sky grew dark.

She looked at him and he felt a spark

tingle to his bones...”

-Bob Dylan

When I fell in love with T, it felt just like that. We were at his ranch in the mountains above the Big Sur coast, so far out in the wilderness that no lights from other houses could be seen, no city skyglow to obscure the stars. We were together on a redwood slab bench out under the stars, which were piercingly bright. At the moment I fell in love with him, if felt like one of the stars had fallen from the heavens and was drilling into the center of my chest. It was an immensely pleasurable and powerful sensation, like a burning ember hitting me in the sternum and burning straight into me, directly to my spine, slowly illuminating my entire chest cavity with warmth and dazzling, expanding starlight. I’d never felt anything like it.

“That’s a very mysterious thing, that electric thing that happens.”

- Joseph Campbell

I had a similar experience when I fell in love with R, that first magic week we spent together. We were lying together and alternating long periods of kissing and caressing with what I would call deep soul gazing. We were staring into each other’s eyes, and a wider area on that same place on my chest lit up, filling my chest cavity with that same beautiful spreading feeling of tingling warmth and light. The tingling warmth felt like it sank into the marrow of my bones, and then radiated out to the tips of my fingers and toes, to my nose and lips and earlobes, and up to the top of my head. I remember feeling that tingling, glowing wave of love expanding out from my chest, moving up my neck and face like a waterline. I felt like love was pouring out of my eyes for weeks afterwards.

"There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment."

- Sarah Dessen

I fell completely in love with E the first night we went to the hot springs together for the full moon. I’d felt little zings and zaps to my chest with him before. I knew I was falling in love with him. But that night at the hot springs, suddenly it felt like fireworks exploding in my chest, bright and white as the moon. It sizzled out to all my nerve endings, and up to the crown of my skull like white-hot bolts of lightning. I knew E much better than I’d known T or R at the moment love struck. I’d only known them a matter of days (though in both cases, we’d been together almost nonstop on those days). I think the depth of knowing with E increased the intensity of the experience.

Funny how every time has been a little different. But all three were head-over heels, ‘this is totally irrational and crazy but I don’t care’ loves. I still love all three of those men, but in very different ways. I have loved and do love other men, but only felt that earth-shaking, life-changing moment of it those three times.

I don’t think this is a universal experience, based on the few people I’ve asked. When people talk about “feeling that spark,” they seem to be referring to the feeling of sexual attraction more than anything else.

You know that feeling when you see someone and the attraction shocks you with its intensity, like a punch to the gut? Many people call it “love at first sight.” Personally, I think “lust at first sight” is more accurate. In The Godfather, Mario Puzo called it the “thunderbolt.” That’s the best one word description for that feeling I’ve ever seen. Sometimes it isn’t the first time you see someone, but rather the first time you see them smile. Or that first eye contact, the first moment of connection. The feeling might be more or less intense based on your hormone levels at the time and your instinctive response to the person’s appearance.

I once saw a drop-dead gorgeous man I’d never seen before at the grocery store and literally felt like I’d been zapped with electricity and punched in the gut all at once. It did hit me in the gut, not the chest. I think that might be an important distinction. The attraction I felt was so strong it shocked me, and yet I felt a sense of recognition, like I knew this man, had met him before. His face was so familiar to me. I actually gasped aloud. My heart leapt and started pounding and I felt myself flush from head to toe. I heard a buzzing in my ears. We made eye contact and smiles and and hellos were exchanged (with a deep blush on my part). We passed each other, and as I turned to say something more, I realized that I recognized the kid he had with him; that this was the recently divorced ex of a friend. So despite that feeling that some people would identify as “love at first sight,” I didn’t pursue a connection. Instead, I walked away. I’ve never experienced that degree of thunderbolt with anyone else.

I saw this man around town a few times since that day, and that intense attraction had completely vanished. It was so strange in it’s intensity partly because this man was not at all to my “taste” in looks. He had light-colored hair and light eyes and a very northern European look. I prefer a dark-eyed and dark-haired southern European, Middle Eastern or Asian look.

2017-02-03

connection

A friend asked me a question today: What is connection? I would reply with another question. What is real? And the accompanying question: How do we know?

Most things, we know are real because we can sense and measure them. We can measure and quantify so much. 

Other things we know are real through a different kind of perception. I experience my “self” as the witness behind all my observations and experiences, rather than as my body and its biometrics. That is something that science cannot quantify. What else is there that is real and perceivable and yet cannot be objectively observed or measured? Connection, perhaps. 

Certainly, we can observe electrical activity in the brain and body that signify consciousness and life. We can measure activity in particular parts of the brain when we have the experience of empathy and connection, the hormonal surges when we experience attraction or repulsion, but the connection itself—which can range from the most fleeting moment of recognizing a fellow being to the deepest love—perhaps there is something there that can’t be measured by science. 

Many spiritual teachers talk about the life or consciousness that is in everything, animating everything. Is that what this is, this witness of everything, and the connection between the witnesses? Are we really all one life, and the connection we feel just the recognition of that fact What then of plants, which science has shown can sense in ways that we cannot? I can attest to feeling a sense of connection to ancient trees, certainly. But I doubt the trees felt any particular connection with me. Is that connection I felt a thing of imagination or something real, something we cannot prove with science? How can we know? 

What about people who feel a connection to someone they've only read about, even an imaginary character? What about the love we might have for the dead? People can even feel a love connection to a celebrity who has never even heard their name. Is that love a delusion? But who can deny what another person feels? 

A partner recently described a feeling of being alone when he was with me. Feeling a lack of connection when I was quiet. I didn’t feel that. I felt him there with me, I felt the connection and enjoyed it in silence. If two beings can be together and have such opposing experiences of their connection, what then does that mean? 

Is connection real or imaginary? How can such a question be answered? The now proven theory of “spooky action at a distance” comes to mind, but can quantum entanglement even be applied to the relationship between beings? What about mirror neurons and their connection with theory of mind and empathy? 

Schrödinger said, of quantum entanglement: “When two systems enter into temporary physical interaction due to known forces between them, and when after a time of mutual influence the systems separate again, then they can no longer be described in the same way as before. ... By the interaction the two systems have become entangled.” 

If we apply this idea to relationships between beings (and it is not at all a given that it can be so applied), what then does that mean for all of our relationships? Are we not all then completely entangled, permanently, not just with those we love but with every being and every thing that we ever encounter? Is that then, what we call relationship? And connection? What then sets one connection apart from the rest? We are all made of the same star stuff. The same energy vibrates all of our constituent particles. If we are all just a part of the whole, then isn’t any lack of connection the true illusion? 

I ask myself these questions and can only answer them with more questions. The more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know. 

2016-06-30

a moment of connection

I know the price I am willing to pay

I dreamed last night that I was walking with a group of people down a path through the forest. Someone approached us and told me that my lover had died. My world went white for a moment with the shock of it, and then all the color drained out of everything, and all the joy. The trees grew together over my head, and the sky darkened even though it was the middle of the day. People reached for me, but I was alone. They couldn't touch me. I felt myself sinking underground, the dirt and rocks falling along with me. There I was again in that dark pit of grief, where no light and no laughter could reach me. I know that place well.

This dream reminded me of something I've never forgotten. All love ends in heartbreak for someone. By loving again, by loving so deeply, I’m accepting this. Pain is the price of love. I came into this relationship walking fully in that awareness. I could never be as open as I was, as I am, without that knowledge, without knowing what exactly it is that I am accepting. I know the price I am willing to pay.

2016-04-14

I was alone, and it was beautiful.

Sometimes I astound myself

with how much love I can hold 

inside this body.

My lovers

each one so different from the next

and the beloveds of my beloveds.

the beauty that surrounds me

and strongest of all

after the first shock

the new life inside me

protected with everything I had

loved beyond any previous imaginings.

There was a time

not so long ago

when I felt that romantic love,

for me,

was over.

That time of my life was past.

I seethed and suffered,

internally railing

against the unfairness of it all,

the fairy tales and love songs

that lied and lied,

that perfect partnership

forever out of reach,

a life of loneliness ahead.

But somehow

one day,

I finally felt whole

within myself.

No need of anyone else

to fill an emptiness inside.

No emptiness was there.

Nothing missing.

I was alone

and it was beautiful.

And from this place

of no expectation,
love blossomed.

2016-04-12

anticipation

As I lie in bed 

on the edge of sleep

I smell your scent

on my skin

and a thrill runs 

through my body

a shiver

a throb 

a longing

sweet anticipation 

of what is to come

delicious suspense

yearning

and not knowing.

What will we make together? 

I embrace the uncertainty of it all 
as I fall into the arms of sleep.

2015-11-05

enough

The highest compliment I can pay

is enough.

My life is enough.

Were I to die tomorrow,

Know that I have loved and been loved.

I have experienced joy and grief and agony and ecstasy.

It is enough.

I could ask for nothing more.

I have all I need.

For those I love,

For you,

My friend,
Love of my soul,

You, you my love,

You are enough.

Just as you are.
Nothing more is asked.
Nothing more is needed. 

October Dance

I’d been having such a hard couple of days. October is always that way now, you know. The grief surges up and chokes me, drags me down into the depths.

And then I danced. In spite of that part of me that was whispering that I’d rather curl up in bed, read poetry and cry, in spite of October, I danced.

Dancing reconnects me with my joy, with my sensuality, with my spontaneity, with play. It connects me with the other dancers and to the world at large. My heart opens. How quickly dance has once again become essential to my being. How did I ever stop? My Sunday mornings are now reserved for dance. It is my church. My spiritual communion with myself, with my body, with my community.

For me, every dance is a memento mori. I walk out onto the dance floor every single week mindful of the fact that I can dance, that I am healthy enough to move my body on the dance floor. That this is not a given, not to be taken for granted, ever. Every week, I walk out into the sunshine afterwards so grateful that I was there, that I danced, that I am well, that I am alive.

Yesterday, as I was dancing, I remembered all those I’ve loved who will never dance again, especially my two lovers who are now gone. I sent my love out to them. In that moment, I did not dwell on my grief at their passing, but rather the lives they lived. When we laughed together. Times of bliss and lovemaking and splashing in the ocean and dancing and joy.

The grief is still there, still gnawing at the inside of my ribcage, but now it is back in balance with my joy, with my love of life. This is the way of October.

2015-10-19

“Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”

- Rumi