Circuity, the Solstice

There is so much I want to say today, but the things I need most to express are the things I feel most conflicted about expressing here. But this blog for some magical-feeling reason is the only place that expression of this kind of anguish feels truly relieving.

There is no way I can write about my life without writing about my relationships (namelessly of course).

I do not have freedom to live the way I want. I want - need - the option of speaking freely, in detail, instead.

Is that my right? If what I need to write about is about a human being who has more choices of life-expression than I do? This is mine. This blog. This is the one - and it can - with readership and/or comments, provide a kind of warmth - that stays with me.

The person I need to write about promised not to read here though. He has been a few times. I am easing into more exposure anyway, so I say it is OK that he did what he said he wouldn't. I tell myself OK, because he has been so good to me. But I said that it is not too. I am glad for his interest. But I don't want him to know this much about me. He says, "But it is circuitous, isn't it. You are writing about me. To the world. And I am not supposed to see it?"

But no. This is my world. My side of the relationship. I do not identify him (by name), and there is little enough crossover in my life, that hardly anyone in my life knows of him except in the vaguest terms. KD is the only one who's met him. People do not know us together except for his friends who do not know I write.

He asked if I had come up with a pseudonym for him, yet. I haven't. I can't. The relationship is so unique unto itself, there isn't a word for him or it. I need what is so real about it. I guess I'm left with calling him my friend. He reads this. He will have to come up with a descriptor for himself.

Isn't that OK to express what I don't want someone to know elsewhere - if anonymously? Isn't that what a lot of 'fiction" or literature is, through pseudonym? That I would want privacy from him that I would share with others, does that make my time with him, the best that I have, any less real?

But he reminded me of the imperfections he has already seen - of the difficulties of the second trip, soon after I was released from hospital (which I told him about along the way gradually). I was not up to that trip and ashamed, and wished it hadn't happened, although we saw beautiful things.

I was more than grateful for this last trip [see post " Return From the Desert"] beyond description, minus the one nightmare of my infection, it was more like the first which was perfection, the honeymoon everyone aims for and misses by some degree.

So he has seen my problems before. He has seen me before. And again. He has come back anyway. He checks my site. He calls. I don't want him to disappear.

Is it health to our relationship that he would see what I would express/hide from him here - my fears, and regrets, and shames, and envy?

- That he says he already knows.

We are forgiving. My word. He says, and has said several times that we save the best of ourselves for each other. We don't have the problems of a relationship, because we don't have a traditional one. We just periodically, sporadically,drive thousands of miles together spending every hour of ten days in a row with each other.

His description, his word, is that we are "generous" with each other. He has said that many times.

There are many things that could mean. One I know is that I don't demand anything. He has said that I don't ask for anything "to a fault." But I asked him not to look up my site.

I don't mind him reading this excerpt,(except for his lack of understanding for my need to write it.) But there are other things I would say if the Belgian flag icon didn't appear - just a couple times - on my pseudo-secret statmeter. Once after the phone call at 7AM this morning (in my pre-medicated, memory-losing, athsmatic state) this morning that inspired this...this what? What do you call this? I know there is a perfect word for it.

I have no reciprocal vehicle to know his shadows of us - and wouldn't want one. I am interested, but I do not need to hear about everything. - It is true, though, that I would be curious, and tempted, if he were writing about our experiences in some venue. (I am not "writing to the world" when only a few people from all over the world stay long enough to read a whole page. I am writing thoroughly to a few people I don't know).

I am so stupid for letting him see the address in my zeal to show him that I had created something. Accomplished something on my own. A site. No help. Mine. My hubris.

I can't live my life the way that I want. That is a fact. Can I write, please, freely about the parts that I do cherish?

The groggy phone conversation (which there is much more to) resulted in his saying I should be able to write if it helps me somehow, but he will check in from time to time. That I shouldn't have to change my address because of that. Or change the way I write. But no. You go get to have your other lives without me. This is mine, even if it includes the traces left by you.



Rodin sculptures taken by "him" at The Legion of Honor, at the last day of the second trip, posted without his permission.