I am fragile.

Last week, there seemed to be a lesson. My horoscope, for example, began with:
"I am fragile, delicate, and sensitive. That is my strength."
-The Indian spiritual teacher Osho

Meanwhile, Garrison Keiller read me: "Failing and Flying" by Jack Gilbert, from Refusing Heaven about the ending of relationships. My mother and I sent it to some of our friends, and Anne had a wonderful response: “…this is so beautiful, so sad but so hopeful, because it gives you a new way to see. I've always thought that there are relationships that are perfect but still temporary - not only love relationships, but all kinds of personal relationships. You have to appreciate their fullness and completeness - and like the poet says, remember that they flew, even if they ended up crashing to the earth….” To which I replied: “…I guess that's the Truth of poetry, of analogy, that they are especially profound when an idea can be applied not just to Icarus and to marriage but also to friendship and fresh fruit and television….”

I watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith the other day, and it reminded me a lot of myself and Jared, not just because he likened her to Christmas morning, but also because of the overwhelming sense of prevailing falsehood, and that the burned the whole f*ing thing down. It seems highly unlikely to me that a situation like that could have a happy ending, but Hollywood is special that way. When people don’t trust, establishing trust isn’t like the flip of a switch.

All that reminded me of the Myth of the Phoenix rising from the burning flame. For both myself and my sister, devastating heartbreak has lead to a sudden falling of everything else into place: work, friends, apartment…. I finally renewed my driver’s license. I told her this yesterday, and she replied with disappointment that she doesn’t have a new boyfriend yet. I can’t help but feel like she’s missing the point. They didn’t love us enough to make it work, and as soon as they were gone our lives improved dramatically in every other way. Isn’t it just possible that the Universe is trying to tell us something? Not just, “Gosh, I’m sorry. You don’t deserve to hurt this much.” But instead: “Look at how beautiful the world is out there, How talented you are, How much so many people love you. Look! …Don’t you see it? He was just a diversion.”

I find dating less mysterious now than I ever have. Last night, Sultan, Jake, and I were at Café Revolution near my house. A young woman singer-songwriter sang about how she did everything wrong in this relationship and now she’s finally getting used to the idea of him with other women. I was moved by the idea of her doing everything wrong, since of course, that’s easy to related to, but the thing about her getting used to him with other women fell rather flat to me bc it doesn’t have anything to do with that. Plus, I think this goes back to the whole “show don’t tell thing.” When I think about Jared with other women, I feel sorry for them without wholeheartedly wishing that things could be different. You choose your perspective. It's representative of something else; so, show me what.

Someone I know professionally was telling me Friday how I appear to have a vision that I’m successfully pursuing. I laughed and self-deprecated. Then she told me about a therapist who told her that she was high-functioning. She then fired that therapist. But the point is that what’s showing outside doesn’t always indicate anything on the inside… unless you know how to look.

This post is getting off track. Andy Warhol’s “Hell is other people” lacks authenticity. And getting used to their existence misses the point. Jake was advising me on another issue last weekend to “fake it until you make it”, and I think that one may have relevance. Mr. and Mrs. Smith destroyed all their possessions because their love for each other gave them a sense of fragility they didn’t know how to handle. Since they were both hired killers, the resulting escalation made it possible for them to put each other’s lives at stake and then realize that they didn’t really want each other dead. From there, there was no alternative but to show their vulnerability since they couldn’t kill each other.

But why not skip the middle stage? The catch is that both people have to do it at the same time, or at least believe that the other person can do it. Or at least be strong enough to do it on your own. Not many of us are. But also, things end, and from their endings, the beautiful can happen. Compost provides an excellent analogy. Relationships, and our relationship-lives, have cycles. What we can do to celebrate the life in that is to let ourselves be fragile, vulnerable from strength.