Running into her tonight was a peculiar experience. I cannot communicate it in any way that will stand up to logic, cynicism, or even patient discussion. In the frenzy that is the illogical, the energy, the juxtaposition of the ordered world and the disordered, it makes perfect sense to me. Once again a movie moved me to tears. Once again I left pretty much in a daze, very disconnected from the simple physical dimensions around me but feeling perfectly safe in the other, less reasonable ones. Seeing you made everything fall into place. It's not the movie. It's not the time of day or the coffee. It's you. To be more correct, it's me. You play some sort of role in this however. As yourself, not just as a placeholder. A lonely person's first post break-up sexual experience is a place holder - the individual involved is not relevant to their life. A healed person's first spiritual contact cannot be mere coincidence because it requires not just their healing but the presence (and unless one or both are very strong senders I suppose) of another person who makes the effort to touch, quietly, closely, without touching, to be inside with the other. So there you are - what I would call "broken", for this reason a completely incompatible love partner, but whether through complete illusion or actual fact capable of touching me inside, in the place you refer to being touched by those rough, dry fingers.... I want to be touched there, and your fingers are anything but rough and dry, they are sensitive, gentle, and welcome. They are probably not really willing, however. They may be acting out of a habit carefully honed on another heart, it may be accidental, it may even be, to add an element of skepticism, an illusion I alone suffer. But there you are. I am certain of a few things - things so unknowable it scares me. My young friend M. says "I've never seen you express yourself this way about a woman." My cynical ex-junkie best friend D. doesn't even question where I coming from when I finally get to talk to him. In my words to him you are as real as I am to myself. There is a door in the world, there are many doors. They are usually invisible - to see them requires special circumstances, and our culture does not encourage these, either. It is a door. I can see the door. It probably won't close - it will always exist, but as we both live and grow and change we will probably move away from it, lessening it's impact and it's usability. Certainly circumstances could render it partly useless, for instance either of us bonding in such a unique way with another person. This door is not some sort of hope on my part, it is real. I cannot help it's existence, I could will it away but it won't change reality. An erstwhile lover tardily returned a telephone call the week after I met you. It was all I could do to tell her my predicament slowly enough to make it clear.... and by then I had all the information I needed, rationally, to know it would not happen between you and I. I simply had no choice but to tell the story. It's the most real thing that has happened to me in six or so years. Oh yeah, she also noticed the change in my tone of voice, attitude, etc. "If you see this thing and I don't, what does that mean?" When I try to be logical about this, like when I try to reject the feelings that arise in me due to the (possible coincidence) of our meeting and "contact", all I get is confusion, a jumble of unreconcileable imagery. 10/13/99 - 3 AM 
© Huw Powell
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