Managing the Magic and the Mundane

Boring boring boring

I love my family.

They are immense, incredible people, capable of surprising me, often by gently challenging my false perceptions of them at any given time.

What I mean is, when too much time has gone by without touching the consciousness of someone in my life, I get weird about it.

But isn't that the constant challenge, managing all of our relationships in a way that does not overwhelm us, but at the same time ensures that our brains don't concoct some personal fiction about what is going on in another person's head.

So much has happened in the last few months and I don't want to burden any sentence with more details than it can bear; however, I believe some milestones have occurred that are worth recognizing.

I feel that a list should be sufficient, if not aesthetically potent.

1.) My dear friend and long time mentor has again taken up the challenge of putting down the bottle. I had a nice personal cry because of the relief this brought me.

2.) Catfish and I took an unspoken emotional communication vacation from one another. I had my anxieties about this for a time, but I just spoke with him on the phone and I am certain he still likes me.

3.) My parents came to visit and finally got to meet Rarechild. This was big for me. We had a very fun day and my Mother invited Rarechild to visit the homestead.

4.) My best friend's mullet grows longer by the day.

5.) Some other things happened...

6.) Catfish and Rarechild's anniversary is coming up very soon, which was just brought to my attention, and, to put it tersely, this brings me great joy.

I love my family.
 
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5.) Some other things happened...

A good title for a short novel or a long poem. Doesn't that really say it all! ;)
 
We are such a loose-knit yet closely tied skein of kitty-tangled yarns.
 
Sometimes it's hard not to feel like an asshole.

Dear Catfish, Dear Rarechild,

In the time and space before we broke ranks with the usual and set out on this journey together, I took you as my Friend, then when I let you in far enough, I called you Sister, I called you Brother.

I call you this even now, because it is not a title or a role, it is a feeling.

It pains me sometimes when I remember how we coexisted in your house together as comrades, and how difficult it is for us now to even move in the same space together. That we have grown closer while simultaneously driving a gentle wedge in our relationship I think is true as well.

I too, dear Catfish, have not felt the freedom to speak my hard thoughts here in this forum. I believe I was waiting for the difficult conversations to pass between us before sharing such things, even in this safe place. I guess I thought I was being patient and allowing some room for breathing, when in fact I may have simply been being negligent.

And too, to you Rarechild, I feel in this way I have been lax in my communication. Where you have been so strong and respectful of the privacy of your loves, wrestling your own struggles, I have struggled with finding the right questions that would satisfy my heart but not ask that you betray boundaries which are not mine to cross.

I have know way of knowing if my words will calm or harm, and I will not be so pretentious as to think that am able to be totally objective and offer any advice. I wonder if maybe it's none of my business, but then, of course it is, as you are my family and I love you. Even as I fear speaking out of turn or saying a wrong thing, I can only say what is in my heart, right here and now.

I have learned and grown enough to know that, in regards to your troubles, I should not be so vain as to think that I am the causing of it all. I am nowhere near that important. That years between you have preceded me is certain, but I am implicit in this struggle where it stands today.

We three each knew we were putting our relationships to each other on the line the minute we agreed to set out together. For my part, I am stuck with my personally quotidian struggle: I never want to break anything and I always want to fix everything.

I have seen you hurt before, as you have seen me. We have had the advantage over many in our chosen life because we have had the time to witness faults, frailties, and fuck ups. You both have seen me struggle through two relationships, one that brought me into your lives, another that took me out, if only for a time.

Would that I could hug you both right now, hard.

Quite plainly, I want to see you TWO happy together, enjoying each other, past this gristly moment and holding hands. And yeah, I have selfish reasons, as always. I take pride in knowing we THREE are healthy, and any illness in a family is bound to get passed around.

On the eve of your anniversary, I gently, if selfishly, ask you both to consider
doing something for me:

Allow me to step back for awhile.

I will still be here, as always, patient and kind as I can be. Unlike prior experiences in my life, this is not me pulling away: This is me holding onto love lightly, as I have learned to do. This is me asking you two to go frolic in a field, romance each other, get out of the house and not consider, even for a minute, me or my place in your life.

That this "V" is physical and emotionally intense at each end goes without saying. It is anything but casual. How could we ever have know what it would look like or how it would feel in practice instead of theory?

Rarechild, I will continue to love you in the best way I know how, through everything, just like always. Even as I know you will understand, I still have to ask: Will you understand if I take the time to breathe on my own, without subconsciously holding my breath waiting for the chance to run around you in circles?

Catfish, would you understand if I told you that I still cannot accept anything that is not given freely, and though both of us know that Rarechild's love is her own to manage, that I feel there is a price being paid and I'm not sure by whom?

Do you understand (of course you do) that I did not pick your tattered names at random from some shiny hat? Quite the contrary. As it were, the Universe shook out its weathered chapeau and your brilliant, glistening selves landed on my head.

A little rain, says the man, never hurt no one.

I love you both.
 
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Mono,

Thank you for that, though it doesn't feel that way.

It feels like the hardest thing I have ever said for Love.

It sounds like abandonment, and it feels like anything but.

Even if it's all wrong, at least I know it's honest.
 
Ain't love beautiful! I wish it upon everyone!
 
“There is no truer and more abiding happiness than the knowledge that one is free to go on doing, day by day, the best work one can do, in the kind one likes best, and that this work is absorbed by a steady market and thus supports one’s own life. ” - R.G. Collingwood


To all of you on this forum and those that make it what it is,

I would like to take this moment, after all that have been before it and before all that will be after it, to say thank you.

Thank you.

Thank for your work.

Thank you for your vulnerability.

Thank you for sharing your humanity and your fair and honest challenge to give the same.

Thank you for living a life that is courageous enough to challenge what you believe, for valuing the gaining of new knowledge as an effect of questioning and not the cause of it.

Thank you for your help.

Lovingly,

Charlie
 
Friends

Tonite I held close the questioning of close friends, knowing that their intent was only to understand that which is so foreign to them.

Respect, trust, honesty, integrity, and vulnerability filled the menu, a pleasant accompaniment to the evening's apertifs.

We talked of cancer, death, family, the grief of the living, mistakes of love, and then, quite organically, of polyamory.

There was no judgment, only a line of questioning bent on understanding.

There was no defense, only shrugged shoulder conviction.

No one has to believe what I believe. That is the beauty of a truthful life.

To Catfish and Rarechild: I speak to the World your love for each other easily when asked, proudly when questioned. I leave no doubt in the minds of others that you care for me.

You are glorious.

I love you for all that you are and also for the life you choose.
Your strength and love will never be questioned long by those in my company.
 
Dao De Jing

Chapter 45: Quiet

Great perfection seems incomplete,
But does not decay;
Great abundance seems empty,
But does not fail.

Great truth seems contradictory;
Great cleverness seems stupid;
Great eloquence seems awkward.

As spring overcomes the cold,
And autumn overcomes the heat,
So calm and quiet overcome the world.
 
Rarechild, Catfish, and I have all been overwhelmed, busy, frustrated...

It seems for now that we are all pursuing our lives together independently, and frankly it can be lonesome from time to time.

Our lives are changing, as they always do.

In the past few months, more things have happened than I care to recount just now, but I needed to say something here, as the chilly winds blow through my caretaker's quarters and Autumn is in its prime.

As the leaves rust once more and another year turns over, one thing remains the same:

My heart is full of Love, and it shall stay that way evermore.
 
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