Late Transitions

Currently I'm working on late transitions.

What's a late transition, you ask? It's when you're between two things--and things are moving a bit slower than maybe you'd like. Or maybe you're just done and ready to move on. Whatever it is, your attention is asking to give up. To die so it can be reborn somewhere else. An honest instinct to be sure, but not one that I want to be ruled by.

The deeper I get into an transaction--interaction--be it positive or negative, the more likely I am to find it difficult to maintain my calm. The more likely I am going to want to swing to be a destroyer, or try to join with someone. The more difficult I find holding on to myself without some drastic action that corrupts my under-standing of the situation. (I believe that if you are strong enough, you can approach any situation with under-standing, that is with a relatively open stance, mind and hands. And by the way if you are relating this directly to sex, you are smart--that's the penultimate interaction--and where we learn most powerfully that the proper approach and demeanor reaps rich rewards.)

Then I try to jump to over-standing, which despite it's good press in some Reggae songs, for me is more like control. As in I know what's going on, I'm in charge, and I....

Which, even if it's true (and given that I'm an intelligent part of any interaction I have I should by the law of probability know what's going on at least a portion of the time), I don't want to do. Being in charge is somewhat my nature. So much so that I pretended I wanted nothing to do with it for a long time. Ironically (and those times were all about irony), it was when I denied I had any interest in being in charge that I wielded my control most sharply. Much of it was passive, but nothing screams "I don't feel like anyone's listening to me" like raising your voice. Or going on and on.

But over time I have learned that I don't want to be in charge, for anyone but myself that is. It takes up way too much time. And you much less reward. Someone else's fun doesn't parse half as well as your own. It's too much work.

It's crucial for intimacy, though. To do all transition well. Transition is hard. Everything is changing. Shifting under your feet. The rules even. And the outcome is by no means certain. The risk is real and the reward has yet to be uncovered. Moving, changing jobs, changing seasons, saying goodbye. When you get down to it, most of life is transition of one sort or another. And while the introduction line is important, and your short game, not to mention how well you perform at the actual task, what happens next--in the deep transition--is where lasting impressions are made or broken.

Were you present after you got the payoff? The next morning did you make eggs (or in my case broccoli)? Did you look in her eyes and listen as she said goodbye? Did you look in here eyes and mean it when you did?

Or--cause I know not everyone's getting married two months down--were you honest and tell her how you felt. Or that you probably wouldn't call? Or just not say anything? Were you as real and as much a man on the far side as you were on the front?

And it's not restricted to lovers by any means. In fact that may just be the ne plus ultra--a heightened, blatant example of what we're doing constantly with the folks and world all around us. Energetically, personally, conversationally, with body language. And that's likely just a yardstick for something even more important: how we're doing in our relationship with ourself. And how we are doing in our relationships with ourselves.

That's what I want to be good at. Not flipping when I'm "supposed to". When I'm tired and hungry and stressed and have every reason to. That's when I want to be able to deliver love with full force: when it's needed most. (And it is crucial to note here that love is not only being helpful, or nice, or saying or doing something! That's the well worn half of love. Holding your tongue, believing silently that someone can pull themself out of a hole, bearing witness, walking away, saying no--these are all 100% love as well. And possibly even more helpful as they are often overlooked. They must be applied lovingly to work--from below--otherwise they're just indifference--but love can be anything--in fact love is everything--I think that we must emulate god and use every single tool at our disposal--including possibly violence--which is why love so hard to deliver, to be--it requires full flexibility in any given moment. And that we not be beholden to our more sentimental feelings: that street person can't take care of himself, she'll be mad if I..., I have to _____ right now. Feel them, look at them, and maybe even act on them, but don't lose perspective. It's the loss of perspective, I believe, that crashes us into both "not ourselfdom" and out of love. Love is radical in that we may have to be silent, or appreciative, or relaxed, or encouraging to deliver it. I don't think that it ever requires us to be anything other than ourselves, but it may require us to be our whole, that is flexible, fearless, and fantastic selves.)

And if I can do that, I know the rest of the week/year/relationship/phone call is going to be love. And that dancing's going to be a joy.