In an age of brazen, callous, sometimes one might say, deadly society, we are seldom wont to focus our minds on something loving, tender, soft, nurturing. Most likely this is because we have been hurt; Had our hearts seared, and faced such an extreme and terrific lack of love where love was needed at some point in time, that we don't even know how to begin expressing feelings of love again.
This is how it is with break-ups. Breakups happen frequently these days. The new person, the new body, appears and reappears in a reverie-like dance. It's hardly real, and becomes less and less real as one goes onto new dances. It becomes crusty and inert somehow. Something is lost. The other is seen but rarely felt.
Suffice it to say, we live in an age of the eyes. Not the heart. This is also a dangerous age, because one is bound for a kind of disaster of the soul one way or another. Love has been reduced to the bare bones of an evolutionary algorithm. Scientists and experts explain everything away as either power-play, or some form of reproductive urge.
For those who are interested in dreams, this is my realization after one last night.
In last night's dream, I was told to soften my heart. It began easily enough in the dream. I went on a date somewhere very swish with the girl I knew in my last relationship; which was also my first and most serious. It was in upper Kloof Street in Cape Town, which is where the rich go to eat and drink. The dream began with me talking to the famous YouTube neurologist, Huberman. Huberman and I were talking like good old friends at a bar. He was trying not to be recognized, but a girl saw him and immediately broke our peace with a drunken shout.
Then from somewhere in the dream came her fragrance - the fragrance of the one I once knew. It's so strange to say; but yes. The fragrance came first. We were in her house in Kloof, in real life not her house at all. In these houses, there is always a sense of warmth and upper middle-class security. A sense that all is well in the world. We were talking and sharing things about the past and we decided in the gloaming that this was to be our last dinner date before we broke things off. In the dream I couldn't believe it. But it was like a contract. I was the final act. We were saying our goodbyes.
At least in dreams, things sometimes make sense. In life, we say, dreams don't make sense, and life does, when it comes to matters of the heart, does life really make sense?
This was a rough relationship and we suffered a lot together. Through Covid and through many obstacles. Some of them were cross-cultural for she's Siamese. Which is not to say that I didn't suffer more than her. But that is a man's job in any case. The man nowadays deals with dragons within the heart realm. I did, and since it was all in the name of love, it was necessary. In the name of love she was already my beloved wife. And to lose her was to lose a wife. It was to lose a life in future time, one we'd built together.
This is how deep the bond goes in relationships. We ate and drank together a little way off by the waterside, and she was very formal, almost coldly formal. She was her old Thai self. She was like a very sleek car, its windows all tinted black, and she was driving through my life for the very last time.
As we ate, I tried to make everything sleek and black-tied like her black car. I kept my voice level. Or rather I tried, and I wondered why she was not doing the same. We ate together so many times during our relationship; usually in malls and places where I could hardly afford to eat on my meagre teacher's salary, always with the fear and the hope of wedding bells and a grand new future, which we used to talk about during these times.
But at the time when we went out into the streets, after we'd paid the bills, I just broke down. She was to fly off next day and leave me all alone and forever. We were under a stone-walled Italian-style tunnel with cars coming back and forth so very quickly, and I simply broke down, and fell to my knees, and offered her my two hands, and I said, "I can't. I can't Aiya. Please. Let's stay together!"
She did not repel me. She put her hand on my head and it felt as if we would.
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