A Move Made, A Move Delayed

Moves are difficult. Not just for the hours of packing and unpacking or the strain of lifting boxes. They’re difficult for the tiny private sadnesses of finding things I had not thought of for years, items that, though stored away for a long time, are still there, substantial and solid and powerful, as potent as ever to disturb my peace, transport me back to a hope now given up as hopeless, a dream now exposed to the full harsh light of waking life.

Over the past couple weeks of slowly settling into my new apartment, I have found such things and have felt a transitory darkness descend upon my heart, a place I have trained over the last decade to rejoice in the small beauties of existence—the sunlight on an empty wall, a blooming weed in a garbage-strewn alley, the stirring of the earth beneath my bare feet. I have learned to rejoice in these wonders that are present at every turn so that my mind does not wander to the overarching realities of serious health challenges, frustrated career moves and the ache of spending every night alone.

Only I know the power of these inanimate objects. Last week it was two books that disrupted my mood. One on urogenital massage, the other on sacred sexuality, purchased years ago with the firm intention that some day I would have a lover who would put these books into practice with me. Seeing them again made me weep. Get rid of them, I admonished myself. Why keep something that mocks my solitary existence? Give it up! And so I gave the urogenital-massage book to Beverly, who, at 74, has a 50-year-old lover, and the sacred-sexuality book to Goodwill. May they be put to good use.

This evening, just prior to tossing it in the Goodwill box, I held a gold-sequined, gold-satin purse from the ‘20s and realized there was something inside—a blue drawstring pouch that contained the love of my life's black hair mixed with my blonde, their tight curls flattened by time. This past April, this man had drowned while surfing, and his ashes were spread in the cold Northern California ocean, yet I still hold his DNA. And I know that somewhere in my boxes is a hand-painted Egyptian bottle with a miniature stopper. Inside is more of our DNA--my blood and his seed mingled late one frenzied night in a trailer in the deep dark stillness of the Point Arena woods.

He was a troubled soul, and there was much that was not right with him. But in this one way, this very important way, he and I were matched, paired in a strange, otherworldly dance. Sure, I have had sex since I was last with him, but only about seven times in seven years. I suppose it has been better than none at all, but perhaps not. Like living in a dilapitated shack after having resided in a splendid villa on the sea is perhaps better than sleeping outside, without shelter, but then again, perhaps not.

I wish he would return, if just for one night. I have asked him to do so, but as yet, there has been no response. How fitting if he would return from the beyond to make love to me, since so often when I was with him, I traversed the boundary between this reality and some other more intense, vastly lighter and freer plane of existence. I remember very clearly how twice I had floated outside my body, carried by angels, but more often, had remained in my body and felt the world shift.

And so, as talismans, in the way that the urogenital-massage and sacred-sexuality books were meant as talismans to draw my mystical lover to me, I will keep the Egyptian bottle and its contents, and the blue pouch in the gold-beaded purse . By some magic he may pass between the delicate seam between the worlds of living and no-longer-here. I will be ready when he does.

Yes, moves are difficult. Though I no longer think of him every day, and though I am ever-ready to meet someone new, I am not yet ready to toss his DNA. I am not yet ready to make that move.