When I met a woman once, I was excited to learn the side of literature she would teach me - for when I met her, philosophy and theology were my main choices, while poetry and fiction were secondary, lest they tended towards the afore mentioned subjects; she on the other hand, had poetry literally locked into her body. So this was very exciting, we could both become better rounded - a mutual, and probably common desire - at least for the type of individuals that would attract us both.
I had heard of many of these dead people, and read smatterings from many of them-but she was my great push. To have an instructor in the form of desire and youth and beauty and humor and madness...oh how well could I finally learn! More than any philosopher's recommendation, or personal curiousness; even over the suggestion of thirty or forty other people throughout life (some I respected!), I was shoved to this other side of the library by my [ __ ] for my instructor.
I enjoy it here, I knew I would, and getting what I wanted and ambling about these other sides of the library, I find the fulfillment of my old hopeful assumption of her thumbprint upon my life - but also a burden to join my literary traveling. I meet new poets, and those new poets and authors lead me to even newer ones (mostly all dead), and in my first discussions with them, these dead men and women mostly all mention their relation to her - thanks friends, as if I didn't know or guess that already. As luck would have it, thus far, my innate love of literature outweighs the "strange frenzy in my head" (Rumi) - And maybe I gave her something she will find worthwhile, at least I hope to have.
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There are those dead individuals I meet and initially (and sometimes even well into our relationship) have a hard time listening to because I can only think to invite her to this party - though I always assume her scent has hung wherever I go before I've been there, and if not, then I hope and assume it soon will as our voracious natures were a similar trait.
So maybe I invite her to these parties in the silence of my heart (and of the library! shhh!) but she does not come (because it's all the frenzy of my own foolish head and boyish heart). However when she did come, and now, when her ghosts come, they come very specifically into the heart of a boy of about five years old - for that is the heart into which thus far she alone has ever had access to.
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When I was five and my mother was at college and my grandma was sleeping and my maid was asleep and the silence of the afternoon in a warm India enveloped me - with everyone napping, even on the streets, while yet somewhere car horns in the distance echoed in argument and frustration - it was then I had some of the last times I was alone, for thereafter, loneliness became more present. I had my toys and explored my curiosity to my hearts content. Looking back on this, as I have been for some months, I realize that that time in my life is what I refer to (quite accurately I might add) as my 'secret garden'. Soon after that my life began swishing about and I moved all over the place and saw many people come and go and hung on to some that I shouldn't have. My shell began forming as I became more conscious of hurt while forgetting the peace of my secret garden to balance it out. Until very recently, nothing was like my secret garden - and even now, in moments of formal and especially informal meditative practice, the peaceful sensation is an echo of those young and warm afternoons alone.
That five year old heart, that's where she walked in, and walks in and out of yet today; into my secret garden - which at the time was even hidden from me! Looking back I feel I saw her walk in as a girl, since I was a boy, and she was my friend, my absolute best friend. I cannot express this well at all by the way, only the silence in and on and about my face will give anyone any idea what I am saying. The buoyancy of it, the fluidity; like a needle straight into water - this is how my friend came into me with her poets and laughter.
My child saw the inner child in this blazing woman of intelligence and humor, of darkness and light, of bread and shadow...a muse like none I have ever thus far encountered; my words fail my bewilderment at this reality by the way - and I believe she was easily placed as such a weighty muse because after all, it is the young heart which creates!
So as young adults, from and in my young heart she laughed with me and we would make mischief together while my grandma slept and the whole world was napping. Then as people awoke, she would go away - my secret best friend, and we would laugh in the way that only two people with an inside joke can - because I knew she would be back, and we would meet again tomorrow and the rest of my day would be a joy. As she dissolves into the horizon and air, our eyes do not break their desirous, playful, and wholly trusting contact.
None of this friendship happened in India of course, or at all really; it's just the only way I've found to express the reality of the emotion which a woman I once met brought out in me. This expression you're reading is the reality of my heart, in actuality however, we were young adults in midwest America during the end of the Bush administration and the beginings of the Obama administration; and during this period, I feel I was ignorant in my matters, i.e. my secret garden was a secret even to me!
I can only believe that the little boy misses his little friend still - why else would I be writing all this? His secret garden friend..my secret garden friend, who came with an unconscious invite and planted her flowers everywhere. Can I be faulted for tending to them? Would you expect I let the flowers die because it'd be easier? You must be a stranger then, I'm much too much of a gardner for all that; too avid a lover of fragrance - and my nostrils grow with each deep breath as my lung capacity begins taking in the whole world.
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It's been about twenty-two years since that little boy had any attention or peace, and the first person to ever be able to remind me he was still alive came with the romantic poets and the wise old lovers. Now I personally will not say what love is, as no language will even try and speak of it (for the language and I both know it will be utterly falsified with one syllable!); but somewhere in that silence, under the quiet of Indian afternoons, in my secret garden - my secret best friend whispered to me what love was - and now her dead friends tell me I know what they mean by love and light and bread and shadow. Her whisper of love, translated by God, is some of the only peace that little boy has had in a very long time.
So maybe it'll one day be like Leonard Cohen in the last line of 'Chelsea Hotel No.2 ' and I'll end these protracted digressions and expressions from the undercurrent with the words, "That's all, I don't even think of you that often" - but for now at least, it seems to me that she'll always be walking around my secret garden, a few steps ahead of me, into all the libraries I go; a ghost introducing me to other dead friends. I'm sure she would've once loved and hated that.
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