It's 1:55 AM

It's so simple to try to tell myself to sleep. But I lay sometimes in the dark room, and an unbidden lyric rolls through my head, and I'm as powerless to stop it as I would be the tide...

If I ventured in the slipstream
Between the viaducts of your dream
Where immobile steel rims crack
And the ditch in the back roads stop
Could you find me?
Would you kiss-a my eyes?
To lay me down
In silence easy
To be born again..

It's from Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks," and without the winsome nostalgia you hear in his voice for things which might never happen, the words alone just don't carry the day. I think of the times I tell myself I've been a fool, when I've been incapable or unwilling of treating you-- or myself-- better, and how I'm learning that I never really have known what I don't know. In this dark, with that Irishman who resonates with me as surely as bourbon, it's easy to forget that we've come here, to this point, because of who we are, who we've been.. And he croons slowly like running water, and I find myself wanting to venture into that slipstream, to somehow step into your dreams, not for you to find me, but for me to find you, to keep your sister from drowning, to keep you from being frightened, not like a father but like a lover, like a confidant and a companion...

From the far side of the ocean
If I put the wheels in motion
And I stand with my arms behind me
And I'm pushin on the door
Could you find me?
Would you kiss-a my eyes?
To lay me down
In silence easy
To be born again

I'm not on the far side of the ocean, but the gulf between us, it seems all at once to be both less and more than it has been in the past. So much less because of our connection, this more solid footing I feel we're on, this base. So much more because the low syrupy flutes and smoky saxophones of this music, it calls me back to you like the hero who awaits his prize at the end of his journey. It makes me want to slay dragons for you... or it makes me want to create a world in which there are no dragons to be slain. I want them to know what we have, I want to live in peace, I want to leave my anger at the side of the road like a snake leaves its skin: Because it's no longer needed. I want to be that in the world. not because we say it, but because the way we Are together propels our attractive energy out into the world. You. Me. Us.

Aint nothing but a stranger in this world
Im nothing but a stranger in this world
I got a home on high
In another land
So far away
So far away
Way up in the heaven
Way up in the heaven

And that's probably true, but I have so much work to do here in the physical plane, so much to accomplish... And I listen to this song, again and again, and I mist up and smile for the love of you, for the power that I've allowed love to give me, and for the person I am becoming with you, for the great work we have ahead of us. I drift off and wonder if I'll realize the moment when we go from this incubation to whatever it is we're birthing. I love you.

There you go, there you go
Standin' in the sun darlin'
With your arms behind you
And your eyes before
There you go
Takin' good care of your boy

Sleep well, my darling. Your man loves you dearly.....