Serpants, Senses, and Self-Love

Do I only know the other through self-love?

Walking at 4 a.m. without the dog these days. I pick her up on the cool down lap and she seems happy with this arrangement. A man appeared out of the mist this morning and I had to decide if my flashlight would be my weapon of choice. We passed one another without incident but at some level, there is always an incident.

For the most part, I think everyone has missed the point in the Garden of Eden. We are neither Adam nor are we Eve. We are the serpent slithering and sliding on the ground. We are the devil and tempter, asleep in our sublunery limitations, waiting to be lifted up and brought out of the dirt. Can we not see how Jesus taught us how to wake and walk forward?

God as dimension beyond what is accessible to the senses.

Both the first moment and the last are happening this instant. There is no last first kiss. No birth or death day; no here without you; no you without river.

The used poetry book smelled of perfume – an alchemy of something so familiar and yet, not. It was soft and clean but somehow aged. A newspaper clipping of the poet's suicide in the year I returned from Kenya was placed in between the pages, slipping out as leafed a few pages. Unlike Plath, I didn't see the anguish or despair in this author's work. I saw myself.

And now I see the indictment of self-love.