free range (love)

I’m writing this to just get it out.

To put it down.

I found a smattering of random notes in my writing desk.  There are pages and pages of observations.  I’m putting them here because I think maybe there is a theme but I may only find it by sharing.  I also don’t want to lose track of these fragments.  As an intrepid bricoleur, the ephemera is everything to me.

The first two, scrawled on index cards from my thesis research:

The Masculine objectifies everything.

Why lure her into a pasture instead of joining her in the open prairie?  What are you afraid of?

Notes from a day and conversation with a guy I dated.

Homemade bone broth.  The gift of a backpack.  Lightning.

Cage(s)

Cage-free.

Lure – allure.

The Paleo Relationship

Free range love.

A conversation heard between two thirtysomething white males over breakfast one Sunday morning at a local diner:

Pac-12 (I don’t know what this is.  Sportsball I think.)

Bank accounts.  They discussed having secret accounts so their wives wouldn’t know all of their funds.  They didn’t like having shared resources.  One said, “When you’re married, you do have to answer questions.  That’s what sucks.”

(They didn’t want their strip club escapades to be discovered.)

Frat boys talking about weight loss.  Different guys at the same booth.  (Men often eat really quickly.)

Random notes written during this breakfast.  Somehow related.

Everyone is moving away from their moms.  From where they came from.

Powerful young woman vs. Shrill older woman.

And another note that seems completely non-sequitur is from the wayback machine.  When I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do for my research in grad school.  It says:

“Image-based storytelling and civic dialogue to connect scientists with students and the general public.

People listening to one another.”

Scientists didn’t get involved but the rest happened.  And it still is.

My advisor told me that this work would continue well beyond grad school and indeed, I am finding how it connects not only with other work I’m doing but with my own evolution.

Finally, from another index card, an affirmation:

I bring healing to wounded places.

(Yes.)

All of this reminds me of this poem:

Just as the winged energy of delight

by Ranier Maria Rilke
(translated by Robert Bly)

Just as the winged energy of delight
carried you over many chasms early on,
now raise the daringly imagined arch
holding up the astounding bridges.

Miracle doesn’t lie only in the amazing
living through and defeat of danger;
miracles become miracles in the clear
achievement that is earned.

To work with things is not hubris
when building the association beyond words;
denser and denser the pattern becomes––
being carried along is not enough.

Take your well-disciplined strengths
and stretch them between two
opposing poles. Because inside human beings
is where God lives.

And so I continue on.  Researching.  Creating.  “Building the association beyond words” and allow myself to kiss the unknown as I am wont to do.