Large Billed Puffin

I say I don’t write about love but I do. I write about love all the time, I just don’t minimize it, make it into something it’s not. In terms of everything else, I turn truth into fiction—weaving a moment into a series of moments—a life even. But when it comes to love, specifically of the romantic kind, I desperately try to stay away from falsifying it, from getting imaginative to the point of disillusionment—this is only true when I am working on the page. I can’t promise disillusionment doesn’t happen in the space of my mind—throughout a day or ten years. 

We read and watch love all the time. Whether it be the version society wants us to imbibe—the love that leads to marriage and kids. Or, the version of an artist, that outsider perspective that makes us consider alternate possibilities, possibilities different from everything we have ever been taught. The kind of love that inspires me the most is the kind of love that embraces sadness and dissatisfaction — that allows it to be there. As humans I’m not sure we get to say there is a fix for this. I love nature more than anything I’ve come in contact with as of yet—nature is my connectivity, my god or goddess, my creator, my spiritual guide. There isn’t a day that goes by, an hour that goes by, when nature doesn’t inspire me—put me in touch with something I couldn’t reach prior, something I didn’t know existed. Nature embraces me, it enlightens me, it lies with me at night when I have pushed all the other bodies away. But, nature can’t stop the sadness. There isn’t an existence where I don’t look at how we kill entire parts of this nature I love—feel the pain of its blood soaked grounds. There isn’t an existence where violence, betrayal and death are merely for survival. Where polluted machinations and the harnessing of tidal energies don’t halt the forces that move us. 

I believe love is about the transcendent. In partnerships it is referred to as the transcendent third. The sublime between two people. But the sublime, or that transcendent entity, can exist between a lot more than two —it tends to be the binding factor in loving communities of all sizes. It is what each individual loves more than themselves or each other. It is what brings them back each time they get lost. Transcendent is defined as, extending or lying beyond the limits of the ordinary. Beyond human experience or understanding. It is superior or supreme. Beyond consciousness or direct comprehension. Nature is something that transcends my experience or understanding. There is more to it than I can possibly see or touch. For religious people God/s, or the higher power they believe in, is the transcendent third in the majority of their relationships. If they commit themselves to it to that extent. For some the purpose and responsibility of having children is the transcendent third. When there is movement people organize together because they believe in the transcendent power of something. Freedom transcends individual or group power, so people organize and fight for it. The transcendent importance of something larger than the group itself. To me this is where love spurs and where love lasts. This is the essence of spirituality, creativity, art, community and humanness.  

I think people make mistakes when they believe that the love of one person, along with the love of themselves, is enough to live on. When they look at a person, and the love they feel for them becomes the transcendent third itself—something powerful enough to sustain through everything. It roots from that societal disillusionment that even the most realistic of folks still find themselves getting trapped into — the philosophy that there is “the one”. That one person who we are meant to be with, who we are meant to roam through time with. The idea here is that we are so energetically connected, so spiritually connected that we create our own transcendence—like a light that rises between us and becomes our energy source. As if we create our own universe, our own sun to revolve around, our own jungles inculcated with an immortal photosynthesis that generates something more powerful than oxygen. This is a phenomenally beautiful thought and I have and will fall into its romanticism throughout my life. Even in my most grounded and intellectual moments I will not say it is impossible. I will say it is just as real as any other spiritual belief we have and therefore it is something we must consider. But, I will also say, it is not multitudinous—it seems much more egotistical which is a part of who we are but considered as well.   

This idea of “the one” starts at a young age and it is the girls who tend to get blamed for it. Girls searching for something transcendent. It seems to me that little girls have a choice—let them ravage you or believe that if you don’t let them ravage you something magnificent will come. Sure there is a balance but it is the edges I am talking about here. That magnificence isn’t necessarily visible, not to all little girls, so it can be hard to come by. Now, we know that religion and patriarchy and misogyny and sexism are responsible for placing a dictum of purity and pleasure on women. Of creating unrealistic and abhorrent expectations on them and dismissing their intelligence and autonomy, their right to be messy and aggressive and sexual and exploratory and not to be persecuted for any of it. We know that mainstream media and the vocalization of community preachers and leaders have promoted this abstinence, this withholding — this wait till you fall in love or are married mentality for long enough to be ingrained in our societal web. But, I don’t think we give little girls enough credit either. I don't’ think we believe they have the ability to discern which parts of this mentality they can use to their benefit. I don’t think we believe they are intuitive beings that, whether conscious or not, make decisions with a part of them this society has completely dismissed—in my opinion out of fear. We even look down upon our little girl selves, think of them as weak or flawed in their “disillusionment” rather than saying maybe there was intuitive power involved in their choice. I believe, this mentality of magnificence is an armory of sorts, that one of the reasons little girls, at least through the 20th century and in less progressive places into the 21st, have thought like this is because they need all the protection they can get and this possible disillusionment has saved many little girls from engaging in dangerous ways. 

As a woman, who has experienced this disillusionment, I abhor the ways this mentality became expected for centuries and the way girls who rejected this disillusionment early on were shamed and endangered. I abhor the societal expectations that took root and the possible origination of this twisted reality but I also want to give little girls more credit than we have. What tools have they had to protect themselves when rebellion is dangerous? What mentalities could they utilize to their benefit? This misguided transcendence, this idea that sex is sacred, this idea that “the one” exists and it might be beneficial to wait for it have been promoted as a tool of oppression and utilized as an intuitive protection by little girls everywhere. I think it is important that we recognize both. I also think it is imperative that little girls examine that reality and examine the ideology of transcendence. What does it mean as we go into women? How can we continue developing our intuitive nature, the deep intelligence we hold, so that as we grow older we protect ourselves from exactly what the oppressive force wants —lack of autonomous pleasure due to our “responsibilities” to men and children. 

So, where does this go? It goes back. When there is a transcendent third, love doesn’t have to look like society seems to say it does. It doesn’t need a marriage unless the idea of marriage is attached to the transcendent connection you and your love hold true to. It doesn’t need monogamy unless monogamy is attached to the transcendent connection you and your love hold true to, it doesn’t need to live under the same roof or have kids or spend holidays together. When there is a transcendent connector we have something larger than us to hold onto. Something that keeps us in our curiosity and our intellects and our intimate embraces. Something that allows for our autonomy and our togetherness. Something that builds a bridge for us when we are in conflict. Something that reminds us that similar to nature we are vast enough to grow back to. 

Transmissions Circa 2014 with some additions made in 2022