Life is A Tale Told By An Idiot

desperation“If I could read your mind, love,
What a tale your thoughts could tell.
Just like a paperback novel,
The kind the drugstores sell.
Then you reached the part where the heartaches come,
The hero would be me.
But heroes often fail,
And you won’t read that book again
Because the ending’s just too hard to take!”
If You Could Read My Mind- Gordon Lightfoot

I am in a funny and unfamiliar place now that I am not quite sure how to describe. It feels a bit like I have stepped into one of those carnival fun houses and I am staring at myself through a variety of crazy mirrors.

The floor keeps tilting and the lights keep flashing.  Every time I take a few steps forward I find someone or something has placed some sort of hurdle in my way.  Don’t know whether to laugh or cry so I choose laughter.

Each time I try to move it is a step forwards, always forwards. Sure, I may have to turn right or left but my eyes are always on the trail ahead. Doesn’t matter if I have to zig or zag because forward is where I am focused upon.

Some of these situations require finesse but that is not my forte. I don’t want to to tip toe through the forest. My inclination is to bull my way through and let the chips fall where they may. But time has taught me to temper that so I try. I slow down and take a hard look.

Damn fun house didn’t have any lights so I have gone and stumbled into some swamp. Now I am working twice as hard as before to navigate the mud and the muck. It is waist deep and I am exhausted, but I am still moving forwards.

Finally I am so tired I can’t take another step. I collapse against a tree and as I fall asleep I hear a man’s voice whispering in the woods….

The Heart Wants What The Heart Wants

Someone once told me that the heart wants what the heart wants. I don’t know if that is a line from a book or a movie, it could be. Then again it might be one of those pithy statements that people come up with. I’d ask the person who told me but I can quite remember who said it. Hell, it might have even been
me.

The heart wants what the heart wants. You know what that means? It is a statement made by people who can’t explain why they are in love with person xyz. It is what you say when there is no logical explanation for your actions. It is a catchphrase, a tagline, a slogan and a motto.

The heart wants what the heart wants. It reminds me of Shakespeare, “Life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” Somewhere my high school English teacher Mrs. McDonnell is smiling. Little Jimmy actually remembered a line from Macbeth. See ma’am, I told you that I could hear just as well in sunglasses as without..

The heart wants what the heart wants. It is the kind of thing you hear people say when they are trying to explain why they are hung up on someone from their past. Or maybe it is what you say when you stop denying the love that is in front of you.

If love were rational, if it were based upon logic life would be easier. When I think about some of the things I have done because of love I want to scream. When I consider the self-inflicted misery I have endured I want to cry because it seems so very foolish. How could I waste so much energy on such a silly thing as a woman, a single woman. The world is filled with millions of women. It should be easy to replace her. It should be as simple as changing shoes, but it is not. It is not, it is not.

The heart wants what the heart wants. It does and mine has chosen someone that is far more special to me than all of the others. My lips remember hers. I can still feel her touch. The pillowcase has never been washed because I have this fantasy that I can still pull it close and smell her.

Sometimes I think that reincarnation must be real and that in a past life I must have stolen fire from the gods or committed some other heinous crime. Because there is no logical reason why I would be punished in this manner. I found the woman that completes me. I found the person that makes me whole and I let her go.

She would have stayed. She would have held my hand. She would have helped save my soul but I couldn’t say the words. I couldn’t make myself do it. Even though I knew it to be a simple thing. A brief plea for help and she wouldn’t have left me. I wouldn’t have been left to live in shadow and night. I could have been whole. Her love was enough to let me believe that I could have been something more.

But like I said, in that past life I did something. I earned the wrath of those who sit in judgment. Or maybe it is nothing like that. Maybe there is no reason why. Maybe this is all there is and happiness is based upon some sort of random something or other.

The heart wants what it wants and mine has betrayed me. In a different life it lay in a green garden beneath bright blue skies and now it is filled with weeds and fields of shattered stone and black night skies.

Once I might have hoped for salvation. Once I believed that I deserved better than this but now I understand that not to be so. Hades has issued his decree. I stand next to Sisyphus. Tantalus is my brother. Happiness is something that I can see but can’t reach.

The heart wants what the heart wants.

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9 Comments

  1. findotitihere May 15, 2012 at 6:34 am

    @SandiAmorim Thank you for encouraging me to make the move! 😀

  2. findotitihere May 15, 2012 at 6:33 am

    @SandiAmorim Have you seen my new site yet? http://t.co/pD6ksFWL is SO much better than the last one. AND more user-friendly! 😀

  3. Sandi Amorim May 15, 2012 at 6:26 am

    “The heart wants what the heart wants.” 
    Yes it certainly does and my head rarely agrees with my heart! 

  4. Jens P. Berget March 13, 2012 at 1:08 am

    That headline is awesome, and it really got my attention.

    I listen to my heart, but probably not as often as I should. I always think about what I’m doing way too many times before I actually end up doing it. But, like Bill, I have said and done the strangest things in the name of love 🙂

    • Jack March 13, 2012 at 8:43 am

      Glad you liked it. It is challenging trying to find the proper balance of listening to our heart versus our head.

      If I followed mine every time….

      Love really makes us do crazy crap.

  5. Bill Dorman March 5, 2012 at 9:58 am

    Jimmy? Is that a clue……..:) oh semi-anonymous one?

    Ha, you think social is fickle; just listen to your heart sometimes and see what kind of fine mess it can get you in. When I look back at some of the things I said or did in the name of ‘love’ I just shake my head at times. Wow, at least I think I have some dignity left……..

    The heart, hmmmm….a strange organ indeed.

  6. Hajra March 5, 2012 at 9:52 am

    If you have read my comments you must have noticed the signs of pessimism. Well, I am one. I listened to my heart way too many times and yes, it got me into a lot of trouble. The heart wanted someone who was totally wrong and took me a long time to realize that. The heart says a lot of smart things for many people; my better reasoning seems to be the head…

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