Points of Light, letters are but tools I use to eventually form words, and for each of those letters my heart is made both grateful and satisfied. I look at each letter like it’s a tiny sliver of a thin ray of light, still, I always take notice that each little letter’s light is filled with its own colors - intrinsic to itself. While I write, I’m thankful for having a pallet of those slivers of rays of light because with all those colors, with all those letters, I get a moment when I have a chance to paint some very beautiful pictures.
I once used these lighted letters to paint this picture:
How do I describe not writing to you? Not writing is like looking at a picture of beauty that's both true and pure - say of a woman just being and looking soft - only to have no ability to take in all of her beauty, a beauty that wants to make my heart so happy it just can't help but smile. My heart wants to smile, but my heart has to be receptive to everything going on around me.
It’s interesting to me that in those words I had pictured - in some unrealistic, romanticized, and wholly idealized way - the woman as being the beautiful, soft, delicate, and fragrant petals of a rose. If I’m transparent, honest, and true with you, this is to me what femininity looks like, and my brain can be a stubborn organ. The times are often when my brain can wish my desires to be true - subject to my selfish interest. But it’s funny how for the most and biggest part of these wishes of mine, also often, I forget that I can’t - that it’s impossible for me to will my selfish wishes to become true - at least not out there in a big, real world where my brain can’t and shouldn’t reign. Out there in the real world is where my lived life breathes as I move through time and space. Out there in that real world is where roses are what they are organically; where they exist in their state of being in spite of what picture I paint with letters I put together in a moments chance to paint a very beautiful picture.
May I ask you, "Where in my picture do I paint my roses roots?" And yet the rose can not exist without her foundation of roots. It’s in her roots where she can grow and expand; and the deeper her roots are, she can always be happy in her strength. "Is she beautiful?" Then I can’t avoid her roots. When she’s young, and as she grows, crowns form from her roots. From her many crowns, she begins to become the visage of a rose I’m very acquainted with because from her crowns shoots emerge that turn into branches which soon grow stems. Where in my picture did I paint either a crown, a shoot, or even a stem? But in her complexity, isn’t she becoming more and more beautiful? Still, and I don't know how it's even possible, soon she grows even more beautiful as tear-shaped leaflets form from her stems. From her leaves, buds appear, and her complete beauty has almost become apparent. Now thorns grow and, in these thorns, I learn the beautiful lesson she sometimes wants to be left alone. “Ouch” is a word from me my rose sometimes needs to hear, but I didn’t paint the thorns. It’s been a while, but now sepals are growing. Sepals look like green leaves and they’re awesome because for my rose, they protect her rose bud before she blooms. I should have painted her sepals for you, but I didn’t. Finally, her beautiful, soft, delicate, and fragrant petals blossom as she reveals her pistils and stigmas to me. I painted this.
Everything I just mentioned is the state of being in which a rose exists organically. In my mind, I can subjectively, selfishly wish my rose were only those petals, but I’ll never ever will my wish to become true. A woman is beautiful in her complexity and in all her complexity, she always continues to live her life lived organically and she never seizes to be organically feminine.
In Angela, up until a few days ago I was confused. I knew she was always and forever feminine - her femininity is wrapped tightly into her DNA. Still I wondered why I never saw her softness, her gentleness, or the easy caresses of her very present, doting affection. I wondered until just the other day when I experienced it from her more completely and fully then I ever imagined or dreamed possible.
Points of Light, you know I’ve been on a never-ending quest to find beauty. I told you how I found ultimate beauty when I found Angela. When I had thought to find a woman to share my life with, I had always thought I knew what her femininity would look like – it would look like what my perception of a rose had always been. But letters are only tiny slivers of thin rays of light. In the full spectrum of all the warm light of our big sun, in the real world I’ve discovered that like roses, the complexity of a woman’s femininity is always better than my brains imagination. I had already seen, experienced, and savored Angela as a complex woman, and in her complexity I love every experience we enjoy in each other’s company. Still, I had never experienced the petals of my rose. Then the other day, for me and me alone, her beautiful petals blossomed right in front of me. She gave me all her softness, all her gentleness, and all the easy caresses of her very present, doting affection… she gave me everything, she held absolutely nothing back. I soaked it all in, I wanted all of it! still, I need to confess this to you, I was also a little overwhelmed. I think because my very active imagination had never imagined a rose being this beautiful, especially after experiencing and loving so much more from my rose than just her petals. I’m thinking the rose’s I had always previously written about went by other names, but I now know they never smelled as sweet.
But I was definitely on the right tract when I once wrote this:
Then there's me and I've heard from the time I was a child how you must TAKE TIME to STOP and smell the roses. I mean, of course, the roses are never going to bring their smells to you, but you can make a quest to find them, and in finding them, you can then enjoy their fragrance.
As Always
Love and Peace
Tod w/ only one d
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