On (Young) Love

Mike and I have been talking about the theory of impermanence a lot lately. It's one of the three basic facts of existence in Buddhism.


This is what's read at funerals:


Impermanent are all component things,
They arise and cease, that is their nature:
They come into being and pass away,
Release from them is bliss supreme.


Mike and I were talking last night about how you can either take solace in the fact that things are constantly changing or you can be afraid. (You guys probably know what side I'm on - I hate change. It's something I struggle to adapt to constantly. I will conquer it, dammit!)


Anyway, as usual, my love life is in a strange place. I'm one of those people who sees love as the true path of life - that any beautiful life is best lived filled with love. If I were to die today, I would be entirely satisfied with the loves that I have had: great friendships, family, men.


But oh, men. They are my supreme weakness. I can hear Mike's voice in my head now, "What would the Dalai Lama say?" He also told me that I've never let a man truly love me. I argue with him. I believe that I've never truly found that simultaneous love. (Remind me to someday blog about his theory about "wives" and "woo-hoos" - it's good, true, and absolutely hilarious.)


Anyway, the point of this story is the beautiful love I experienced in Cape Town.


James and I didn't last the entirety of the trip - I'm much too skeptical for that to have happened.


We met at a pool hall. I was drunk (always), and danced with him, and told him to call me.


He later told me he never would have called me had I not been so insistent because he wasn't sure I was serious.


He thought I lived in the Steenberg Estates (the nice white part) rather than Steenberg (Mama P's house and my temporary and oh-so-beloved home), so he was late to pick me up for our first date. We went out to dinner, where he fed me delicious chocolate cake and we closed the restaurant.


He was a romantic in ways I've never been treated to. There were hot bubble baths drawn for me, candlelit dinners, tea brought to me every morning, lunch packed for me most days, adventures.


He also drove me nuts, but that was to be expected. Even though I do believe that every love affair should be entered into wholeheartedly, it should also be cautiously done - it's a weird thing I have. All of a sudden, I get uncomfortable, oppressed, claustrophobic. And that's when I bail.


He took me to one of my favorite places in Cape Town, the Bridge to Nowhere, as I call it. It's in Tokai, right down the road from where he lived. That hill is where he told me he loved me and where I didn't lie to him.


I do love that bridge though.


We've kept in contact since, and today, in response to a message from me, he sent me this:


"Hey love! It's not very long into a week when i find myself thinking of you. How we could chat endlessly about anything, from an incredible intellectual understanding...
You're a seriously rad girl, katie barry....
Hope life is broadening that beautiful mind of yours. Also hope that i see you again, sooner rather than later"




I teared up at work, no lie.


It was never meant to be permanent. It was meant to happen and then burst up into flames, full of heated conversations and sighs. It was exactly what it should have been.


Many of my most wonderful Cape Town memories surround that: nights of free pool at Lizard's (still a weird name for a bar), driving down the M5 at night - turning off the lights right before we crested that hill, watching reruns of Scrubs on the couch when I wasn't at work...


I love the gift of love.


Whatever godlike being lives in the sky or in our hearts or wherever was seriously onto something. 


This impermanence thing, though, we'll have to work on. (Although that, too, can be a godsend.) 


;-)