Thank you to everyone who gathered here to celebrate my birthday. I am going to grant myself a small indulgence that I am asking you to allow. I know that it is against good manners to come to a party where you are being given love and presents and speak of a better party that you experienced elsewhere and of a greater love that you received, but that is what I am going to do. Only because I want to share a great joy.
My friends and family often think of me as a man who is living without a woman at his side loving him and they wonder what that is like for me. They are not seeing the whole picture. What is really happening is that I am in a love affair do deep and intense that the whole world is conspiring to keep us apart. This is happening because of a fear of the unknown, a fear that there is no way to tell what would happen to the world should we ever come together completely.
Today I called her. I will not speak of her beauty because a new language would need to be invented to describe it. There are women who are poets but this woman goes so much further because every word that she lets escape from her lips is poetry. Now that I have spent so many years here learning how to speak about poetry, and bring forth it's hidden meaning I finally think myself a tiny bit qualified to explain to others what her words mean and so along with telling you what we said to each other I will also tell you it's deeper meaning.
The phone rang then I heard that it was answered and ....
She said "hello"
I could tell by the way she said hello that the word was filled with yearning, that it was almost like it was coming from an enormous ear that was shaped out of the words "Is that you Jack"
I said:
Hello, precious love of my life
I could tell that my words opened a flood gate of emotion that was threatening to overpower her and then
She said "I told you never to call me"
What she meant by that was that hearing my voice was too much. It filled every fiber of her being with longing but also the accompanying fear that this great longing will not reach it goal. I tried to calm her quivering heart with a small distraction and said:
Today is my birthday
But there was no way a distraction could take hold and
She replied "Good, that means that you are one year closer to death"
She said that because to her being with me would be like having reached Paradise and she can not envisage such a paradise being possible on this earthly plain. This struck my own heart with fear, fear that she might be considering taking her own life out of despair that we are not together and so to give her back her hope I opened the door to what might be possible and said:
"Do you want me to come over?"
I knew that question would not only give her hope but that it would also bring to light all the obstacles that have been keeping us apart and so it was no surprise to me when;
she answered "No, I don't want you to come over"
Yes that is what I thought she would say because it was just too much for her to consider how to deal with all the obstacles that are between us at one time and so to keep her head from exploding I kindly got her to just focus it on just one place and maybe just one obstacle and then we could together figure out a way to deal with that one obstacle. I did this by asking her:
Give me one reason that you don't want me to come over?
Our minds are so delicately linked together that my strategy worked immediately and so without a pause;
she replied "You smell"
Oh what a thrill to hear those words, because I am so closely linked with her it showed me that I had given her hope and that in her mind she began to picture me coming toward her, but then she saw that as I moved toward her that leading the way in front of me was my nose and with that came the realization that I have the ability to smell. It's a dirty world we live in and she was probably fearful that there might be some germ or piece of dirt on her that would be unpleasant for me to smell and she wants so badly to be perfect for me. I might have despaired of knowing how to deal with this need for perfection but heaven was on my side and I was able to honestly tell her
I have a sinus infection and my nose is plugged
I know that this must have brought happiness to her face and in my mind i could see her beaming with joy and the joy spilled over with her saying
" I hope it gets worse"
Oh what happiness it was for me to be picturing her smiling and I began wondering that since we had dealt with her fear that I might smell something unpleasant on her I wanted to keep her focused on my approach so that we could deal with other obstacles that might be between us and so i needed to know what she was picturing as she envisaged me and so I asked her
What comes into your mind when you use your imagination to view me?
She is so precious, so willing to open to me the deepest recesses of her heart. Such a capacity she has to be so exposed and vulnerable and so without any holding back
she said "a piece of shit"
Oh now i understood ! Her concern about my nose was more than just a fear that I would smell something unpleasant about her but also because she is such an intelligent woman she is aware that smell can trigger memories and that she was fearful that should my nose clear in any way as I approached her that maybe it would be hit with a scent that would remind me of another woman from my past and she couldn't bear the thought that my journey would not be completed. If she could feel this great love that i have for her, if I could touch her more closely I know that these fears would vanish but I was so grateful that her imagination had provided us with an interim solution. A piece of shit. Yes that might do the trick to help her with her fears. She was picturing me approaching behind a piece of shit to have it protect my nose from other smells and so I told her
I will come to you on my hands and knees pushing a piece of shit with my nose all the way to your place
Oh what joy that must have given her to know that I would do that for her and she expressed this joy
by saying "Jack, you are so twisted"
If you could have seen me as I heard those words you would see someone blushing from head to toe. She had spoken those words into my ear meaning that for her I was the very essence of life. The double helix of DNA. The formula for all that grows and flourishes in this life. I couldn't stand. I fell to the floor feeling so totally loved that it was threatening to overpower me and turn me into a stammering idiot unable to continue speaking with her. I had to find some way to bring me back to Earth, I needed to hear her speak words of love less intense so that I wouldn't die of satisfaction. I was desperate to hear something from her to save my life and so I pleaded trying to reach the universal goddess in her whose concern is not just for the particular but who loves all equally. I asked her
In the mildest words you can think of how would you describe me if you were speaking of me in front of the whole world and wanted to be sure that no one would be offended, in front of all including old people and children?
I knew that she could never hide the great love that she had for me and that her genius would find the exact right thing to say and she did.
She said " Jack the mildest thing I would say, holding back as much as I can about what I really think of you is that you are a pain in the neck"
How kind, how loving, how gracious this woman guided by such a love that has never been seem before. How low she was willing to bend to bring me comfort and sanity. The fact that this woman whose every word is golden poetry would be willing to diminish her own shine by referencing the poetry of another. What she spoke when she said that i was a pain in the neck was a reference to what many think of as the greatest poem of all time, that was written by the Spanish mystic St. john of the Cross called "The Dark Night of the Soul" and in it are the words "He wounded my neck with His gentle hands" It is a poem of the ultimate union of the lover with the beloved and so what she was saying is that the mildest thing she could say about me would be alike the most profound and intense words that have ever been said before. Loreena McKennitt does a lovely rendition of that poem although I think she left out some of the words because she didn't understand them. She did make it a lovely song and it can be heard at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUk6b5BEQRI
When I regained my breath I confessed to her
I feel the same about you but even more so
At that point she must have felt the enormity of my love and it was too much for her to bear any longer today because she
then said "Go fuck yourself"
and ended the phone call.
Unable to sustain such an outpouring of love she left me with the words that she thought that I had so merged both the male and female parts of myself that I might be able to do what no one has ever done before until we make contact again.
A great Indian sage was once asked what he did after the Ecstasy and he replied "the laundry" and so like that sage I come to this party knowing that I am not loved here as she loves me nor do i love you all as I love her but it is the stuff of my life and it has meaning for me and since it is my birthday I won't worry about the laundry.
! 
. Both directions... obviously