I saw her first at an art opening two Friday evenings ago, wearing jeans with holes in both knees... big holes. She moved about energetically. At first, I thought she might be with someone. Then, I was involved speaking with a very interesting Texan, who is new in town. Then, she was gone.
The next day, as I was about to enter the Fábrica Aurora to attend their monthly art walk, I just happened to meet the Texan again, as he was getting out of an Uber. Moments later, as he and I were moseying our way along, approaching the fountain, she walked by, briskly and unaccompanied. When I said, "I liked those jeans you were wearing last night," she smiled and laughed while thanking me, but kept moving, energetically, deer-like, across the patio and into the building.
Then, I saw her a week later, the next Saturday, at a very well-attended community Rosh Hashanah lunch. I greeted her there, but she was moving purposefully towards the buffet. She was thin, but not skinny. Her hair was light (either blonde or white), neither long nor short.
I'm sorry that I didn't get her name. Because, the next day, when I wrote making inquiry about her, offering my sparse description, the hostess of the luncheon drew a blank, confessing, "I did not know 60 to 70% of the people at the party," to which I confessed: "Well, really she acted uninterested (unfriendly even, except for her smile), but I thought, maybe she's just hypersensitive, and that's always been my poison."
For seven years, before coming to San Miguel, I dated a violinist whose extreme sensitivity on that instrument brought Yitzchak Pearlman to ecstasy when she was invited to play for him at one of his Manhattan Saturday night soirees. My violinist was exquisitely alert, somewhere on the autistic spectrum. We got along swimmingly, making me think that I must be on the spectrum myself. Having someone else claiming the burden of vigilance was a great relief.
Then, on my latest foray into the romantic realm, I dated a much younger Mexican woman who was also very tightly wound. We saw each other infrequently. Everything was lovely until she committed to our relationship and I made a mis-step (an understandable misunderstanding). Then, her dark side emerged. Skittish, hurt and angry, she tried to forgive me, but the spell broken, could not. We continued communicating for hours at a time, several times a week, for a month, messaging painfully back and forth.
Then, after getting a good look into her tortured version of love in an article of hers that I was about to publish, I suggested that we try going forward as friends (I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid), messaging her:
You wrote in your article, "I understand how exhausting it must be to try to love me," and I am tired. Perhaps we should retreat to a friendship and/or a professional relationship that you can believe in, where you are not suspicious that I am trying to gaslight you or do you harm.
Without missing a beat (she types fast), she replied with the following message and immediately blocked me on WhatsApp:
Do you remember what you told me about my light being projected onto others? It's true. I thought you were an intelligent, interesting person with a light of your own, but now that I've taken a few steps back, I've realized it was just me projecting my light onto you. You don't shine like I thought.
We have no need to retain any links. I never wanted to be romantically involved with you and now I don't want to do so in any sphere. I'm not interested anymore. Neither you nor I will change our minds and this dynamic has already become very tiresome for me.
You don't need to publish my article either.
Well, I thought, at least I am intelligent and interesting enough to provide you with the insight, about reflected light, that you used against me, hoisting me by my own petard. I took it well. I might be emotionally retarded, but I do know that I'm intelligent and interesting. And, as my cousin Rebecca pointed out on hearing about the episode, laughing boisterously as she did, at least she didn't say that I wasn't funny.
Turning another of my own critiques against myself (one that I made regarding political activism), I lament: Just because I can imagine a better world, does not mean that it is this world. In this vein, I have realized that it is easier for me to adjust to the world (my neighbor's over-amplified rancho, for example), then it is to try to adjust the world to my liking. I admit that my ideas of perfection, or even betterment, often make reality (or my relationship with it) worse.
Of course, (with apologies to Freud) just understanding that I am a perfectionist doesn't make my perfectionism go away. But it does offer me the opportunity to step back, take a breath, count to ten, and take a look at my complicating tendencies.
Mexico, experience and age have beaten most of the externally-directed sensitivity out of me. My inwardly-focused sensitivity is another matter. But "focused" is not the right word to describe the unstable ups and downs of my mental-emotional palette, a kaleidoscopic field without the symmetry.
I don't know why it has taken me so long to apply Buddha's principal adage, "Everything changes," to my thoughts and feelings, but I have come (only recently) to question if anything can be built on their shifting ground.
And, after all, that is the stated goal (poor compensation though it be), to give up trying for fixity, for permanence, and come to rest in the consciousness that is observing it all. Yes, that is all fine and good. But then there is the woman with the holes in the knees of her jeans, always scampering off, like a shy deer into the woods.
**************
Dr. David Fialkoff praticed homeopathy and natural medicine as a licensed naturopathic doctor for 25 years. Now he is engaged in healing society: building community and strengthening the local economy by fostering local internet. "Facebook and Google make their money by selling ads next to our content. We can make our own social network and search engine for our own local community, and keep the profits circulating here in San Miguel."
************** *****
Please contribute to Lokkal, SMA's online collective/publicity association:
