Worrying News From Afar

I have just heard via email that the great love of my life has been involved in a car accident. She has minor injuries and concussion but thankfully it seems she is otherwise ok. When I spoke to her on the phone she sounded so vulnerable and it was obvious she is in a lot of pain. I am walking around in circles unable to settle. This sense of helplessness is cruel beyond words.

The Cheesecake Incident

For those of us here Downunder who love an American today was Thanksgiving. And soon tomorrow will be too! In the eight years I have known the great love of my life I have spent only one Thanksgiving with her. One. (And for that matter one Christmas also) When yet another solo Thanksgiving rolls around I invariably revisit that day I spent with her and in particular I love to revisit the cheesecake incident. Here below is my journal note from Thanksgiving 2005.

"It was Thanksgiving here this last Thursday. This being the very first I have ever experienced I diligently plotted and planned for days. I scoured the net for tips and, two days before, disappeared into the kitchen posting "Do Not Disturb" signs all over. Nothing about the recipes I was tackling made too much sense to me. There were seemingly discordant flavour combinations and vegetables with odd names and unexpected flesh colour. And there were sacred old family recipes which I rapidly learnt one must never ever ever tamper with! My whispered protestation about how the stuffing recipe seemed "just a little bland" and my private fears about its texture went unnoticed. The most this novice from Downunder managed to get away with was to slip a lttle pumpkin in the cheesecake!

Ahh and what a cheesecake it was!!! Mouthwatering though I do admit it caused a few anxious moments. When it came out of the oven it looked superb but the settling process was alarming. I suppose the sight of the two of us nervously huddled over that cheesecake watching it slowly crack wide open must have been rather amusing. Cheesecakes, I discovered that night, do not respond well to pleading. Or begging. Or shrieks of horror.

In the end I filled the enormous crack with roughly grated chocolate and I do not believe anyone was any the wiser. Since this was the first cheesecake I have ever made, and of course my first ever Thanksgiving, I was hanging out for compliments and our friends from New York and Chicago did not let me down. Both assured me it was delicious. Since neither of these good people are burdened by English sensibilities and since I would expect them to both know their cheesecakes (better than a novice from Downunder) I felt I could depend on their honesty! "

Hot Tea and Cool Jazz

The Oamaru Victorian fete was held last weekend and thankfully my friends urged me to go with them. The era has always conjured up images of fusty and overstuffed rooms in museums which for me hold no hint of life or passion. But on Sunday the period came to life for me and reconnected me firmly with my roots, so much so that next year I plan to join others at this weekend of heritage festivities in full period costume! The fete was set in a once derelict warehousing area that has been restored to provide the perfect Dickensian street setting for this event. The day buzzed with an irrepressible energy which I must confess I became totally caught up in. My reaction to the pipe smoking contest was a great surprise to me. For a while watching the row of men sitting quietly smoking pipes at a long table felt a little like watching paint dry but somewhere along the way I managed to forget myself and the era of sensory overload in which I live and actually found myself excited by this slow paced and simple old time event! (By the way this contest was won by a woman in it's first year. Perhaps one day the great love of my life will be here in New Zealand to enter it. I do adore the smell of her pipe tobacco!)

(Photo By Helen)

Gratitude

Being a left-brainer the great love of my life likes to make lists. Long weighty pragmatic serious work-related lists of the kind that lead to deep frown lines on the forehead. Now and then one of her lists is accompanied by hoots of laughter. Those kinds of lists are usually very long also and begin with the words "Helen's To Do List". Then there are the lists she likes the least. The feelings lists. The latter, though written by her, are generally elicited by me. (No surprise there) I always marvel though at the ease with which she produces these and how lengthy they are!

My lists are almost always feelings lists and uppermost amongst those is my "gratitude list". Some entries on that list change day to day but some, such as friendship, are always there. It is impossible for me to imagine living here alone in New Zealand without the support of friends. Because of them there are the free range hens eggs, the freshly picked rhubarb and the delicious roast lamb with homemade mint sauce on a Sunday night. The long walks on the wild Otago beaches discussing Norman Mailer and the various joys and perils of flying. There are the scrabble games and the walks on the shores of the breathtaking Central Otago lakes. The full-bodied wine and the vibrant conversation shared at dusk amidst world-renowned South Island scenery, barely a stone's throw from Lord of the Rings country. My friends are good to me. They are people of substance and well deserving of their place on my gratitude list!

My Prayer

I will not ever view the marginalisation of same-sex love to the fringes of our society as a reflection on the calibre or worthiness of my love. It is indicative rather of a fear that exists somewhere else outside of me and outside of my relationship. I forgive those who, in suffering this degree of fear, attempt to visit it upon me. I give myself full permission to celebrate my love no matter how others may view it or pass judgement upon it or write laws that discriminate against it. I pray for eventual enlightenment in the hearts and minds of those people.

For As Long As It Takes

Living in this long distance bi-national relationship could very easily see us wishing large chunks of our lives away. There is no doubt that the times we spend together are lived to the fullest since we barely leave each others' sides for a minute but what of the long periods of time we are forced to spend apart? I know many people will view this lifestyle as one of deprivation but I do my best to view it differently. There are days of course when the pain closes in on me but on a good day there IS joy to be found in this unconventional lifestyle. It is all a matter of how one views it.
The challenge I set myself when I am alone here is to seek out the face of my love in the world around me. I may find her in an unfolding flower or the laughter of a stranger. She may be there in the faint aroma of tobacco in my pumpkin & paprika relish, or in the windfalls that lie beneath my neighbour's apple tree. It is more than mere association and not just that these things act as memory prompts, though they do of course. There is something about a love as expansive and deep as this that enables it to redefine itself and still survive.
I doubt that the makers of discriminatory laws will ever grasp this fact. That true love will not cower. Nor will it lash out in anger. It will simply endure. For as long as it takes.

Thoughts & Love From Afar

My American partner's immediate family, who include amongst their numbers conservative fundamentalist Christians, have embraced us both as a same-sex couple with warmth and love.

Tonight my thoughts and love are with one member of that family who is facing a very serious health challenge. I long to return to America to stand beside my partner as she struggles to come to terms with this situation. I dare not fly back so soon after leaving because I could well be turned away at the border; a situation that would see me banned from re-entry for some years.

Over the years I have learnt that I must find a resting place for the complex emotions I feel when I reluctantly leave my American partner in New York. Sometimes that place is a piece of writing and sometimes it is visual, as in this scrapbook page I created in 2003. Activities such as this enable me to move past the grief I feel and reconnect with my joy for the duration of our time apart.

Unrequited Desire

I hope you will not dispute, dear reader, that I AM making an earnest effort to settle back into my solitary life here in New Zealand. I have unpacked my suitcase finally, albeit a few too many weeks after my departure from New York, and I have arranged my day-to-day life so that I see her photographs and wear her clothes and smell her Cartier and hear her voice on the phone at least once a day. I have hauled out the "big book of us" which keeps getting bigger by the year and begun to add the most recent installment "Summer of 2007". I listen often to "Beauty & the Beast" and the various other music, romantic and otherwise, which she recorded for me on my iPod. Yes I truly am trying!

BUT there are the inevitable hiccups. One is shown above. This is my new car. The great love of my life bought it for me yesterday. There is only one problem. It is ten thousand miles away! Now not only do I have to hunger endlessly for that elusive tactile connection with her. Now I must hunger for same with this sexy little wagon! The jury is out, currently, on how long I will be able to endure this unrequited dual desire!

The power of an unbroken circle

It occurred to me today that, over the last several years of living in this predominantly long distance bi-national relationship, we must have learned many things. That she and I are still so devoted to each other and that we wear identical gold rings indicates that yes, that has to be the case. Just today, during our phone call, she mentioned the comment a friend of ours made to her when she showed signs of buckling under the strain of a crisis that has befallen her family ~ "Remember that ring on your finger". There have been many many times when a glance at that beautiful ring is enough to repel the onset of emptiness and summon forth the courage to carry on in the face of this discriminatory situation. Most couples who are committed to each other wear a ring but ours must encircle not only our fingers but the entire globe!

This Sweet Aloneness

(Written to accompany the link "My New Zealand Home")
There are times when the city of Dunedin and its surrounding landscape seems such an appropriate place to feel lonely. No matter where I am or who I walk amongst here there is always the nearness of that breathtaking landscape where slender fingers of rock clutch desperately at the receding tide. Was this place not formed in the very image of my loneliness itself!

As I walk the streets of this New Zealand city I am aware that here and there on high an aging clock face gazes down at me, reminding me that time will not wait too long for me to mourn. Its chimes break wide open my memories of time with her in New York and demand that now I must be where I am. BE WHERE I AM. Here. Now! And when the clocktowers are not mocking my futile attempts at resisting this place I abruptly find myself in, and the chimes not shattering daydreams, then perhaps it is the faintest strain of a lone piper somewhere in the distance that reminds me that this state of aloneness is not without its blessed life-giving sweetness.

Longing

My dearest Magnolia. Your loveliness is undisputed but I simply cannot fathom your presence. It is not you whom I wish to find lying here before me. Just a short while ago the powerful Lady Winter promised me a calling in my house in the faraway American woods. Oh I hope she will understand why I could not wait long enough for her coming.

Please Forgive Me ...

my elongated silence. To be sure, the air here in New Zealand chatters irrepressibly with the voices of springtime and has barely noticed I do not speak.

Tomorrow I Must Leave

(Please note: this post was written some weeks ago but not published then as I could not bear to be here amongst my writings)

Summer in upstate New York with the great love of my life has been a scrumptious tactile time marked by brief thoughts of activism and far longer periods of boundless and irrepressible joy. Oh yes it was a tactile time, when ALL of one's senses could explore the depths and heights of love. A time when nature and culinary delights (and even my written words) have retreated into the shadows and given me full rein to concentrate on the light in her eyes and the touch of her breath on my skin in the early morning. For a brief time I have been free to marvel at the form and warmth of her hands and the strength of her shoulders in motion. Aloneness, my ever-present companion in New Zealand, knew it must step back and remain in the shadows for a while. But it was always there. That soft drumbeat of solitude. That place that we both knew from bitter experience that we must keep burning quietly in the far reaches of our individual souls. For early autumn has begun to string the coloured lanterns from the trees. Today Nature is preparing my farewell party. Tomorrow I must leave America.

Of Butterflies and Buses

At one level I do not see too much difference between waiting for one’s basic human rights to be granted and waiting for a bus. Both are made up of everyday moments which are no less precious for the fact that they must be lived in a state of limbo. Of course thankfully people are not required to wait for a bus for eight years (the length of time my American same-sex partner and I have been waiting for the right to live together in America as a bi-national couple) and if they were most of course would simply walk away from the bus stop and seek other means of transport to their destination. Or perhaps another destination.
There might be some however who, knowing only this bus could take them where they wanted to go, would defiantly stay the course and perhaps to begin with they would march in circles around the bus-stop waving banners that protested loudly their right to ride that particular bus to that particular place. Maybe some would stand upon the seat in the bus-stop and loudly address passers by , urging them to see the injustice they were facing.
In time these defiant ones, having stayed at the bus stop secure in the knowledge that one day their bus would come, might find that they were becoming very tired from walking in circles carrying flags and banners for years and that their voices were hoarse from crying out for their rights to a public who seemed barely to notice. Around that time they might begin to notice the intense colour of the blades of grass that pushed their way up from between cracks in the pavement. They may catch sight of the grace with which a butterfly alighted upon the bus-stop railing. They may notice that such seemingly irrelevant everyday moments were beginning to sustain and strengthen their resolve to hold on. The focus from that moment on might shift to ensuring that when their bus finally arrived (as they knew it would) they were not enraged, embittered or worn down by the struggle but so vital and beautiful of soul that they could truly relish and give thanks for, that long awaited ride!

The Great Love Of My Life & Me

Gay Pride New York City 2001

Freedom

Following September 11th 2001 I frequently heard the comment from prominent Americans "They (the perpetrators of this horror) want to hurt us because we are free!"

Freedom is relative of course and many in the world might rightly consider my American partner free. But when I turn to wave to her one last time at the airport as I reluctantly leave America and I see her tear-stained face nothing will convince me that she is free!

Love is All I Know in New York City

Below is an excerpt from my journal recorded in the days that followed 9-11-2001

"There is no place to hide from this pain. From here in New Zealand I watch televised images of New Yorkers pleading for news of lost loved ones. How is it possible to respond to such horror? I search desperately for something to hold firm to and find it there in a sea of tiny flickering candles resting in hands cupped in gentle repose. How else can any of us hope to repel this unseen enemy than with the greatest weapon of all. Love.

Love is all I know in New York city.

Just weeks before horror ripped through this vibrant city I flew home to New Zealand from New York. As I left this city of tall slender spires that beamed with a burnished pride before the morning sunlight the ache of separation forced on us as a same-sex couple by American immigration law weighted me down into my seat and enveloped my heart in a fog of grief. A year earlier I had met for the first time the handsome and eccentric New Yorker who was to change the shape of my future irrevocably. This woman swept me up into an unchoreographed dance that traversed the depths and heights of New York city, acquainting me intimately with a face of this metropolis that tourists never see. And with romance New York style!

We had snowball fights late at night as we stepped out to buy coffee icecream, our delighted laughter echoing through the streets and drawing knowing smiles of approval from onlookers. New Yorkers, it seemed to me, love a lover. We embraced freely on pavements rendered silent by a delicate flurry of snowflakes that melted as they settled on the warmth of our lips. She presented me proudly with a huge bouquet of fresh (if somewhat bedraggled!) flowers which she had found atop the piles of garbage that lined the city streets that night and proclaimed “Don’t say I never give you flowers!!!“ We ate black bean ice cream at 3am as we drove from Chinatown to the caverns of Wall Street and she proudly introduced me to her old stamping ground ... the area that now lies in smouldering ruins. We walked the pavements of this metropolis as if they were our playground. We made it ours as New York has, through the decades, implored all lovers to do.

Months later, when eventually we emerged from the chrysalis that is new love, we began to become aware of an immoveable wall that existed beween us; American immigration law. Together again briefly in summer we defiantly held aloft the flags of our dual nations as we marched 65 blocks through Manhattan in the Gay Pride march, beneath the bright yellow banner imprinted with the words "Stop deporting our partners!".

Today I sit here alone in New Zealand, the phone in my hand. Far away in New York city she sleeps with her phone next to her on the pillow. The only comfort I am free to offer her is to listen to the sounds of her sleeping. I am prevented from returning to her by that immoveable wall and like all New Yorkers she is now locked in a daily battle against fear. The threat of further terrorist attacks looms ever larger. But behind that battle which she shares with so many others is a battle which she fights alone. A battle for that most basic of human rights; the right to stand beside the one you love at a time of immense collective grief. I am reduced to watching CNN from ten thousand miles away, desperately hoping for even the briefest glimpse of her face amongst the crowds.

Neither of us knows when I will be able to return to her. The likelihood of America’s borders now becoming even more difficult to penetrate looms ever larger, even for those such as myself, who come bearing only love. Yet we are aware too that we have much to be thankful for. Ours is but one story and New York is today the city of thousands of stories of lovers cruelly torn apart. As a couple who abandoned themselves to the love story that is New York city we cry for that scarred cityscape where our own joyful laughter will forever linger. And we cry desperately for those couples whose separation will span not just months, as ours does, but fully into eternity. "

Katherine

“The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody's fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind.”

Katherine Mansfield