2022 Delivery 1, January 2022

The Opening:

I was young; I was anxious; I was bound to an archaic concept of me.

She smoothed my mind and body with her sunny day thoughts and yoga softened hands.

I agreed to her assumptions and her understated demands.

That first summer we gloried in the eagerness of our interconnected bodies. Each morning we smothered each other in kisses that lingered after the passion had moved in the way it must. As our climaxes led us into stillness and soft murmurings we settled down with our pre-breakfast habit of figs and rooibois tea. We sipped the tea from hand-painted china cups. We chose the figs from the hand-blown glass bowl that always stood on the bedside table. We lay propped on a dozen bountiful cushions on our big round mahogany bed. We sighed in contentment as yearnings became satiated and bodies became still.

We marvelled as rays of fresh sunlight entered our bedroom window from over the bay. That light reflected from our crystals and dream catchers and from our eyes as we gazed lovingly into each others’ souls. We knew ourselves as privileged in our balconied and engardened beachside cottage.

And yet we took that privilege for granted, as our due, through our affirmative mind-states, and we congratulated each other unceasingly on the manifestations of abundance we continued to achieve from our lithe and positive young minds.

 

In the middle of those hot summer days, after she had gone to her job as a personal assistant in the city, as I sat alone at my desk in the blind-shaded front room, and tended to my freelance architectural design work, I often was visited by the long familiar pain and the longing in my heart for something I could not quite discern. I sometimes told her of these negative emotional events in the evenings as we ate our tempura and organic green salad, and we both agreed that with willpower and intent I could turn those feelings around to the light. She also seemed to have her black times when her moodiness and silences darkened the cottage and I tread softly so as not to disturb.

Together we denied the possibility that life could go in any other direction than how we planned. We spoke softly sometimes of the babies that would come to us at the right time. We did not take active steps to bring this about. We allowed our bodies to merge and we both deeply believed the souls who had already decided to come to us for caring in their preparation for a new lifetime of spiritual education on the material plane, would arrive at the moment of their own choosing. We felt snug with the investments that our families had set up for us on our marriage. We knew we would need to work in our professions for some time yet but that whatever happened some monthly income would accrue to us for the rest of our natural lives. We agreed it good to tithe a small sum regularly to the local charities as a mark of our humble duty and in recognition of compassion to the less fortunate.

We kicked sand along the beach as we walked in the cool evenings and sometimes we would laugh and proclaim “The world is our Oyster and a damn yummy one it be!” It was our little personal coupledom mantra, our mission statement for the life being created for us by our deeper intent as we moved resonantly into our love.

My anxiety and depression seemed to have faded from the constant presence it used to be. The regular brief visits of that darkness as I sat alone at my work desk just confirmed to me that I needed more people in my life. From the time I had met Aleena the year before, my emotional state had improved and there was no need to assume this was caused by anything than the finding of the love and companionship of my soul mate. Surely the remnants of lonely darkness would loosen away also as I began to socialise with the small circle of friends we were cultivating. We determined to attend a dinner party at least once every weekend and in between to have a few friends over for a nice cosy evening of games and white wine. I began applying for full time positions in architecture companies even though for the income there was really no need. People around me would perk up my slightly gloomy days, I believed. This perhaps was an ancient concept of me.

The Beginnings Of Intimacy:

Before the day Aleena had first invited me to her bed in her little apartment I had very little positive experience of sex and intimacy. Those arts had eluded me for the decade or so since I left school. A small number of young women had succumbed to my charms but a few weeks would go by and somehow they stopped returning my messages and my shyness prevented …