“Things I Would Like to Do with You” is now available! It’s eco and lovely. Get your copy here. 

Five Things I would or would not like to do with you in Time.

“We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill,
going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.” ~ Arthur Golden

You are out there and I am out here and this is not the time. But the time may come to pass: that is how time works. The only question that matters, now, then, is whether our hearts have connected, and can learn to breathe together.

If you had a spare hour, I would not want to see you. I would want you to take a break from your path and do something lovely for yourself. A massage, or a swim, or fun with friends…whatever you have not done for yourself that you are thirsty for.  Maitri. Space is love and I give that which can not be given to but can only be taken from you. And you need it: as you have said it provides ground for good things to come.

If you had a day, I would fly anywhere in the country to see you, if only for an hour, and we could drink warm hot brown coffee and go for a walk and I would like to cry at the thought of seeing you and holding your hand, sitting on a bench, looking into the street together, seeing your profile from the other side. Sighs are healthy, for they mix watery emotion with space and humour.

If you had a week, I would like to meet you somewhere–on your road, or in my hometown. We could dinner and go to a show and to a bar and play pool and laugh at each other and drink local beer and stay separately or together. I would rent something where we could climb to the roof. We could bicycle and go to a used bookstore and we could cuddle, and read outloud, if that is not too much. If that is still too much, we could just walk in the park. If that is too much, we could just go to a party, and be loud and fun and barely make eye contact, but warm one another in each other’s fires. If that is too much, we could just be naked, and sweat, and learn one another’s bodies and movements, like two new surfers learning to respect the water.

If that’s too much, we can forget one another, mostly, as we have our other lovers.

If you had two weeks, we could go on a little break, together, to a romantic retreat—Montana, or Big Sur, or Santa Fe—with nothing but space, big skies, warm waters, nothing to do but be.

If you had three weeks, however, we should go to Greece. White walls, blue walls, white sky, white sea, blue sea, blue skies. Your eyes. Your hair. Your bikini, my shorts, four tanned and sandy bare feet. What are the colors there? Blue, bright blue, pale blue, bluegreen, grayblue, bright pink flowers and sun, light pink and white tablecloth, white, white, white…I want to spend some time on the sea and in the islands. A painted lacquered wooden boat, your red dress. Impossibly blue sky and water. See-through white curtains in a hot breeze.

But if you had four weeks, and you were ready, which you are not, we should just be simple, together, in my hometown, and live life, and not do anything but hike, and drink coffee, and work, and laugh with my dog, and eat good food with many good friends, or alone, and climbrun together up along the creek into the mountains. We could text and make appointments with one another “what are you doing later?” and see each other when convenient. Like adults, like normal life, and see.

And that would be the best—to live everyday life with you. For I do not know you and though I seem dreamy and open, just beneath that layer I am waiting, my hope balanced with prajna. Three layers down, I am rational: that is where my hesitation and patience lies. But I am not afraid of exploring and finding out what lies over the edge of the flat earth, for it is not flat.

I am not afraid of anything but filling your space. You need and deserve that and I would not like to be a part of anything other than love in your life,

And as you and I both know, in our bones, in our blood, in our mindstream, in our calm moments, love is made up of space just as the earth is made up of water.

And my love includes laughter. The woodfire requires wood and oxygen, both. And I love to cut wood.

Get your copy of Things I would like to do with You.

Read the first, Things I would like to do with you in the Woods, first.

Read the second, Things I would like to do with you this Evening, second.

Read the third, Things I would like to Remember about our day in Vermont, here.

Read the fifth, Things I would like to do with you before I lose you, here.