Love²

We were/are Soul Mates! In ancient Greece it was told by Aristophanes in Platos symposium that every person was once a being containing 2 people in one body. A round fat body that was complete and spherical. We were prehuman humptey dumpties with bodies composed of 2 hearts, 2 minds, 4 arms, 4 legs, 1 large head but 2 faces. We could see, grasp and move in all directions with mind power². With our 360° vision and body it's easy to imagine that from our vantage we experienced the world as if we were the center of the universe. We were a terribly powerful beast of body and mind but a cocky center of the universe beast that greatly angered the gods. A butt hurt Zeus split us all in half, (with dental floss apparently) separating us into 2 individual people. It was done to humble our humpteyness, splitting us like an egg to bring us down a notch. Giving us 180° vision and ½ body. (Sadly, despite this many of us still believe that we are the center of the universe.) Afterward in life so the story goes you find yourself a half with an insatiable longing to find your other. This other half being the love of your life, your soulmate. like some perfectly squared math equation. Love².



It's a beautiful parable. It is a fable of the same kitchey fairy tale flavor one can imagine hearing often in the microphone at one of those Mormon Wedding Reception Halls in Sandy that smells and vibes more like a funeral home. It's the Freebird of wedding speech tales. The ideas that stem back to 1/2 souls and the shaping of the world around them put this wrongheaded idea of love as a completing make out session of puzzle pieces into practice.

I may be an overly romantic hyper-individualist but I want to go to toe with this idea of love². I see it as an idea that muddies the waters of a shallow puddle to make it seem deep (oooh Nietzsche-poo) or drops a roophie into the cocktail of love. I know from the outset that being for all accounts a bitter ultra-single young anger-pot of a man that in even considering love², I have to avoid becoming the outside clueless observer who mimics an overly analytical solitary lesbian feminist with teen wolf body hair, dessecting concepts of Male attraction with statistics and math equations. I also know this is totally going to jive like a sermon or lecture in a "Im telling you like it is" tone but consider that I am merely TELLING myself and sharing that experience with yall, whose eyes remember choose what they read. Like a throw down of self with a studio audience.

Don't get me wrong I have a strong personal sense of what love is and well was. That past tense knowledge being really kind of the key twist to it all. Sometimes you do not understand something until it breaks apart. Imagine the magic of a clock radio as revealed after being smashed to pieces. A myriad of components lay strewn about on the floor that shed new light on its function and significance once hidden in it's polished completeness. Anyway, I just want to run the pieces of the idea with a bit of a Mormon twist through the perspective press of my own philosophy that churns in a busy chamber behind my eyeballs. Just some Philosophy with a subjective but also human face to look at something often thought about but too often skipped over and rarely dissected with inquiry. One of the beauties we have in Life with a capital L as I see it, is seeking simple awareness. Avoiding deep thoughts into love is like carpeting a wood floor covered in marbles without thinking about the consequences. So, instead we can blow up the idea of love like myth busters with a little bit of explosive arm chair pondering pointed toward simple awareness seeking. Avoiding the unconscious rationalizing in this case that is the algebra that forms our lovers squared math equation.

"You complete me!" "You are the Balki to my Cowwsin Larry!" "We are PERFECT Strangers." "I live for you, and without you I would now be nothing." To imagine believing this, in a way seems like only a longing to become nothing. I know that this cliche idea of love has seeped into the semiconscious vernacular of the masses and often sentiments like this are just grazed over with the same unconscious knee jerking of thought that many relationships are formed by in the first place. An unconscious knee jerk that in a way is like when you awake to yourself jerking IT in your sleep and you've just missed the climax. But what does a cliche sentiment like this even mean? and worse in practice? What does an idea of a relationship like this mean for the individual? How does the idea of love usually play out in the average marriage? Is love bonded eternally by this magic notion of love² or more often is it by a mortgage or the immense cost of a divorce attorney? I dont want to talk about the on the surface nitty gritty material details we all observe in Siamese twin lovers² . Let's think about this in surreal terms.

I want to slap around the idea, not the face value. The messy idea of love² something we all know and which the masses seem to worship. (The mob masses seem to always love ideas of any irrational perfection that allows them to cop out on their responsibilities to actively better their situations.Cop outs like attributing Godlike divinely gifted Black Presidents, or Brad Pitt's abs as carved of God's own turgid ass with a holy melonballer. All of which naturally endowed by some kind of heavenly Magic) Does someone in such a soul completing union somehow dive into the ribcage of their lover and submerge themselves into the soul waters of the other's being? what a terrible way to drown your meta-individual self while at the same time weighing down the snuggles fabric softened fluffiness of your soul and that of the other who you supposedly love. One could go on about the lame-ocity of this love² concept for pages and pages but countless pages have already been written on the subject from Plato to De Beauvoir. Where I want to take this love² is to see how it works in combination with another picardfacepalm.jpg vision of Love... the Mormon Temple Marriage.

*PREFACE* Now, I know from the outset that many have countless arguments and defenses of the "wonderful union" of a love glued and squared away. Well this isnt really some attempt at a debate. This isnt even an attempt at a constructive argument. This is at best some humorous perspective sharing on fluffy theology and notions of love and it's supposed bonding purpose. But really this is merely a bitter 20 something ex-mo sitting on a park bench with a tall boy(beer) rolling perspective presses in his mind on the idea of love². Maybe All for the purposes of textainment and reaffirming bitterness. I am also not writing this to change any minds or inflict existential crisis on the single person looking for love² or someone trapped in it's clutches. It's for me and perhaps the fence sitting more cynical lover of love or bitter ex-mo who, if they have all their little existential ducks in row would toss out this love² notion outright. Anyhoo, let's face it if you are a 20 something living on planet Utah, talking about the "never-ending" bond of love and marriage is merely talking about the big shitting white elephant of relationships in the small room of Utah. I'm not trying to smash anyone's beautiful image of neverending love or Mormon sentiments of it. I would never try to deflate the ideas of yourself, love or your theology that you shine on(eyes closed) through life with. That's like taking the needle out of the vien of the Junkie and that would just be darn cruel. */ PREFACE*

Now I may have over prefaced this but hey when you grab an elephant by the tail in a small room you have to be prepared.

RIGHT! So this may jive like a hard tossing of word salad liken to a COBB salad of fictional Non Fiction, or basically senseless text-tainment and like I said for reaffirming bitterness. I am going to throw in a personal angle, taking a turn on subjective anecdote ave with the only case study I have on the Mormon marriage. That being the beautiful work of Sadism I like to call my Parent's marriage.

I'm not bashing relationships or marriages altogether rather just saying in passing that it is a little bit of ugly faith to think of love in such bonded completing terms. Maybe getting into ideas that most people kind of just skip over out of I dont know convenience? Ignorance? Laziness? Complacency? (Nah to big a word for the unconscious). Ideas like the role of the individual in a relationship and how lethal weapon 4 this concept can seem. I also want to elaborate on how this idea of love² only gets worse when you throw in a disgusting, antiquated, and chauvinistic religious dogma into the thickening molton mold of an exploded caulking gun type of messy bond.



I want to tell a brief tale of the Mormon concept of soul mates(It's far less poetic and 10x fold more creepy then Zeus splitting 4 legged human humptey dumpteys like egg beaters). For a Mormon you SEAL(their word) the deal so to speak in the Temple through marriage with your eternal souls sealed as one for now and into eternity. You are nothing if you are not sealed into this union. In fact for a woman to even gain entry into level 7 (planet making) heaven it can only be through an eternal sealing through your marriage to a capital M Man. (THAT'S THE RULEz I DIDNT WRITE EM says the prophet) The Man in level 7 heaven will also get many other wives with which to populate his own planet with. (NOTE:My planet would consist of hedgehogs who mate with possums and consume the LSD that flows in the rivers and streams) Anyway, that's the short of it and so from the beginning they have this love² on Meth idea. CUTE isn't it? It demands from the outset the idea of perfection sealed bonded terms for all time and eternity. The ugly faith in this conception can be viewed in the unique Utah statistics in areas like domestic abuse, Prozac consumption and murder suicide cases. So let's think about this from the woman's perspective. She essentially only exists to be a part of Man that in the eternal heaven will mean an even smaller divided fraction of that portion of man. SWEET!

Imagine for a minute the gowned wife as she takes the plunge and submerges her existence into the man and become one. Afterward they find that their being is drowning in the dark shallow cavity of the big macho male's chest filled with dogmatic BBQ sauce and chauvinistic Man-musk. The room of the man's chest isn't the dream home they'd thought they share forever but more like a dank basement apartment with no door and stolen construction materials serving as makeshift furniture. With many more spirit wives soon to join you in the drowning later on of course. Shall we try to create a psychological profile of a Mormon woman in this state? I think selfishly for our own sanity's sake we best not but with that in mind, is it any wonder that Mormon trophy baby makers(in life and death) consume more Anti-Depressants per capita then Dick Cheney's neighbors? Nietzsche's Zarathustra says (to highlight irony) man's key to happiness is "I will" and for a woman today it is "He will" repeat "He will." This may be the only point the Mormons would agree on with Nietzsche's fictional character and thank god there are heavy doses of narcotics for the Sistas of the ward to back up this insane notion of subclass happiness.

A Mormon woman is drowning in a mess of a man's chest, sentenced to an eternity of marginality and subclass faux-happiness. Not to mention the Mormon-man whose chest they inhabit is hopped up consciously or subconsciously on a sense of supreme and divinely sanctioned superiority. THINK of Glen Beck(Mormon!) on his knees praying for ratings. So what happens when this atrocious assbackwards idea of marriage falls flat on it's face and evaporates? Not even considering the unbelievable amounts of pain and effort it takes(for a Sista) to overcome the endless amounts of road blocks enforced by church doctrines to prevent such an exit from the superglue'd Mormon marriage. Eventually, the marriage hits terminal velocity and the relationship burns up as someone cuts the squared love equation with a square root.

Imagine the freed now ex-wife exiting the man's chest. She is still dripping in the stink and sticky mess of their ex-man's spirit sauce and the foul dogma dank that they once dove so willing into. They are probably carrying 5 to 6 kids(remember their meaning for being) and spare baggage, have no professional work experience other than the roles of heffer cow or domestic slave. Very generally and stereo typingly(word?) speaking they do not have the slightest idea how to function without a PRIESTHOOD holder at the wheel of their life. I am now taking a right turn on "Subjective Anecdote Ave."



I am taking this view after being an on-board witness to the plane crash of my parents Mormon Flight 666 disaster of a marriage. Among the fiery wreckage there sat 7 kids under 11 and one sticky Mom, a tiny bubbly blonde woman whose radiating energy and happy breathes could fill balloons that could float into space. It was on the curb with my family as this jaded, uneasy, jiggling mess of mormon jello waiting for life to pick us back up that I realized my parents, this commanding and directing force in my life may actually be as completely lost, alone and as scared shitless about life as I was. I did not think that with any type of scorn or even pity just a sort of charged sadness. My poor little Mother a 5 Ft nothing, 90 lbs spitfire covered in the sticky love² mess from a 6'2 300 lbs Mike Meyers as Fat Bastard as well as a dogma fat on hypocrisy. There is something about the Mormon religion that takes a young soul as fiery as it may be on it's own and gives it a paddle ball on a string game of existence to play with supposedly for all time and eternity. Eventually the very thin string breaks and standing there is this adult soul filled with fire but no direction and no idea of what to do with itself.

So, I sat there among my mormon herd of siblings looking at my mother and in the darkness of her over sized pupils, I could see the image of her little soul with a broken paddle ball and a look like she was holding a flood of tears back with her lower eyelids like pursed floodgates. The eyelids weighed down and fluttering like a moth in your bedside water cup, an act of trying to maintain composer. I imagined what her view of the world would look like through the "film strip off the tracks" watery chaotic projector of her sight at that moment. A moment like when you turn to your Mom after watching Bambi's Mom get shot and you realize she would someday die too whether by a hunter, cancer or city bus. The hardest part of this realization being that she did not have many reassuring words to say about it. You parental reflects chaos like no circus mirror ever could.

So the surreal scene you can imagine, is my family minus one insane Fuckwad of dad was left in this deep sticky mess with a Mom at the helm who was busy trying to put the pieces of the broken clock radio of life back together. My Mom's way of getting rid of the musky sticky BBQ mess of my father was through wiping it off on a bunch of Ghey former BYU theatre majors who SURPRISINGLY were now single AND still faithful, after having a terrible mess of a marriage themselves. (Conflicted gay former RMs trainwrecking through marriages like a high jacked bus in an Urban center? "I KNOW THIS MUSIC" says the Utah native.) So fittingly my Mom went to wiping the sticky mess of the mochoness of her last marriage on effeminate Mormon men who actually liked their sex....*cough* a bit sticky. However, her soul was playing with the paddle ball again just pretending that it wasnt broken. In the act of this wiping my Mom and my family actually dodged another clusterfuck marriage plane crash. One of the BYU theater studs(Fittingly named Dean) she was dating(and engaged to) we found out was oh no GAY?!? This revelation came from a former wife of said stud who informed my naive(but cute) Mommy that she had in fact been dating a "Woman spirit from heaven who must of fallen into a man's body and loved the COCK." After this experience she avoided dating the effeminate "struggling" Mormon BYU theater majors.

She eventually settled luckily in a pretty on-the-surface happy Mormon marriage to my step dad, a beautiful Ned Flanders type with a softer voice and a Mormon seminary teaching job to boot. God bless their bonded submerged paddle balling souls. Getting back to love², fittingly my step Dad was a widower and a Mormon seminary teacher and by that I mean only that they were two 1/2 souls playing with broken paddle balls when they met, looking for each other so they could become whole...again. Another additional tid bit to that info is that as my new step daddy was a widower, my Mom theologically thinking from the beginning will only get 1/2 of 1/2 of my step Dad for their love equation. The division she has to accept in order to feel "complete" in love is like some warped infinitesimal that divides and divides as new wives come on and her purpose diminishes exponentially. And what of my step Dad's former wife chilling up at level 6 heaven waiting to level up? well of course she get's no choice in the matter. (Do you think there is some type of lobby on level 6 heaven where Husbands can introduce their wives to each other before they take the plunge into their level 7 planet making?)

On a side note despite going through the terrible pain and even falling in love with one of these "Fallen Angels" gay MOs, my Mom still stands strong against gay marriage and considers homosexuality a choice and abominable sin. So in this line of thinking her belief wishes the gay men of the faith to be condemned with their future eyes melted in mascara mormon wives to divorce after divorce. Condemning homosexuality and subjecting both parties to a failed marriage after say a wife walks in on her fabulous husband boning his male boss on his desk at work or after seeing him on the KSL nighttime news after being picked up "cruising" around Fairmount Park behind the 24 hour fitness in Sugarhouse. But we've again run off course here down a back alley. Let's get back to love².

So in a smug, asshole-esk / tongue and cheek style, I'm questioning the idea of the Mormon marriage outright on principle. It's harsh perhaps but with the idea of love on principle I do not run around like a football fan painted with love's colors on my face with some type of misplaced hubris for "the game" (that is any relationship whether a night or decade) or "team" that will carry me into overly romantic notions about it's outcome, meaning and purpose. There is no "I" in team but there is an "I" in relationship and in Marriage. To think otherwise is just a terrible and disingenuous way to fuck yourself and others over. All that said However, I do not cut the magic away from the fruit of love. To do so would be to peel an orange tossing the juicy fruit and going only after the peel. You have to leave and enjoy a level magic, beauty and art in all things, the point is to not get lost in it and see things in true technicolor vision.

So in concluding this obscenely overly epic novella/rant let's ponder if there is a better way to think about love? What does this ultra single anger-pot think about love? For this let's slide down a sentimental hill on a metaphorical sled to the finish.



Maybe we can take a square root surgical operation of common sense to love² and well since I use analogy like oxygen in any and all things expression I will use another. From my foray into love I would say it's safer as in more realistic to analogize and compose Love between two people as a force of gravity not split superhumans. Call it Lovity. Any thoughtful person in a relationship can acknowledge that is is a sensitive balancing of 2 people involved in a complex power play of wills. Rather then the bonded playdough or completing idea of two long lost halves coming together perhaps we can view or seek out the idea of love as do independent bodies in motion that come together in a vacuum of space. Think about planet you and say planet me in a dancing orbit not the final glueing of the last two pieces of humptey dumpty. Thinking about independent bodies of equal mass and equal significance coming together.

In space these two orbs attract each other forming an illusory yet physical bond within the force and limits of lovity. A bond that transcends surface or on sight definition, some real and meaningful magic. They do not merge, they are not two long lost bodies now joining together, completing each other. They are not lost halves floating through the universe searching tirelessly for each other. In fact their individual movement is based more on their own self-searching. In my experience if you look to be "completed" by another you will never be complete. You will find that in searching for a completing match that you are opening yourself up to be less whole than you ever would of been on your own. Attraction in lovity is now quite to the contrary of love², attraction is now based on their individual searching and drive that has found oneness in spherical wholeness within themselves. A conscious complete planet despite their self achieved wholeness will be aware of the fact that they are but a spec in an infinite swirling of bajillions of orbs. Their connection with one another not divinely magical but an outcome from a myriad of forces and happenstances based on realities of their existence and efforts.

Human planets of equal size, wholeness and fiery energy moving at the same speed on a similar course will attract into lovity's reach. In that you can still sense a bit of magic in love. As joining orbs, they still retain their alluring autonomy and provide each other space but also magnetic company bonded by their mass. A side note to this in the same strain of metaphor is the chaotic life of the incomplete ultra single human wanna-be whole planet. I only know this from my own space adventure experience and telescope observation. Lost single orbs seem to travel around in the darkest , and most nihilistic regions of space with other orbs all in a chaotic asteroid field. Colliding, connecting shallowly for short periods, bumping and grinding each other away into a pulverized pulp of jaded and confused scattered space dust. As I see it, this existence of human connection is a far worse puke in mouth vision of love or human interaction than even the silly Mormon Temple marriage.

Milan Kunderan in the Unbearable Lightness of Being defined Happiness as "the longing for predictability." To understand this, think of the predictability of a relationship, a pet, a parent or talent that brings us happiness. Through a trusted and enjoyed expectation that you feel when you see a persons familiar shoulder blade covered in familiar blades of hair with a familiar scent at the first sight of each and just about every the morning. Through that familiar purring cat on your chest without fail at first light. If you power-squat on that thought for a bit it becomes easily clear. The enjoyment of repetition with another being and the longing for it. In considering love, I think this definition of happiness is important but is too dry, considering that we are sliding down the sentimental hill on a metaphorical sled. However, as for lovity I sense that happiness as experienced in love would be better defined as "the longing for serenity" or "seeking serenity." This conveys more sensuous human activity and tacit enjoyment. Lovity is this in action and as a force of attraction not bonding. Besides the way the words ssslide out of your mouth and hisssss is in itself more sensuous.

But back to space, the lovity force is always active between joining human beings in orbit and they themselves must remain active and whole to maintain it. A philosopher Robert Solomon said that you can imagine love in this realized sense as a long conversation. With the same sensitivity, mutual effort and imperfect ebbs and flows of any 30 to 40 year conversation with any one person. A perfect process for human beings in orbit with each other is acknowledging this with keen awareness of it's sensitivity. Lovity is a means not an end and not contingent on infinity. Lovity should never be a prison. Human beings in a lovity orbit are however in a beautiful dance spinning around the other with a union of almost perfected symmetry. To maintain this symmetry between human dancing planets takes as much mutually inspiring effort as any classic dance or break dance battle. There is no perfect soul only a perfect dance or perfect process between individuals seeking perfect means not perfect ends.

Derived from all this if I throw love² into a square root and arrive at a definition of love that I can sit better with.

Love is the mutually inspiring effort for maintaining a sensitive, serene symmetry between beings.

If you think about it, Love is the only thing that makes life truly worth living. It adds color and a bit of magic to an otherwise barren black and white fruitless landscape.

If you've made it this far and you have slid down sentimental hill with me I feel comfortable sharing that I can say with honesty and conviction that after a few years contemplation, I long for this lovity thing and seek it genuinely. Of course only through what I now feel is the calm calculated lens and light of simple awareness that makes love a dance not a longing to be a superglued other half.