Fortifications
Two people open their hearts to each other…and fall in love. The most joyous, most profound and most loving state one can experience is to stand utterly naked before another, and find your beloved waiting naked for you (the BoDeans even wrote a song about that). It is pure rapture to behold and embrace each other’s hearts with no barriers or reservations.
Sigh.
I doubt that all that many of us remain in that rapturous state for all that long. I certainly haven’t. We may find that we weren’t privy to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Few of us live lives of total honesty and absolute integrity. We all strive, but we sometimes fail. We are human, after all.
Still, to discover a falsehood, to learn that there was far more to learn (far more hidden), to endure betrayal, to suffer rebuke or mockery, to be hurt by the one you love above all others, gives cause to raise defenses or retreat to shelter. We begin to build our fortifications, our walls and bastions. We haul the stones and mix the mortar. We lay stone after stone...stone upon stone...and slowly build our walls; all the while hoping they will prove strong enough to protect us.
Time passes. We suffer more hurts. Some are small, yet still significant. Some are overwhelming. We build our fortifications bigger, thicker, taller. The battlements obscure the sky. We eventually lose sight of the sun. We can no longer find our North Star.
With the passage of time, we find the hurts come faster. Armored hearts become empty shells. Words need not even be spoken. A night of silence can hurt every bit as much as hours of artful lies. Eyes alone can hurt and rebuke. A glance of derision or disrespect will send us scurrying to build our walls higher, thicker, larger yet. There may even come the day (or night…you can no longer tell) when all you have is your fortress…all the rest is lost far beyond your keep.
You find yourself kneeling exhausted in the dark, and you have all the time in the world to ask yourself: “Just what have I accomplished here?” The days grow long in your dark and solitary cell, the dark itself a burden on your all-too-weary soul.
And then…one day…you begin to wonder: “How the hell do I get out?”
Sigh.
I doubt that all that many of us remain in that rapturous state for all that long. I certainly haven’t. We may find that we weren’t privy to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Few of us live lives of total honesty and absolute integrity. We all strive, but we sometimes fail. We are human, after all.
Still, to discover a falsehood, to learn that there was far more to learn (far more hidden), to endure betrayal, to suffer rebuke or mockery, to be hurt by the one you love above all others, gives cause to raise defenses or retreat to shelter. We begin to build our fortifications, our walls and bastions. We haul the stones and mix the mortar. We lay stone after stone...stone upon stone...and slowly build our walls; all the while hoping they will prove strong enough to protect us.
Time passes. We suffer more hurts. Some are small, yet still significant. Some are overwhelming. We build our fortifications bigger, thicker, taller. The battlements obscure the sky. We eventually lose sight of the sun. We can no longer find our North Star.
With the passage of time, we find the hurts come faster. Armored hearts become empty shells. Words need not even be spoken. A night of silence can hurt every bit as much as hours of artful lies. Eyes alone can hurt and rebuke. A glance of derision or disrespect will send us scurrying to build our walls higher, thicker, larger yet. There may even come the day (or night…you can no longer tell) when all you have is your fortress…all the rest is lost far beyond your keep.You find yourself kneeling exhausted in the dark, and you have all the time in the world to ask yourself: “Just what have I accomplished here?” The days grow long in your dark and solitary cell, the dark itself a burden on your all-too-weary soul.
And then…one day…you begin to wonder: “How the hell do I get out?”
* * *
posted by Jonas | 4/15/2006 01:39:00 PM
5 Comments:
This post could have been written by me, in much simpler terms of course...
I did not realize I was building my wall of river stone (that is how I have always imagined it) until the day it came tumbling down....and it did happen in one very long night and day, at first stone by stone, then suddenly they all crashed down at once.
The rush of emotion that filled me that day, that week, and the many months afterward, I was open to everything, newborn tender in the intensity of living life once again.
The remnants of it still encircle me, many times I find that I have begun rebuilding and must remove some of the stones once again.
I believe I need the protection of the stone wall, but I hope to keep it lower, knee high, easy to climb over, no mortar to hold the stones together, just stone resting on stone, with chinks of light shining through them. I imagine it covered in deep green ivy vines adding strength, but a beauty too.
For to save myself, I occasionally need that wall to rest my back against hiding, to spend some time for reflection, breathing space, a green and sun bathed haven to refresh the soul. Then and only then do I find that I can once again take that leap once again into a life filled with the most amazing thing we humans possess.......feeling.
I'm glad those walls of yours came tumbling down. I broke out of my fortress for a short while, only to be savaged...
Somehow I really hate thinking of you being savaged. (Ravaged maybe.....smiling.. for some reason that thought just popped into my mind)
On reading your comment, the immediate impulse is to think your fortifications are still stongly in place, with no cracks or chinks, but there are aren't there? Isn't all of this a part of that? Even if it is just a peeking out to see if the world is safer? But I have this feeling that you are beyond just peeking.
These circular walls, they have handholds, footholds, and although I don't see you tearing them down, I see you climbing, sitting on the edge, warm sunlight shining on your face, your feet dangling over, and Jonas, your lips are curved upward in the beginnings of a smile.
Awwwwwww, Ms. Delight, I love your imagery and your kind and hopeful words. Yes, I have days that are sunny.
(I daresay, most everyone would rather be ravaged than savaged)
“How the hell do I get out?”
Sometimes this life is no more than a moment
And sometimes the light is lost unto the dark
But courage hears the sound of dawn approaching
And each our own bright morning star
I woke to find every window open
I woke to find the heavy door ajar
And I walked outside and stood upon the hilltop
And gazed once more on a bright morning star
I walked outside and every bird was singing
As I found again my bright morning star
(mary chapin carpenter)
(this is love too) (2)
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