Stuff from holiday on "my muse"

Once again my holiday found me ruminating on "my muse". This cow has far too many stomachs!! In note form and hopefully an end (again).

> Watching the sunrise from King Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh I reformulated the reason why I was trapped with "my muse". She gave away the only thing i ever wanted: herself. She made cheap what for me was the most valued. Maybe this was deliberate because it is a great responsibility being valued that much - she was young, I put a lot of pressure on her, this is my mistake. But basically she couldn't perceive herself as being that valuable - in her own eyes she was cheap. Now I went into this situation because I doubted marriage. Was there a force that makes one person more special than another? I chose her to prove this. That moment of decision was mathematical in its precision: when asked to rate her I had a literal vision of a meter in my mind's eye that rose above the critical 95% level - my soul simply said "yes". I never took an exact reading it was somewhere at 97%/98%. That was the form that certainty took for me. I have never said "yes" to anything before or since and I know I never will - I know there is only one "yes" inside - everything else is full of doubts and imperfections. There are others more perfect scoring - I saw two yesterday - but she was "the one". Now if i chose another to love then at the same moment i chose her, i also prove that there was nothing lasting in my choice of "my muse" and I prove that "yes" is only conditional and so lasting unbreakable marriage vows are impossible - things are proven to be conditional and temporary, to be based on nothing but choice. We can always chose and so marriage lasts only as long as we chose it, which means that the vows we make in the past have no bearing on the future. It destroys the whole of reality. So to continue to believe in the possibility of marriage, ironically I have no choice but to remain faithful to my unfortunate choice of "my muse" and so not get married. But this is the risk I knew I was taking that moment I said "yes" - the whole of existence drawn up in the palm of ones hand in an instant. Anything less than this is cynical. She will never know I did that, altho I felt at the time and feel now this wasn't the first or the last time we would be doing this. But for me it is better to dream in hope that live in despair: I am an idealist and always feel those practical individulals who settle for the contingencies of life rather desperate like rats. We will all die very soon so why the great struggle?

> On Helvellyn mountain as I slept one night I found a power within myself. I had lost her and lost control of the only thing I ever really wanted. This I saw had a catastrophic effect on me destroying access to control. The OCD I speak of became very disabling after I walked out because I realised losing control of her brought into question the issue of controlling anything. I constrantly felt like losing control of myself. Helvellyn made me realise that while I had lost her I still had myself, and more I could see that controlling myself was actually different from controlling her. Failure to be an effective part of her life didn't mean the same as failure to be an effective part of my life - even tho she had apparently meant everything to me. Afterall whatever she was it still required me for her to be it. This small seed is the way out I felt.

> Similarly the failure to achieve my hearts desire made me fearful of the world and I lost trust in what lay outside me. Has taken a long time to be able to look someone honestly in the eye again.

> Something I had a sense of before but came again was that everything that I thought unobtainable and beautiful in her was really a projection of those things I had to find in myself. Seeking her was really seeking myself. They say that a good relationship is one that encourages you to be the best you can be - indeed this is actually a main quality of what we find attractive in a partner the promise of what we can be. Often a girl makes me feel that it is worth trying to do my best - working for her makes sense of the daily grind. This is actually a misplacement it seems because 'the daily grind' isn't the point and ultimately I feel makes people bitter if the 'girl' ever falls in their estimation and they wonder why they wasted all those years working for her - my father for example. I became my best simply for its own sake when I was 14, maybe inspired by my father being town mayor and wishing to be the best, but ultimately seeking perfection itself - no girl was involved. Finally I believe I am gaining the qualities that I so admired in "My muse".

> The Capon Tree is the only remaining tree of the ancient Jed forest. Standing next to it and placing my hand on it I had a great sense of the age of this creature. 500 years old they said in the plaque. Standing there I was liberated of one thing to do with "my muse" - the zenith of the situation came when she spoke of someone she had just slept with saying how large he was and how small she had been next to him. The image captured the physicality and rawness of the sexuality of their liason and removed any sense of "love" from my relationship with her. Such strong feelings I had to escape from. Standing next to this ancient tree I felt small and this is what reminded me of her words regarding that sexual encounter. But I felt small in another way - the sheer age and wisdom of this oak dwarfed the age and wisdom of her sexual partner who was at most twice her age and not wise at all. Rather than inflame my desires this oak placed everything in context and showed the triviality of the tiny things we each get so troubled by - in 500 years I'm sure this oak has seen it all. There was "great peace, silence and respect and wisdom, coolness and watchfulness." [from notebook]. This encounter diluted, washed away and cleansed that painful encounter over 10 years ago now. We do share this planet with some extraordinary other organisms.

> A sleepless night on uneven surface and after intense day and evening of rain had me sitting awake in the early hours in a very clear state of mind. "my muse" was young and excited about sex, that is all she wanted. Deep down me too. But the sense that I must be loyal and caring which led me down this road (maybe because of the experiences in my youth where I had hurt girls). Also I am pursuing a much more complex agenda of spiritual attainment and also am shy of getting involved in worldly affairs that seem to tedious and unfruitful.