The Dreamer and the Engineer (The Lovers Part II)

Talking about being various dinosaurs today, someone said they'd be a T-Rex.  I turned to my boyfriend and told him he'd be a Brontosaurus since they no longer exist.
"You know that means our relationship doesn't exist either, right?"
"Eh, I'm used to having imaginary friends." I replied.
"What, like your gods?"

What...what do I do with someone like that?
It's not faith for me...I abandoned Catholicism because it demanded faith.  My gods (yes, all of them, from Diana to Ganesha to the distant ones like Ishtar) have populated my imagination and my emotional life since I was a kid.  One of my favorite quotes from Neil Gaiman goes, "Things need not have happened in order to be true."  Maybe the gods never existed, but their energies, their impulses, the pulses of their own souls (because the gods feed off our love, our worship, our energies we use in devotion to them) are absolutely true because our hearts and our minds MAKE them true.  Of course I believe in the invisible because the invisible has been with me all my life.
But...in that one comment...I feel like I saw it all from his eyes.  Gods are children's things, things that are little and useless and to be outgrown to make way for the progress of science.  Yes, religion is flawed.  Religion is flawed because HUMANS are flawed and we always have been...and while science uses objective methods to create objective results it looks down on those who believe.  Science, to me, while useful, is slowly becoming arrogant and condescending.  It lacks empathy for other peoples' emotional and imaginative experiences.  At least, that's what he seems to be demonstrating.

I'm emotional, so I'll end it here.  I only post this bit because it helps me to sort out my identity and where I stand.
So, yes.
I stand with the gods.  Every single one of them.
I stand on a mountain with their voices rushing up behind me like the wind.  I stand with the people who worshipped them, the people who loved them - then and forever - because it is their combined voices that generate the spiritual song of the universe and demand that we raise our own.  Yes, of course, the servants of the gods are often corrupt and muddle the messages, forwarding their own agendas for power and domination over the demand for love and compassion.  Yet the impulse towards the Divine - that impulse is pure.  It is that pure impulse that gives me hope that we'll get it right and it is that impulse that makes me raise my voice to join the music of the spheres.
Namaste.
Blessed Be.
Amen.

Fire and Earth, Air and Water (Lovers)

My blogging habits here are sporadic at best mostly because I don't want to post in this unless I really have something enlightening or constructive to say.  This time it isn't as much enlightening as a need for personal enlightenment.

Be patient with me, please.  My soul is a tree with parched roots, its branches and leaves inhaling the world around them as they forever reach for the sun.  

Okay.

I don't understand my boyfriend.  

*furious blush; fights the urge to run away*  

Or rather, I am still flabbergasted by how different we are!  He's an engineer: all head, all science, balanced by his love for those around him and his uncanny power to transform into a rambunctious five year old at the drop of a hat.  I'm...damn, I'm me.  A dreamer first and foremost, I've been a writer, an artist, a theatre kid, and a scholar at various points in my life.  Beneath all that is a kind of spiritual current that sustains me.  When I was Catholic I sat in the stillness of empty churches and talked to the Virgin Mary and God like they were old friends.  As my worldview expanded and my Catholicism collapsed, I started casting about for anything that could sustain my need for spirituality and I eventually settled on a vague sort of paganism.  I can read tarot, know next to nothing about palmistry (although still love looking at peoples' hands), and every time I see the Moon she takes my breath away.  I think of the moon and I think of water, I think of the surf cresting and swelling, breaking her reflection on the sea into thousands liquid jewels.  

My boyfriend...not so much.  As I type this he's watching yet another engineering video, most of which flies straight over my head.  It's...cool.  Shiny.  Gadgetry.  Dry.  

Last night was the transit of Venus, the only time in our lifetimes when Earth, Venus, and the Sun will align.  With my love for the stars and his love for science, it should have been a perfect connection.  It didn't pan out that way, though.  While he saw "AWESOME!!!!!" I saw "black dot across big yellow ball".  It wasn't until I saw the images from NASA that I understood.  But even then, it's still so distant from ME.  

I walked downtown along the River Thames today and was thrilled by the little things: baby swans following behind momma swan, momma swan attacking any duck or goose that dared to look at her babies funny; ducklings all fluffy and little (and maybe I had never really seen ducklings up close until then); baby grouse (which I had definitely never seen before); and two ducks sparing over a female.  The sun and the wind and everything around me had me singing...  

I had a dream last night that, admittedly, was inspired by Jim Carey's movie "The Truman Show" in which Truman's life, from birth onward, has been nothing but a reality TV show.  Everyone, from his mother to the milkman, are paid actors in on the secret.  Fortunately, my dream was different.  Somehow I had been elected to be the star of a theatre production of some sort.  Everyone knew about it but me, so when they announced it, people were cheering for me and everyone was happy.  There was a pool in the center of the crowd, so I dove in and started swimming like a fish.  All I could think was, "I should do this more often".  When I got out of the pool, I was walking out with a bunch of girls who were really nice.  They were telling me about the antics of the director, Ryan, and how hard he was to work with.  But it was okay, because I had been in the same theatre company as Ryan before, so I knew what I was up against.  Then the dream ended.  

Water.  Swimming.  In Tarot, the cups are the suit of emotion, represented by water.  I'm happiest when I'm swimming in these emotions and feel the world around me, rather than just thinking about it.  Swimming in the tides of life, I'm free and peaceful.  I have the power to emotionally sustain myself and use the surplus to sustain others.  

So our personalities, our basic urges, make this relationship...odd.  As an engineer and an utterly British man, he's not one to show his emotions.  A slight frustration here, anger there, but a real, honest outburst is rare.  I love him, but because he's all air, all gadgetry, all brain, I wonder how to connect with him.  I wear my emotions on my sleeve.  If I try to hide them, I fail miserably.  With him, even grief is shoved away in work or gaming.  I don't understand. 

In the end, the real issue lies with me.  I need to be myself, spirituality, singing, joy, and all.  Intellectual passions he is fine with, even artistic endeavors.  But when it comes to matters of the spirit is where things stop, for while he doesn't judge me or look down on me for my beliefs, he has no way of understanding.  So it gets cut out in me because I have no way of sharing it with him.  I think...I think that's how it goes.  There is an enormous disconnect there, a disconnect I can sum up with one scene: 

Sitting in Starbucks one evening I watched as a seagull fly overhead.  Suddenly I said, "I wish I had wings..." 

"Why?" he replied.  "There's nothing up there."  

His response shocked me a bit and I felt stung.  "What do you mean?" I asked.  

"Well, not until you get out of the Earth's atmosphere and reach space." He said.  

I made a feeble attempt to defend myself but I couldn't articulate what actually having wings meant to me: the freedom, the escape, the dream.  

But that's us: the dreamer and the engineer.  What to do, eh?

The Independent Woman

An article I read today about What a woman's last name means.  Yes, it is from offbeatbride.com and, as a woman who spend her entire childhood dreaming of Prince Charming, I love the illusion of the happily-ever-after that weddings seem to generate.  What has been dubbed today as "bridal porn" has been a guilty pleasure of mine for years.  I love... love!  I love watching my friends fall in love and watching them get married because they're so happy, at least for the moment.  It infuriates me that there is an entire industry that exploits this amazing celebration and now we have shows on TLC where it's more about the dress than the ceremony, much less the poor groom who has been shoved aside and turned into a prop in the bride's fantasy of HER perfect day.  But I'm getting off topic.  That's a post for another time.

For the last four years, since Randolph-Macon became simply Randolph College, I have struggled with my identity as a woman.  I want to be strong, independent, and fierce.  I don't want to be branded as a raging, angry feminazi lesbian who doesn't shave her armpits.  I want to embrace the joys and comforts of being in a loving relationship.  I don't want to be perceived as weak and needy.  I've already been accused of needing a man to feel complete, I would like to avoid that in the future.  Attempting to strike this balance at all has been tough.  I will admit, I've been alone with a guy before and have gone beyond my sexual comfort zone (my brain screaming, "GET OUT, GO HOME NOW!") because I did not want to be perceived as a tease.  As one ex once told me, "You have to finish what you started."

At the moment I am somewhere in the middle of the question of my identity.  I value my freedom and independence but every day I struggle with the notion that I am NOT an island, that I need the support and love the people in my life provide.  I hate opening up to my friends because I don't want to be an emotional burden, and besides, that's not what Independent Women do.  Independent Women don't rely on their friends or significant others for affirmation and emotional support, don't rely on them for financial support, and have outgrown their need to rely on their family for any support whatsoever.  Yet I  do - I enjoy the affirmation and emotional support my significant other provides and am still dependent on my parents to provide everything for me - food, transportation, clothing, all of it!  I feel guilty that I am not the Independent Woman Randolph-Macon groomed me to be and I can't stand myself for it.
On the other hand, I don't want to be the island that is typical to my idea of an Independent Woman.  By opening up and venting my emotions, I know I create a healthier atmosphere for necessary relationships to grow.  When I try to be an Independent Woman, I feel distant, cold, and cynical.  When I try to be someone who is nurturing, kind, and giving I feel like I wind up getting trampled on.
Examples: My last year in college I began dating an old friend that I cared about very much, but I was very driven to succeed in my career.  For that, I pushed him away but doing so left me feeling like a cold, Amazonian.  Later I moved to DC to pursue my career.  While I was there, I was bombarded by homeless men and women asking me for money, food, even a place to spend the night.  One man I gave forty dollars to get back to his family stranded on the highway.  He left telling me I was an angel, but in the end I felt like I had been used and duped.
So where, exactly is the happy medium?  How do I embrace my femininity and the fact that I know I need the affirmation I get when my significant other tells me I'm drop-dead gorgeous while still retaining my independence?  How do I balance these two facets of my identity?

This brings me back to the article I mentioned earlier.  According to the study, women in the EU who take their husband's last name are perceived as less independent, intelligent, and ambitious but more emotional and caring.  Meanwhile, women who keep their last name are perceived as the exact opposite: independent, intelligent, and ambitious, but distant and cold.  The study goes so far as to say that women who take their husband's last name earn less than women who don't.  It frustrates me.
At the moment, I'm in a place where I'm deeply in love with a man that I would be proud to marry.  I'd even be happy to take his last name, because his simple English last name is far harder to mess up than my North German last name with all the weird vowel pronunciations.  Do I plan on playing perfect housewife if/when we get married?  No - he knows I can't cook to save my life (that's his job) and how highly I value my education and my career.  But I don't plan on wearing the pants in the relationship, either.  I love and respect him too much to turn him into one of those little mousey men who spend their married lives getting trampled by their wives.

I suppose in the end I'm raising a cry for balance.  I know men and women are different, we have different strengths and weaknesses, but respect among the sexes shouldn't vary.  What does a person's last name matter?  It only tells you where a person's coming from, not where they're going.