Love is Louder [Vol. 2]: Mea Culpa*

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Mea Culpa*

I can't sleep any longer
I crave you
I want to go beyond edge of my fantasms
I know its forbidden

.....

I am there and elsewhere
I have nothing left
I'm going mad.
I surrender.

Take me, I'm yours.
Mea Culpa.
Take me, I'm yours.
Mea Culpa.

Have you ever thirsted for something or someone so ferociously that you become possessed by that thirst? Has a passion ever left you whirling in madness, and devoured by self-doubt? I think it's what John Mellencamp meant by Hurts So Good. I also think this state describes the surreal visit to that place where madness and extreme-ness meet sanity and moderation. This song ~ Mea Culpa, by Enigma ~ reminds me of that place ... I have visited that surreal border between sane and insane. I have thirsted for a person so much I wanted to die, to stop feeling the pain of that ferocius thirst. And, oh, I knew just the thought, and surely the desire, to die was forbidden. And, many times in those hours of darkness I begged God for mercy ... for some kind of relief. I do not live there anymore, but I remember being there.

It's spiritual and healing to look back upon that time (a year ago was the mid-point of that drama in my life) and no longer feel that way. And to see the twisted-ness of surrendering oneself to another human, of dissolving one's own self into the other. It can't be real love, if it entails loathing yourself to love another, can it? I think not ...

* lyrics by Enigma, from their song Mea Culpa,

translation by Roxanne Galpin ~

NB: not a literal translation --

my aim was to capture the sentiment

conveyed by the original French lyrics ~

literal translation rarely are of any real use.

3 comments:

Mayden' s Voyage said...: I mailed your copy of what you sent to me early this week...I hope you will have it soon~

I agree with your assesment that, "It can't be real love, if it entails loathing yourself to love another, can it? I think not"

No, loving someone and being loved in return should make us better versions of ourselves. Nothing about love should equal loathing- in any form. However, I understand what you've expressed here.

My best to you~ and thank you so much for the postcard! It made my day :); 28 July 2009 at 21:28
X. Dell said...: I'd be lying if I said I couldn't understand, and on a visceral level. Fortunately (or unfortunately), as I've grown older, my passions have become fewer and more ardent.; 1 August 2009 at 14:19
foam said...: Have you ever thirsted for something or someone so ferociously that you become possessed by that thirst?
yes, but it didn't really involve self-loathing on my part ...
i didn't act out on that desire ..

i wish you all the best, roxanne ..
XO; 1 August 2009 at 16:25

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Welcome to Insanity

Depression is such a cruel punishment. There are no fevers, no rashes, no blood tests to send people scurrying in concern. Just the slow erosion of the self, as insidious as any cancer. And, like cancer, it is essentially a solitary experience. A room in hell with only your name on the door. I realize that every person, at some point, takes up residence in one or another of these rooms. But that realization provides no relief from said hell.

It seems to me the basic definition of mental illness: a persistent, painful inability to simply be with someone else. It might be lifelong, or it might descend like a sudden catastrophe, this blankness between ourselves and the rest of the world. The blankness might not even be obvious to others. But on our side of that severed connection, it's hell, a life lived behind glass.

Distilling Life

I sometimes like to lose myself in the thought that I am merely a culmination of various chemical reactions occuring at the cellular level of my body. What directs these chemical reactions? Is that where individuality resides? When I consider pharmaceuticals and their effect, it can make sense - chemical reactions fueling existence. Perhaps the Seroquel XR I'm taking bridges some cellular, chemical gap or deficiency. The perceived effect being an insular stabilizing of my mood. Does it all seem a bit too simple? Can we really distill life down to a few chemical reactions?
I wonder. Perhaps, then, divinity resides within those chemical reactions?

Words of Wisdom

"Writing is a deep-sea dive. You need hours just to get into it: down, down, down. If you're called back to the surface every couple of minutes by an email, you can't ever get back down. I have a great friend who became a Twitterer and he says he hasn't written anything for a year."
~ David Eggers

"Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form."
~ Rumi

"If we do not transform our pain we will surely transmit it."
~ Richard Rohr

"We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand, and melting like a snowflake. Let us use it before it is too late."
~ Marie Beynon Ray

“Love is not a victory march. It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.”
~ Leonard Cohen

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish it's source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.
~ Anais Nin

"All of us live in exile in a real way. As St. Paul puts it, we see as 'through a glass darkly,' through an enigma, separated always partially from God and each other."
~ Ron Rolheiser, OMI

"Truth is shattered into a thousand pieces when God throws it down to earth."
~Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg

“The act of building is the physical tangible expression of promise.”
~ Unknown

'The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.'
~ Dorothea Lange

"Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself.”
~ Thomas Merton, Journal: October 2, 1958

“The authentic self is the soul made visible.”
~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

"A diamond only shines after it's been cut."
~ Danielle LaPorte

"Having a grievance is like drinking poison and thinking it will kill your enemy."
~ Nelson Mandela

“The absence of fear is not courage. The absence of fear is some kind of brain damage.”
~ M. Scott Peck

"Art washes away from the soul, the dust of everyday life."
~ Picasso

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."
~ Thomas Merton

"Worry is like a rocking chair--it gives you something to do but it doesn't get you anywhere."
~ Unknown

"A photograph is a painting made by the eye, using light as the paintbrush."
~ Roxanne Galpin

"The most important events make no stir on their first taking place, nor indeed in their effects directly. They seem hedged about by secrecy. It is concussion, or the rushing together of air to fill a vacuum, which makes a noise. The great events to which all things consent, and for which they have prepared the way, produce no explosion, for they are gradual, and create no vacuum which requires to be suddenly filled; as a birth takes place in silence, and is whispered about the neighborhood. Corn grows in the night."
~ Henry David Thoreau

“The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.”

~Virginia Woolf

Love is Louder [Vol. 2]

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Mea Culpa*

3 comments:

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