And What Is Love?

On the Edge, Living on Air, Oldest on Earth

Yale called them the Undying Lands, a term borrowed from Tolkien. To Yale, the Undying Lands were in southeast Utah, the land of his mysterious origins. We never did find out much about his beginnings. As a child, he went from foster home to foster home, what he called Foster Fear.

He was as mysterious as where he came from. Sometimes in the middle of his chores on Rolando Claycomb’s ranch, where Yale was a hand, he’d disappear. No one knew where he went. No one but me. I followed him once, during a thunderstorm. Sitting at the edge of an overlook at Dolores Canyon with crooks of lightning dancing all around him, he dissolved like a wraith into the fog. I never did find out how he slipped away into the storm.

In the end, all mystics speak of love and nothing else. They don’t believe in ‘kinds’ of love, for they realize that love is one, of a single nature. They don’t write about unconditional love, since they see that as a redundant phrase. If we place conditions on our love, then it’s not love at all. But only barter. The human idea of love seems a description of a bargain. A this for that. A tit for tat, if things don’t end well. The world sees love as just another struggle for power, as a desire to possess and to control. To possess innocence, to defend the prize as spoils the winner holds onto after a long battle. And if we can’t have it that way, then we’ll kill whatever it is we try to love.

In that bargain, in that war to possess the plunder, we kill off love as well. Love must make its escape from us, since it can’t be held down, owned, traded in one kind of transaction or another. And this is why, the messengers tell us, love seems an elusive quarry, a light easily dampened. Its stain comes off in our fingers, and we only see its traces, the remains of butterfly’s wings. The winged thing itself, the whole object of our pursuit, dissolves in the sunlight.

Yale might say that love is that desire which stands behind all other passions, in which all our lusts are subsumed, and in which they lean as but a poor fraction, as symbols for that which is inexpressible.

That which loves us beyond measure, passed all comprehension, has no words, no formulary, no embodiment which can be held or made love to. We try to kiss it, but it’s touching our lips to light.

That which is, in reality, our wild heart’s desire, our heart’s wildest desire. It can never be kidnapped or ransomed or understood. As we pose all our other playthings in its place, love’s the one behind their masks that can’t be posed. It dances with us. It teases us, as we tease each other with it. Then, like Yale, it slips away, maddeningly away.

When you wake, this will you know. And you’ll wonder how you could ever have believed anything else was true.

© 2022 by Michael C. Just

Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.

You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23

Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002

Four of his short stories have recently been published online:

Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)

The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW

I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October

Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within