Collapsing Time, Space, Lives
ESTABLISHING: HUDSON RIVER, WEST SIDE OF MANHATTAN, MID SUMMER. From a distance, we see what appears to be a man and a woman barely out of their teens, on the cusp of adulthood, strolling together along the Hudson. Their body language says it all: Full of hope and expectations, bashful and sweet, crazy in love. The sunset, bathing the horizon a sexy crimson, provides the requisite romantic backdrop. He boldly grabs her hand, raises it to his lips. She, the more cautious and unsure of the two, tentatively acquiesces. He gently pulls her close, slowly moves in for a kiss. She hesitates, and … FREEZE FRAME
ZOOMING IN: We soon realize, upon closer inspection, these crazy kids are not kids at all, but rather adults well into mid-life. The past has collapsed into the present; in an instant, two adults magically, instantaneously returned to their former selves, teenagers in love ...
MID SUMMER, 2010: That sultry July evening, L, my college sweetheart, and I found ourselves strolling along the pier together, laughing. Coy and excited, fully alive. Just like old times. My God - could it be over 30 years - 30 birthdays, Christmases, New Years, Valentine’s Days, not to mention all the life and deaths, both literal and figurative, that took place during those years - have in fact come and gone since we had fallen head over heels, truly-madly-deeply, hopelessly-deliriously-completely, wrecklessly-blissfully-endlessly in love? Since we had pledged our eternal devotion, promised to switch schools (he was in D.C., I was in Boston) so we could be together now and forever, marry and live happily ever after? Until, that is, our heart-wrenching break-up some months later?
According to the Gregorian calendar we currently use in our world, the “real” world of Newtonian-based time-and-space, cause-and-effect physics, it appears that yes, the earth had indeed completed over 30 revolutions around the sun since our summer of love. But in that moment, it felt like yesterday. Just two nervous kids walking side by side along the Hudson, wondering what the other is thinking, where the other stands, what the other wants. Over thirty years dissolving in an instant, fading into oblivion like the setting sun, rewinding to a summer of ’79 redux.
It only takes a moment. Time and space, just an illusion.
From a distance, we might still have passed for giddy teenagers. Despite a slight look of fatigue (or was it disappointment?) and a loss of the coltish lines of our younger bodies, on a physical level time had been relatively kind to both of us. I still had my dazzling smile, ballet dancer’s carriage, and ample head of curly hair that, fortunately, I no longer tortured into a Farah Fawcett circa “Charlie’s Angels” mane; he still had his boyish beauty, his cocky confidence and swagger, his high school football-star muscles. Was he still that traffic-stopping hunk? Was I still that exotic, distant but vulnerable mystery girl? Were we still the young uber-couple, turning heads and attracting attention wherever we went? Decidedly not. I was definitely a little thicker on the bottom; he had undoubtedly thinned a bit on top. But we both were holding up rather nicely, considering that I just turned I won't even say! and he wasn’t far behind.
But despite these changes on the physical plane, despite half a lifetime of experience and maturity, in that instant on the pier I again felt like that awkward, confused, unsure 19-year old. And he transformed back into that sweet, sincere-sounding, eager-to-please boy.
Sages, poets, songwriters, even quantum physicists agree that everything can change in a day, in a minute, in a moment. A chance encounter, a grave accident, a flash of inspiration, a simple “yes” or “no” can, for better or worse, inalterably, permanently reroute our best-laid plans. Just like that. In life, and especially in love. Only it didn’t happen that way for me with L.
But he insists to this day that the moment he laid eyes on me, he was thunderstruck. That for him, in that one moment, the world shifted inalterably, permanently. That he just knew this was it, I was the one, and things would never be the same. That he would always love me. Just like in that cheesy, wonderful song.
Ah, youth. The innocence. The gullibility. Hormone-drenched, hyperbole-prone, drama-driven. But in at least one sense, he was right: things did change, for both of us. Drastically. For him, in an instant. For me, it took a bit longer: rather than the seismic shift of his 9.0 quake, I arrived through a slow, steady erosion, a gradual chipping away of my wall of doubt and insecurity. Eventually, I could no longer resist his relentless assurances, his complete certitude. Though a long time coming (in teen-time), once smitten, the effects were total, complete, and extremely difficult to reverse.
If “it only takes a minute, girl, to fall in love”, how long does it take to fall out? “What a difference a day makes, 24 little hours …” Well, how about over 30 little years? What a difference might they make?
According to L., when it came to his love, his desire for us to be together, his regret at having left, nothing had changed in 30+ years. Despite decades of history, two separate lives lived far apart, his feelings, his undying love, he insisted, remained constant. And he just wanted me to know that.
FLASHBACK: LATE 1970’s. Months after declaring our everlasting love or each other, our complete commitment to each other, our unwavering willingness to do whatever it takes to stay together, we broke up.
It seemed so right at the time. Undeniably, unmistakably, the real thing, that once in a lifetime chance at happiness. How lucky were we to have found each other so young! How special were we? This was it. Together, forever.
Our forever lasted a little over a year. The whys and wherefores of the split really don’t matter. Suffice it to say that at the beginning of our brief but consuming relationship, he was so sure – we’re perfect for each other, this is it, the real deal - but I had some doubts. We were too young; it’s all happening too quickly; we need to give it a little time. Eventually he wore me down, convinced me not to worry, we’re so happy, this is meant to be. And despite my initial reluctance, eventually I fell. Hard. Truly-madly-deeply, teenager hard. I’ll-die-without-you hard. However, as I became so sure, he started to waver; his feelings started to shift. I suspect he began to realize the power his soap opera looks, charm and gift of gab had over people, and the doors they might open for him. And that summer he decided to abandon us, our vows and plans, to frolic with various celebrities on Long Island’s exclusive beaches. I stayed in Boston and attended summer school. He cavorted with models and fashion designers; I studied accounting. We didn’t talk much; it was obvious he wanted to end our endless love.
I didn’t weather the break-up well. For years, the rest of my college days in Boston, I cried, I ached, I ate. Still heartbroken, I graduated early, left the country, and moved to Paris to take courses at the Sorbonne. To forget him, I needed to start over, completely from scratch. And after considerable time and space and life, I did. I traveled internationally for business and pleasure. I studied. I held cool jobs in interesting professions, experience taking precedence over salary. I turned down several marriage proposals. I reinvented myself again and again, metamorphosing over and over, always emerging new and improved. Now unveiling TQ, Version 2011.
L., ever the over-achieving mover-and-shaker golden boy, went on to law school, got married and had kids; he became a master of the universe, merging and acquiring, bringing companies public and putting together those arcane international deals you read about in the Times’ Business Section.
Entire lives – decades – full-length scripts collapsed into a dozen lines of type.
Time would pass before I began to hear from L. again on a regular basis. Once or twice a year I’d get a call. Birthdays, Valentine’s Day. We’d catch up on each other’s lives: I settled in Manhattan; I witnessed the agony and ecstasy of my father’s passing; I’m leaving on a shoot in the South Pacific, in South America; I’m developing material for film and television; no, I wasn’t married, didn’t have children … he moved south; he lost his mother to cancer; he travels regularly to China; he has an office in New York; he finances his daughters’ champion-level riding habit; he and his wife live apart in a limbo state of un-divorce but non-marriage, convenient but passionless …
… and, he confesses he only has one regret in life: leaving me. Ending us. Despite the years apart, the distance, his love remains unchanged. Our brief time together, he swears, has the dubious honor of being the only time in his life that he was ever truly happy -
Whoa. Wait a minute. (But a minute, like all measures of time, exists only in maya, the illusion of our inaccurate perception of time, space, events, objects, everything. The poets, songwriters and quantum physicists know better: like the flickering of light energy on a movie screen, the passage of time and the distance of space seem real but don’t actually exist; it is we - individually, in conjunction with the collective, and with the God-source - who collapse probability clouds in the time-space continuum and co-create our experience of life, an expression of our beliefs. Or maybe it’s just all in our head. But I digress.)
For L., past is prologue. “Time” just a continual, endless string of now – and L.’s now, despite the illusion of “reality” and change, remains constant. Inalterable. Eternal.
For me, not so much. (What a gift, I thought, to be able to play like that in the quantum field, collapsing time and space, fusing the past and the present into the future through the constant of love everlasting.)
Granted, it took many rotations of the earth around the sun before I got over L., before I was able to heal my heart and soul. Many moons before I finally managed to extricate myself from the fear of abandonment, the feelings of inadequacy, unworthiness, unlovability, the I’m-not- pretty/smart/thin/popular/good enough recording in my head, turned way up by the split. But my success (again, a long time coming) was total: I emerged whole, better, smarter, stronger, washed clean, ready to welcome someone who appreciated the new me, the real me -
But sitting at the café on the pier, I must admit I was charmed by how quickly, over burgers and beers, we fell into the groove of our former couplehood. Even after 30 years, how comfortable we felt challenging each other over choices and ideas, how easily we debated our many differences over taboo topics such as politics and money, how completely his cockiness and confidence disappeared behind shy eyes. How quickly we both reverted into awkward, insecure teenagers again, full of yearning and hope. Could the old become new again?
BACK TO PRESENT. ZOOMING IN: He leans in, anticipating the return of his kiss. She stands impassive. Because in that instant, things have become crystal clear. She’s taken a quantum leap, revealing a disappointing truth. She realizes that their past hadn’t collapsed into the present. Rather, all these years, he’s been carrying his version of yesterday into today. It wasn’t his love that remained constant: Apart from the minor physical changes on the outside, before her stood the ambitious, status-seeking, ego-driven adolescent of 1979 who wanted what he wanted, who was very used to getting it. On the inside, he hadn’t changed a whit.
And in an instant I saw that the endless love he professed to feel for me, the charm he used to bulldoze me into feeling the same, actually had little or nothing to do with me. I barely figured into the equation, then or now - neither the enigmatic girl I used to be, nor the intriguing woman I continue to become, uncover, discover. What he loved, what he yearned for, was the idea of love he’s carried for decades: its purity, its hunger, its beauty, its failure, its exquisite pain. L. always was, always will be, in love with his love. The dream deferred. A premise, not a person; certainly not the flesh and blood woman standing before him.
And in that moment, I was able to release him and the sweet but illusory promise of the past for good, and open the possibility of finding love for real, in the flesh, in the present. Right here, right now.
So where the $#*&@ is he???
© 2010, Theresa Quadrozzi - A-Muse-In-Manhattan
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