Jamie

[Sorry about the strange appearance of the text that follows. It is copied from my old Livejournal app and seems to have retained the format here]

 I received today a rare notice from my old LJ account. I had nearly forgotten writing here, once upon a time, so I logged in to take a look and refresh my memory (having first, of course, to recover my old user name and password, both of which I had forgotten). 

And refreshing it was. What strikes me most in these former entries through the years is the intensity of feelings expressed. It is as if these things were written by another person altogether, a person who loved deeply, who was in touch with his heart, and with his heartbrokenness. Many of the entries, the farther back one searches, are related to a girl I loved. Jamie. The gal who got away. Or as Sinatra would have it--

"The girl who won you has run off and undone you. That great beginning has seen its final inning. I don't know what happened -- it's all a crazy game ...

No more, no more those all time thrills, cuz you have been put through the mill, and never a new love will ever be the same ..."

Well, I guess I was always hoping that she would read these entries, and relent, speak to me again (for, you see, we both used to write in LJ). Of course, no such a thing happened. Or if she did read them, she responded not, strictly sticking to her promise to completely end our relationship in any and every degree. 

These many years later, I do understand what happened to us, and that the fault was wholly mine. She would be 43 now, if I calculate aright. And I will soon be 67. It has been roughly twenty years since we last spoke.

I am surprised to see all the poetry I wrote down here, which, inept as it is, impresses me as touching for its honesty, for the heart laid bare on the sleeve--for the heart that even existed in that once upon a time. I can't help but miss the person who cared deeply, who felt irresistibly pressed to express his sadness and his longing. Where has he gone?  

I spoke once here of having been awakened, of coming to life, of astonishment at this sudden gift, the magic of a woman, the magic of love. I felt alive through and through, to my very fingertips and toes. I remember, I remember. And sometimes I dream of her still. And I have thirsted ever since, in my deepest soul, for love is a miraculous fountain indeed, one that both fully quenches and leaves one fully empty. From this fountain poetry bubbles, and also one's life blood. Is it better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all? I suppose so. This is the only manner in which alternate universes can endure.

Jamie. I picture you now with a family, two children, wholly immersed in a world on the far side of all possible worlds. Or as Sinatra has it--

"Once you warned me that if you scorned me, I'd say a lover's prayer again and wish that you were there again to get into my hair again ... It never entered my mind ..."