I Saw Her Pants the Other Day

I saw her pants the other day—at least I think I saw her pants. She was wearing a dark blue silk blouse, tucked into pale blue silk trousers. As she danced around me, I could just about make out her dark boy-shorts through the translucent weave of her trousers. Boy-shorts or tucked in shirt; I couldn’t decide. You may think, "Shirt," and that I’m just a creep—but they finished in an even line, and had a symmetry that no amount of tucking in could hope to achieve.

She has a gazelle-like grace. All ranging limbs and long silver hair, propped up with swan feathers. She spins and twirls, flexed bare feet striding around the floor with her arms oscillating to the beat while her head swings this way and that, hair cascading down her freckled face.

She’s a Lancashire lass with a passion for horses and dogs. I’ve seen her with a huge hound. It has bright eyes, thick golden hair and is always straining at the leash. She’s a match for him though: strong, alert and sufficiently connected to manage him with skill, patience, and little apparent effort.

I love her mastery, or should that be her mystery? Her stillness, her lightness, the clarity in her eyes, her skin, and her boundaries. I see her being "in allowance" of us all, suppressing judgement, reaching for compassion, always seemingly open to the learning. She wears her flaws easily, and creates a space where we can all relax into ourselves and discover what’s there.

Sometimes, she looks less than certain, and I see her eyes are hooded. Her hair is already turning white, and she has more wrinkles than I’d realised. Occasionally, I catch sight of her bare leg from the knee down ,and I see the bruises and scars that presumably come from working daily with large animals.

When she sees me, she comes towards me. “Hello beautiful,” she says, as she bends demurely with joined knees to reach down to my height. She embraces me sweetly, heart to heart, and pecks me on the front of my cheek.

Each time she does this, a bit of me dies. I fall into the vastness of her open heart, and gaze in timeless wonder at its apparent limitlessness. I feel like I could remain in her arms forever. She doesn’t resist, never clings. There’s no awkwardness, despite her towering over me. When we separate, nothing is unfinished. The beauty of the moment remains intact, undiminished by ending.

It may be my imagination, but I am captivated by those kisses. Each one seems to move further from my cheek and closer to my lips. By now, she is catching the corner of my mouth. Our lips sharing the lightest touch.

I reflect on this and, in so doing, the bliss bubble bursts to be replaced by cold, unwelcome rivulets of insecurity. I’m too short, too old, too poor, too needy, too undeveloped, too loud, too talkative. A crazy, deluded fool.

I gather up all my years. I bundle them together, wrap them in raw silk, label them wisdom. Alone, I have no idea whether I’m big, small, short or tall. These terms only acquire meaning in comparisons and they, we well know, are always odious.

I consider my wealth. I am unimpressed by conspicuous consumption. I prefer homemade to man-made, and I prefer unmade best of all. The most beautiful times I spend are invariably when I am outside, in nature, sometimes catching raindrops in my open mouth, savouring their impact on my outstretched tongue.

It’s true—I can be needy, but I’ve developed a fierce attachment to my independence, an attachment so strong that it verges, at times, on pathology. And I can turn around and walk away when I am drawn to anyone who stimulates those feelings of being needy in me. They are no longer me.

I have learned to be generous with myself, and to breathe into those points of attachment... to "just inquire if there is more space to be found," as my yoga teacher says. It never ceases to amaze me, just how much pain can be dissolved by breath.

And so, I have all the tools necessary to meet her face on, look up at her, gather up my courage, meet her lips, linger, open my eyes. I no longer deny my desire to reveal my vulnerability, able to accept without resistance, the reality of our connection. I see it for what it is without being afraid of the truth of that, no matter what transpires.

We all long for touch, contact, to be known—but our broken hearts often leave us with a distrust of the requirements of romance and relationship. How do we square that circle? The longing to desire, be desired, share companionship and dreams, versus the fear of once more being hurt and disappointed with who we are, and the choices we made that brought us again to this vulnerable place.

Six weeks ago, I fell in love. For eight days. A holiday romance that involved meeting, courtship, resistance, surrender, passion, and ultimately, heartache at our premature parting. This was a forbidden relationship, one with no future—an opportunity taken, with the risk of regret.

Distraught, I danced with my hurts. As I danced, I cried, and roared, and dashed myself against the wooden floor, enjoying its coolness, the way it held me, the feel of gravity as I rose again, a Phoenix, to dance some more. I collapsed again, coaxing the hurt outwards, from heart to periphery where it could be thrown off in a pirouette or stomped into the ground.

Lancashire lass's voice comes over the PA. "Trust your feet," she says in a low voice. "Let them take you somewhere."

I drop from my head through my achy-breaky heart, past the sense of loss in my loins, down my legs, through my ankles, and find karate stances from my teenage years there to support me in this warrior journey. My inner voice whispers in my ear, "Walk the path of the broken heart." At this, my ego leaps in. "Broken heart?" it scoffs. "It'll be the path of 'wounded knee' if you carry on like this!" Funny, but not enough to distract me from my connection to my feet, the floor, the music, the Lancashire lass, or the path of the broken heart. And so, my mission emerged: to break my heart as many times as I can. To fall in love recklessly, embrace rejection, devour hurt, suck up loneliness and like cold raindrops on my tongue and chilled drips down my back, to love it all, to revel in sensation, and enjoy the richness of being alive.

I saw her pants the other day. At least I think it was her pants.