Seeking to love maturely

You can see it's an old book.

I don't smoke. Although I like the taste of cigarettes in someone else's mouth:

"Love - a short word that means so many different things. Everybody wants it; far from everybody can give it. Yet we all think we know what it means. Is it something natural we don't need to think about, or is it an art? Erich Fromm...discusses its different forms, from the most natural in mother-love to the most impersonal in love of God; from romantic love, with it's endless possibilities of self-deception, to the steady assurance that mature love alone can give. To practice the art of loving is more difficult than ever under today's pressures; but Dr Fromm is convinced that 'Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence." [From the very foreword, indeed...]

I have within myself committed to perceive my new relationship as an opportunity to explore the art of loving; I have much to learn, and trust me, it ain't gonna be a walk in the park. I'm also very, very bored with playing the same relationship CDs over and over.

Someone that I can't remember, but whom I'm sure is famous (not that I care), said, once, that the unexamined life is not worth living. I constantly, and anally (some learned ones might say), but also at great self pain, constantly examine mine. I'm committed to living my best life, in THIS lifetime.

Namaste: I bow to thee, and honour the very highest in YOU

Sublittoral emotion

Life is strange.
I rushed down to the KZN South Coast yesterday in an emergency. Of the heart.
How do I even begin to encapsulate yesterday, last night and today in words?
I'm a swirl of deep current and dangerous emotion, not necessarily good. I'm being swept out to sea, but from a beach that I don't know well, maybe not at all.
I won't write that I'm floundering, I won't lie that I'm not uncomfortable and not way out of my depth.
I am disappointed. But I trust that I'm meant to be here right now, emotionally and geographically, although I have no clue why or what's next. And definitely not, again for emphasis, do I know why. Why?
I'm writing in code, because I know no other way to decode the current stream of my matrix without literally decoding it as I un-write it.
Back home, on my outside storm- and sun-battered couch, everything seemed so clear. And straight forward. And lonely.
I am alone. My world is an alone one. But it's changing. And I'm not sure how or why. Or where to.
So right now I'm surfing the sublittoral zone of my coastline on a razor blade. While the jaded and terribly aged Beach Boy's California Girls, playing very softly in the cool background of the coffee shop I've landed in, reminds me that all things shall pass, this too.
The passage of time, and the grappling with life's lessons, are themes that always flutter and then rot around my mind in deep autumn: I compel myself to live more deeply, more passionately, more intensely. Even at the serious risk of self-implosion.
So, right now, on which hook do I hang myself and this day? (Again, my prayer is for wisdom, understanding and - please God - guidance.)

Ocean

Today was perfect. I breathed in deeply the tangy salt-freshness of the ocean, while wearing the absolute minimum clothing possible. I dreamed of the impossible. I had my outta-bed-hair frizzed and whirred by the bluster that was driving the waves. I had the skin on my feet scoured by sea sand and tanned by the sun; now they are looking so healthy and smooth it's as if I'd lived on this beach as a bum for months. Then, when I was tired, I walked barefoot up to the house gulping in fresh air beautifully tinged with the giddying scent of frangipani blossom.