In 2001: A Space Odyssey, when Commander Bowman returns to Discovery in one of the space pods after retrieving the dead body of Commander Poole, HAL refuses to open the pod bay doors, plum drowned in madness and conflict. Commander Bowman takes a risk and goes through the emergency airlock, which is not pressurized and without a helmet, has few precious seconds to last the few feet to the entrance of Discovery. He manages to do it in a taut few seconds.
When I have spells in my life where it feels like I’m between lives, or pressed up against the new life by the old and have reached a stalemate, I think of that part of the film. Or when I have to walk through a patch of hurt I think of it because it’s dive in, hold your breath and get through it and the air will return no matter what chaos that’s supposed to be order won’t let you back in the conventional way.
I’ve only loved two women in my life deeply enough to say I really know what love is. For that I am fortunate; for the circumstances around each I am extremely unfortunate. The first love, a dark and disastrous affair, I was discussing with a friend and she said it seems that I have a large capacity to love given what happened. It was a good thing to hear because it reminds me of what I call the Inner Sanctum Heart, that secret roaming ground that words can’t hold and usually lays sleeping. The second woman, in a seemingly difficult marital and health situation, I realized this week still sits in that Inner Sanctum heart. Sometimes when too much time happens by with dark side of the moon silence, I worry something may have happened health wise. Today I poked around on the Internet and through one of her relatives, found her husband’s Facebook account and a picture of he and she in a Christmas Card photo. That’s when the Inner Sanctum heart opened house and dropped a mile wide of heartache all over the place. I feel a bit the sucker but it’s no one’s fault. In fact, it set off a whole buffet of looking back and wading through all of the opportunities I’ve had over the years with women; one’s I’ve passed up and usually I do this when I feel lonely. But I don’t feel lonely, I just feel like I need to hold my breath and walk through the vacuum hole without my head exploding. I must be clearing the catacombs for something new. Or at least clearing the catacombs. The rest I can’t put into words, except that Love explodes from the inside where you sit, hang, linger, powder, and flip a coin of pain and joy a thousand times until I lose your face on either side.
