Once upon a time, according to Plato via Aristophanes,
Humans were born in pairs, attached, entwined
forming an intimate ball
Women + Men
Men + Men
Men + Women
Women + Women
Paired for life
Once,
We had 8 limbs and 2 faces
4 limbs on top
4 on bottom
We didn’t have to walk upright, but rolled
We had symmetry
We had strength
The strength led to courage
The courage led to pride
The pride led to arrogance
We decided we were greater than the gods
In a decidedly human act of bravado and stupidity
we rolled up towards heaven to overthrow them
Zeus, wielding thunderbolts, struck everyone in
two
Couples were now detached, separate
Alone and lost, losing the will to live
The Gods saw they needed to remedy this sad state
of affairs so a few repairs were made:
Heads were rotated to face permanently forward
Skin was knotted at the belly button
Most importantly,
We were left with a longing, a memory of the other
half of our selves
Today we call that concept of a person our soul mate
To this day we roam the world
Desperately seeking symmetry,
Eternally longing for our other half
There are 7 billion people alive on Earth today
all still sensing they are missing someone
There have been over 100 billion people, ever
the
odds are not in our favor
Once,
On the way to Greys River for Volcanology we
stopped to pick Ken up
He was standing on the side of the road holding a
sign that said “Quaternary”
He was prepared to hitchhike home too, the reverse
side read “Holocene”
Once,
we cut words out of an old geology textbook
(and)
pasted them over each other's hearts
then kissed;
each trying to embody the word the other wore
subduction
coeval
fault
I remember most the love;
simple and unassuming
Your lips tasted like figs
Your kisses reminded me of the first cherries in
spring
Loving you like Icarus too close to the
sun.
My heart tangled in geology and ancient mythology.
Tender, like sunbathing in the Rockies in May
Once,
I loved the wrong man for years, convincing myself
he was an engineer masquerading as an artist---
that he saw me as a poet masquerading as
a scientist
One of the first things he said was how worn out
the record was
I loved it because of its worn out sound; well
played, well loved
Turns out that records are still better than
cds
tapes
mp3s
And every time we listened to
The Beatles
I was reminded that
Once,
in a uniquely human act
full of hope and hubris
we sent a golden record shooting through space
a cultural Noah’s Ark,
a living myth with a billion year shelf life
It had language, music, poetry, a kiss, humpback
whales singing and the recorded brain waves of Ann Druyan
Ann and Carl Sagan had discussed the possibility
that in a thousand million years some future life form would be able to take
the recording of brain waves and REM and reconstitute it into thoughts
Initially unbeknownst to them, Ann and Carl had
fallen in love contemplating the vastness of space,
discussing how to encapsulate humanity and
introduce us to the cosmos
One night, during a trans-continental phone call,
they realized they were soul mates
The realization of this love came as a flash
insight
A scientific discovery of the heart
They had never even kissed
Ann's brain waves were recorded the next day and
two days after their record was launched into space they were married
They were together until Carl died 15 years later
[A thousand
million years is a long time, who knows what is possible in a thousand million
years]
Once
upon a time
there was nothing
nothing became something
It was the Pre-Cambrian.
thousands of millions of years passed
oxygen led to algae
single cells became multi-celled
gradually life exploded
It was the Cambrian .
millions of years passed
existence became larger than life,
extinction loomed on the horizon
It was the Cretaceous.
millions of years passed
apes appeared in the fossil record
It was the Cenozoic.
time passed
Humans arrived in the fossil record.
Humans created gods.
It is the Holocene.
Once,
during a video chat, as you leaned forward to find
a translation
I began counting the freckles on your forehead
That night I dreamed I counted all the freckles on
your body
It took me a lifetime
like
counting sheep
a
dream within a dream
I awoke missing you
According to Plato, when we find the other half of
our soul we recognize it instantly
There is an unspoken understanding
We are lost in an amazement of love and friendship
and intimacy
These lucky people spend their whole lives
together
But if you asked, they could not quantify what
they desire of each other
After Carl’s death Ann said “The tragedy was that
we knew we would never see each other again.”
I want to love like that.
I want to love you like that.
For Keeps.
