Soft Soul Kisses in The Dark

Sometimes, even when we've remembered why we are here and what we love. . . . we wake up to find we've been holding back, have become inadvertently timid about diving into our own lives.

When I was fourteen years old I heard Leonard Cohen singing “Suzanne” on the radio. Late at night, in between sounds of the house cracking and the hydro wires humming from the forty below zero temperatures, I’d tune my transistor radio to stations in Toronto and Chicago, hundreds of miles away. Beneath my bed covers, long after my mother thought I’d gone to sleep, I’d lay in the dark and listen to music that was never played on the local radio station in our small community in Northern Ontario. It was 1968.

I loved Leonard's deep gravelly voice, but it was his way with words that made me want more. Words that open something inside have always been my first love. “Suzanne” was the piece that made me want to write poetry.

Last night I sat in the darkness of a huge stadium and once again listened to Leonard Cohen singing “Suzanne.” He also sang “Halleluiah" and many of his other songs over the course of a three and a half hour concert. He was. . . . shimmering with the heat of presence, and the heart of humility- companioned on stage by fellow master musicians and singers.

But the piece that unexpectedly broke me open was “A Thousand Kisses Deep.” Maybe it was because he didn’t sing it, but simply recited it with a violin offering soft sustained notes beneath his resonant voice. Maybe it was the miracle of sitting in the dark with thirty thousand other people who were listening in rapt silence to a Canadian poet recite a poem, reminding me of the power of words. He held the microphone close and became the words:

“The ponies run, the girls are young,
The odds are there to beat.
You win a while, and then it’s done –
Your little winning streak.
And summoned now to deal
With your invincible defeat,
You live your life as if it’s real,
A Thousand Kisses Deep. . . . ”

Suddenly, my face was wet with tears.

Because it’s so easy not to live “a thousand kisses deep.” So easy to skim the surface, to write about things instead of letting the words hold the rawness of our particular joys and our sorrows.

And I thought of a lover who had been in my life years ago. When we got together he knew he was going to move to Los Angeles in a few months, and I knew my place was here in Toronto. We knew we weren’t forever, but we experienced a deep and healing intimacy in the time we had. The love-making was a fire that burned away all that was dross in our lives and our selves, a healing born of hearts that did not hold back- perhaps, in part, because we knew we were never going to deal with the challenges and weariness that sometimes visit when sharing daily logistics with another.

One day, as he drew me close, making my back arch in desire and awakening a sweet ache in my limbs, I made the only request I would ever make of him: “Promise me that you’ll never pretend this did not happen, that it wasn’t real and full and enough. Promise me you won’t pretend it was ordinary so you can do what you know you need to do, go where you know you need to go.”

He made the promise. But he couldn't keep it. Since then I've become a little wary of others or those aspectes of self who answer requests that require courage with the casual words, "Of course."

Because it’s hard to live a thousand kisses deep, to face the smallness of our lives and the largeness of our loves; because it requires courage to live with the knowledge of our "invincible defeat" in both the small daily things that undo our resolve, and the knowledge of our mortality. Because it’s a little crazy, when asked about your financial plan, to talk about the book you're writing without consideration for what is “marketable,” for what can be “leveraged for other products and spin-offs.” Because living in a secular culture with a passion for the sacred and an awareness of the very real magic that runs throughout life can make you feel a little out of step with the world around you.

But for the soul there is no other way to live, and all the fears, all the holding back, all the attempts to be measured and reasonable, to not pour the messy details of the past, the wild dreams of the future, and the full sensual experience of the present onto the page just won’t cut it.

Because not living our particular life, as Leonard says, "as if it’s real" leaves the soul hungry and sad. And life is too precious and too short not live to the edges and the depths, not to live “A Thousand Kisses Deep.”

Oriah (c) 2012