Seeking the Essence of Relationships

This morning I ruminated about relationships, all kinds, questioning what’s real and what’s not. Mother and child. Under supporting circumstances, they “bond” in a way which at least has the effect of keeping the child alive. It’s reasonable, perhaps obvious, to agree with biologists that the bond is adaptive, evolutionary. Yet I was looking at what we, in variations, overlay on that bond, say culturally. “You should respect your mother and honor your father!” And the overlays particularly around attachment. The roles we (child and parent) create between us. I thought of a time when I was twelve, on hallucinogens, when I had had to extract from my mind what my mother was as she came to get me when someone had called her to say I was tripping my balls off. That may sound like I was crazy. Yet in some respects, I might have been sane for the first time. “Oh, that’s right!” I pondered. “A mother is something there to hassle you, give you a hard time.” I had for the first time stepped out of the relationship we had constructed and examined her, albeit cherry-picking a very limited conclusion. (That is, this mother had been and continued to be so much more.)

I imagine this momentary perspective bears resemblance to a Buddhist perspective and thought to write a book about “discovering” a Buddhist perspective, that is, before knowing Buddhism.

Anyway, I moved on to relationships with pets. Here the projection of story and roles is more obvious. “Come here my little feather muffin!” Okay, I do say stuff like that my parakeet. “Is daddy getting a little beak (which he nibbles my nose with) this morning?” Okay, I must get out more.

Anyway, I then wondered what the real essence of our relationship is. Whatever he is throwing my way, I imagine I can trust. That is, I don’t imagine he has a language to create story around us. “Oh, look at this asshole. He leaves me all day, then thinks I’m going to indulge his pathetic sound effects? Ain’t happening, bitch!” So again, I look at what he does bring. This morning, he made this warbling sound more than usual and that usual means beak is coming. I can’t be sure because we’ve only had a physical relationship for the past month or so, though we’ve cohabitated for seven years. I’m not sure what the nibbling means. I imagine it to be affection. I imagine he gets some need met doing it. (Yes, whether or not I’m projecting, so do I.) And if this is true, then needs and meeting them are core to our relationship, and relationships, upon which so many of us then superimpose other stuff, constructs, that are not real. Osho took it so far as to say, the term “relationship” is static, dead, not real and can only live as a concept. That is, life being a stream of moments, we can only relate.

So I’m then driving to work, still thinking about my bird, about what to do for him, whether to get another one, as his “partner” passed a year ago and I have to leave him on his own if I’m to go to work or spend time with humans. Two birds, small sparrows (on a treeless street), fly onto the hood and roof of my car. Not believing myself to be St. John of Assisi (though sometimes I’d like to be), I had to wonder, given the context, if I had finally gone garden-variety schizophrenic. Then a passing driver said, “There are birds on your car.” I concluded that my hallucinatory system is just not that sophisticated. I pulled over, but when I opened the door and looked, both birds – and, with it, some psychic / spiritual opening / had disappeared.