An article by Sha'Tara, local writer and friend.

Rambling Rose: a Consumed Genius

[Dia-Mono-Logue ~by Sha'Tara~ ]

While reading Charles deLint's story, "Saskia," I found this quotable sentence: "My last serious relationship was with a woman who wasn't so much flesh and blood as a spirit borrowing her cloak of humanity."

Ah, relationships. "Serious" relationships. I don't do relationships, not in the sense people understand such things anyway. Relationships that require towing to the open sea with repetitive possessive pronouns have an inherent weakness: they are ballasted with dependencies and loaded down way past the safe line with hazardous, unsecured expectations, leaving no room for safer, more varied and interesting cargo. Such relationships are lopsidedly
unstable; have a tendency to sink, and are not equipped with either lifeboats or life jackets. That being said, and it needed to be said, I do know a lot of people of current denomination, and I've certainly known a lot more during my brief little foray counting 65 Earth years on this world. This knowing means I've been in and out of hundreds of peoples' lives, and at least as many have moved in and out of mine. That too needed to be said so that the following makes sense, or at least now possesses a greater potential to do so.

I know a person, a being, an Earthian, a human, who actually fits Charles deLint's description of his Serious Relationship. In appearance a woman, but in fact much more of a spirit, if quite lost in her chosen-or dictated-form.
A being literally bursting with ideas and desires that mishmash outwardly into everything she encounters so that nothing actually works quite
properly, leading me to quote, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. To me that is rather sad because when such a being enters herself into a
"Serious" relationship, the results literally blossom into series of frustrations and disappointments. I call this spirit being woman, Rambling Rose; the genie in a bottle who won't come out, however many times, however
by whom, the cap is removed.

I repeat, I don't do relationships, so keep in mind that I am neither disappointed nor frustrated by Rambling Rose if, for example after several
days of effusive e-mail exchanges, she disappears for days, even weeks, resurfacing suddenly with a question like: "Are you still here?" as if I were the one who pulled the disappearing act. It bears repeating this is a
funny world and people sure get funny ideas and when they act on those, well, anything goes.

This spirit friend, this Rambling Rose, truly trusts (or I could say believes in) only what is material, physical and biological. It is I who see her as a spirit in uncomfortable human form. In her mind there is no spirit to confuse her world. Well, I think I can understand why that is. Why add another aspect rife with the certainty of uncertainty to a life already overstocked with things that do little more than continually go bump in the night? Yet, for someone like me, spirit in fading flesh, more at home flitting between worlds and realities, un-tethered from the constraints of time, relating to Rambling Rose could be an impossible challenge. On the
surface of things, we have nothing in common apart from having met while sharing some moments of grubby earth life. But I know from experience and observation that everyone has something to teach me, if some more than others. RR is a wonderful teacher, despite, perhaps because of, her limitations. I am quite aware of her failures, but that is not what I choose to focus on.

Brief introduction to RR, for those who do not recognize who I am talking about: Poet, painter, composer, animal rights activist; wife and mother: RR is passing through this world leaving it changed for the better. This is a courageous woman and the world that takes advantage, mocks, pities or judges is the poorer for it. But that is how the world reacts to whatever is different, magical, odd, a little too savvy.

How do I approach RR? It all comes back to relationships. Another condition of this skewed world is to relate selfishly and with a pathological need for control. Judgment, censure, stricture: these rule unless or until personal success turns this to adulation-and that is perhaps an even worse condition for any relationship. I remember a classic teaching, quote: "The stone the
builders rejected has become the capstone." I have walked among rejected stones all my life and I've engaged them. Since no one wanted them, I was not challenged for the time I spent with them. In my mind, these stones became capstones. Since the world had already made sure their blemishes and unsuitability were exposed, there was no illusion, no hypocrisy. All I had to do was remain detached and look for that which the world could never see;
would never see.

The thing is, RR is a Total Serious Relationship type. She needs to relate to people, to animals, to nature, to basically everything, in a way that
must create constant and palpable feed-back. To achieve this she reveals herself to the object of the relationship and in this revelation, discovers her own shortcomings in a way that makes them appear to be worse than those
of others. That which was intended to be a "great" accomplishment becomes a personal failure, a let-down from one's own abilities. These failures are the common lot of man, says the detached observer, but the T S Relationship won't allow that discovery, that awareness. Sadly then, this skewed view of one's failures makes the failure special. "I have failed more abominably than anyone I know!" It becomes a parasitic specialness that stymies, consumes, the very things that would create and develop the genius.

Ah, RR, are you becoming a ghost, a Consumed Genius?

"The danger in not realizing one's spirit aspect is that sooner or later,
that one must turn into a ghost."