Love not a drug, after all

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No way. "I have love so it doesn't matter what I do." Forget all that, you simpleton. Conduct matters more than anything.

Conduct was the only communion on offer to you. It mattered what you did. Helpful?

Terrifying?

Love not an assuagement, not really comfort. Your new age friends told you what a fool you were to have chosen this love. Chosen? Was love ever chosen?

Time accumulated and spawned reflection. Then reflection invaginated and became a will -- your own. So your conduct was still a mystery, was it?

What to do from moment to moment, given love has eyes, given love watches. Guards in a way, in a way not. Breathless. Ask the question without stopping for breath: what should I do?

They said that love would tell you what to do but you had to ask, so had to know how to ask, how to hear the answer when it came, words or silence, perhaps silence. But a silence full of clues.

Oh God, make it easier for me.

It seemed your conduct always got in the way of your asking and hearing. How to pray in front of a honking horn, in the middle of an argument, on a weary day like today? Hearing the phone ring, not answering? Hearing a voice on the phone that pulled you into outer space without a helmet, without a plan. Why have you left me here so unsupported, Lord?

Or was this conduct itself a way of speaking, a form of conversation? Were you saying what needed to be said?

Was even this a kind of test? And if so, were you failing the test or passing it?

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