by Michael Raysses
Recently, while discussing favorite movies with my partner Toni, we remembered how on one of our first dates we watched my all-time favorite film, The Wizard of Oz. Beyond my affection for it as a cinematic souvenir of my childhood, is my profound appreciation for the plight of the various characters portrayed within its story. There isn't a person I know who hasn't ever wanted to be smarter or braver, or maybe even wanted to jump in a hot air balloon and land in a place where they could reinvent themselves as a wizard. (Say, like, Los Angeles?) However, it's the Tin Man's quandary that always struck me most deeply––what would it be like to go through life searching for a heart you don't yet possess? (Any lawyers, talent agents, or studio heads reading this, please consider that a rhetorical question.) More to the point, what is the trajectory of a heart's evolution? And when and where does the heart come to a place of rest?
I pose these questions because I find my heart to have taken up residence at a place I never even conceived of.
That is, until I met the aforementioned Toni.
I have always considered myself a spiritual work-in-progress, freshman year of college excepted; I never saw any interrelationship between whatever state of spiritual awareness I had reached and my love life. Oil and water mixed more readily for me than spirituality and romantic love. Youth and its desire for order gripped me, so that whomever I was involved with had their own belief structure, and in the absence of worshipping Satan, Donald Trump, or some combination of the two, it was something with which I never concerned myself. Love and matters of the heart were bound to an earthly plane, separate and distinct as the respective places we each lived in. I was convinced that spiritual issues had nothing to do with love between two people. Until, of course, they did. Which is what I experienced when I fell in love with Toni. Like a Rubik's Cube that I didn't know was only one twirl away from being solved, our partnership has weaved romantic love with spirituality into a braid I never could have envisioned. I am not exaggerating when I say that. Let me give you an idea of the depth of my myopia…
One of my most formative experiences with the way I looked at romantic love occurred in the fifth grade. I had been taking acrobatic lessons from an elderly instructor named Mr. Ernie, and had gotten to the point where I could perform a handspring, the equivalent of flying. Brimming with my newfound accomplishment, I decided to pitch a little woo to a classmate named Susan––she was playful and reminded me of a colt.
When my feelings for her reached critical mass, I walked over to her house one afternoon, and on the sidewalk that stretched in front of it, I began performing acrobatic stunts for her. I started with a few cartwheels just to get her attention. When I saw someone stir through the window, I upped the stakes and did a backbend, walking the entire length of her front yard bent entirely over backward at the waist, on my hands and feet. When I heard the front door open, it was time for my finale––the handspring––a move that up until this time had only been performed indoors, under Mr. Ernie's watchful eye. As I looked up, I saw the sun glint off Susan's front door, as it swung open. She had come to profess her love for me! It was a love fueled by my desire to perform for her, to show her what love was capable of inspiring me to do. I marked my steps with great determination, and began the sprint that would vault me into the air, spinning head over heels (how's that for symbolism?), landing at her dainty feet with a flourish.
Just as I planted my hands to thrust myself over, though, I saw something on the ground in front of me, and the fleetest of doubts raced across my subconscious. But it was too late––I was airborne now, and my body was all that I knew as my feet whipped over my head. And as the soles of my feet reached for the ground, only one found its mark. The other slid out from under me, and I fell like a clump of dirty laundry.
When I looked up, there was Susan's mother with a very concerned look on her face. My colt was nowhere to be found. There was something I hadn't reckoned with, though––Susan's dog. Unbeknownst to me, I had chosen its “play area” in which to perform. And what I thought I had seen as I started my handspring is what I landed in on my descent, leaving me a 'transformed' young man upon my descent. I walked home that day, more earthbound than ever before, literally trying to scrape the experience off my shoes and clothes, to no avail.
For years, I kept the lesson of that experience in mind and heart: That though love could launch me into the stratosphere, that merely by sending me heavenward I wasn't guaranteed a smooth landing. In fact, I could even land in … a state I never imagined. Thankfully, in the case of Toni and the love she has shared with me, that state has come to mean a level of awareness and depth that justify all manner of acrobatics, spiritual and otherwise. All of which is deliriously Greek to me.
©2007 Michael Raysses. Michael is a writer/actor/National Public Radio commentator who lives in Los Angeles. His email address is Greek2me@ca.rr.com.