Petrarch
But this love followed one other period of my young adult life, in my last three years at university, where I was equally enraptured, spellbound and captured in every way. Because the imagination controls all and can make one book into a miracle of insight, just as easily as it makes the plain face of a girl you meet into a wondrous, indescribable beauty and her voice a siren song, which no others can perceive. I’ve been lucky in my time to experience three intense forms of love, one for friends, one for women and one for books.
The most intense love of my life was the first, with great authors, peaking in September of 1977, when I was just starting my graduate studies at Toronto, before I became disillusioned with my teachers and before Dennis showed up and ended it all. I felt like a young Joseph Scaliger, reading through Homer day and night in twenty-one days, energized. I got through fifteen chapters in the next two months, driven.
Before I go on in this true history, I have to wonder, (as I did back then), what love I would have given up for the other’s, if I had but one choice of the three, as they were all so intense. The image of the young, sixteen-year-old Petrarch jumping into the large fireplace after his father threw his copy of Cicero into it, (in a rage, because he was reading it instead of his law books), ready to die to save it, and his father pulling him out with his clothes on fire and realizing his mistake, was vividly on my mind at all times. And I wondered, seriously, as a would-be author, whether I should have nudged Lindsey out the door, (not into a fireplace) to continue my studies and efforts to become a writer. I was indecisive. But the allure of her scent, her soft arms and warm, unexpected hugs, her quirky, feminine traits won me over.
“By day I’m vexed, by night we make up”.
This succinct note was the next entry in my journal, still at Steve’s house. Our love from the start was a little ‘vexed’. If I was not in some degree blinded by my love for her I would have clearly seen it was more than ‘vexed’, it was doomed. I loved her not as she was but as I wanted her to be. But this, as I slowly realized over the following months, was an impossible development and I, a serial dreamer.
She said and did the most foolish things, frequently. She was clumsy, forgetful, vacillating and confused in many of her thought processes. Part of my attraction to her was a closeness I formed in always trying to help her, (once again, the ‘pity’ principle). At first I really did believe I could change her into the girlfriend of my dreams.
I think this is true in many love affairs, the eyes are blinded on both sides, not just one. You talk and talk and try to persuade your mate to change certain habits of character. You make no real progress but then you make love and try again, with redoubled efforts. This goes on and on. But you slowly grow frustrated and what started out as soft-spoken, kindly worded advice turns to admonishments and then arguments, which again are followed by apologies, tears, hugs and kisses and all-absolving sex. This turns into a hell of an existence, similar to Virgil's description in book six of Aeneas’ trip to hell, where at the end of many horrific scenes he finally makes it back to see the daylight ahead and has two gates to choose from to walk out of the cave, the gate of horn or the gate of ivory. He chooses the gate of ivory, only to find out the gate of horn, (or hardship) was the gate where dreams come true and the gate of ivory, (the gilded gate) was the gate of false dreams, false expectations and ultimate disillusionment. This was my journey with Lindsey. But I did finally walk out the gate of horn, having read the book. I left her.
