The sweetest sight in the world to me is the light in her eyes.
When she lights up, when she looks at me and her eyes shine, I feel deeply happy.
When she looks at me and her eyes are dead, then I feel sad.
I'll admit it. I want to see the light in her eyes. I don't feel like a man until my vision for myself is reflected in her eyes.
When I have the rapt attention of a beautiful young woman, I feel drunk.
I wonder what puts it in her eyes and I wonder what takes it away.
I'm 44. Many beautiful women have shined their eyes at me. But it's never lasted long.
I guess I'm a romantic. I want to believe there's more to reality than it can bear. I want to believe that I can make her eyes shine for years on end, until we grow old and die.
I don't like to be looked at with contempt by someone I admire. I don't like to be the object of her disdain. I want her to have the excitement about my life as I do.
I want to be a hero. I want to be heroic to someone I love. I want to go out into the world and conquer a little piece of it and then to bring it home and to earn her admiration.
I wonder what I would have to change in myself to make that possible. I wonder what I would have to do. I wonder in which parts of my life would I most need to grow. I wonder which of my slovenly habits I most need to discard.
I want to be heroic but I am so damn tired. Instead of acting heroically, I am sitting at home watching the NBA finals (with the sound off) and listening to CDs of George Eliot's novel Middlemarch.
I feel like life is passing me by. The last nine months, I've been sick or exhausted most of the time. Perhaps this second year of Alexander Technique teacher training is just kicking my butt.
I was in better health last year. I was going to yoga every night. I was getting more work done. I was walking further and more frequently to shul. What happened to me? Ever since Rosh Hashanah, it's just been waves of illness.
Ever since that day in February 1988, I've been broken. The doctors call it Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Hardly an impressive sounding name. When people hear it, they just assume I'm a whiner.
I want to take action to turn my life around. I don't want to lie on the sick bed at home while all the great girls get taken and married and impregnated. But I am just so fatigued. And I've learned through hard experience the past 22 years that the only thing that will turn me around is rest.
So I lie here and watch life pass me by. I rely on little hits to perk my spirits, that great dinner last night with the six shiksas, the hope of the Lakers winning another championship, the odd fulfilling blog post, the meaningful email, the strong conversation, but the meat and potatoes of my life is just illness.
Not sick enough to get disability (not that I want that), just sick enough to prevent me from pouring myself into work, just sick enough to hobble me, but not sick enough to destroy me. Just sick enough to humiliate me. Just sick enough to hold my dreams out of reach.
When I confess my frustration that life is passing me by, I get these irritating responses:
* Pointing out all I am accomplishing.
* "I'm glad I have a job that forces to leave the house or I wouldn't get anything done."
I remember this crusty old man who said I had IWW Syndrome -- I Won't Work.
