"Fuck Love"

An ongoing theme in my writing is authenticity. How do we become what we were meant to become?

I have had to sort through my opinions, opinions being generated by the culture around me. Right in the middle of being domesticated something restless stirs. Sitting around at the table and talking about work, some imagines and attitudes creep in and then the domestic mask shows itself. Choose to take off the mask. Take the mask right off, yous and yous and me. Let's be real.

Choices. We have the power to choose. To choose what to think and believe. I have children. How do I teach them about choices? How do I teach myself?   

So the other day I talked to this woman with the words "fuck love" tattooed on her neck. I was driving afterwards and I had a clairvoyant thought about what cynicism actually is. Cynicism versus questioning: how it's possible to question from a distorted place in the Self. (In case you were wondering, I am CONSTANTLY asking questions).

It seemed as though this woman's tattoo "fuck love" contained a question, tattooed right under her neck, about where the hyoid bone lies beneath the skin and connective tissue. The throat chakra. As if to say, "Are you going to try to talk to me, mister? Don't, because I've already made up my mind about love." I felt compassion for this woman, seeing as I remember the feeling of having my heart all smashed to pieces and thinking I would never recover. I recovered. I've dropped the cynicism about love. I've spent some time in my poetry recovering the word "fuck" for my own sensual, sacred purposes. "Fuck" is actually a good word. Any word, renovated from its negative usage can become a "good" word, a cleaned up, healed structure within which to place something special, a feeling, for example.

"Love," maybe love was the word that this young woman wanted to question. Maybe I'll choose right now to see that she was (I'm telling the story here, after all) questioning the word love. Maybe she was preparing to speak about love. To love. With love. And that's why she had it tattooed right there on her neck.