The Lovers

All the world loves a lover, so the saying goes. This is not, strictly speaking, true. Many of us wish that lovers would get a room. When I was in Tuscany this fall, I was persuaded by my hotel owner to go to a local spa called "Le Terme Sensoriali--The Sensory Spa". The idea was that all the senses, or the chakras, or something, were to be stimulated by various "holistic" means.

Having a degree in Holistic Medicine, I am naturally suspicious of anything bearing the label "holistic". It's not just that familiarity breeds you-know-what. It's that holism carries within it the word "whole," and that implies that nothing is outside of holism. Not cigarettes, not Vegas, not Dunkin Donuts, nor MRI's and chemotherapy. Holistic medicine is whatever makes you feel better, right now, and if it's a band-aid, so be it. When you don't need it anymore, you will discard it. I promise.

So considering that I was, as stated, in Tuscany, in a constant state of awe brought on by the sheer poetry of the landscape, the amazing food upon which I gorged like there was no domani, the wine ditto, and a beautiful pseudo-rastafarian farmer who rode his tractor as if it were a bucking bronco, the need for further sensory stimulation was, shall we say, limited.

But the owner of my agriturismo, an intimidating young woman with pale eyes and rather unfortunate purple sweats, convinced me with the sheer force of her personality that I should go, and sold me a ticket on the spot, for 30 euro, which is 45 bucks to you and me.

So off I went. One reason I was in Tuscany was to soak in the thermal baths, renowned for their healing powers. It was a beautiful fall, sunny but not too hot, the perfect time of year for the baths.

I was welcomed to the Terme by a thin dark woman with raccoon-style eye makeup and a languid air, the type of female that inspires in me an old Muay Thai urge to elbow her in the face. She handed me a robe and told me, her voice practically inaudible over the piped-in Afghani funeral dirges so unaccountably popular among the holistic set, that Alberto would be showing me around, once I had changed into my swimming suit.

I squished around in my flip-flops for quite some time before Alberto appeared, almost coming to an ignominious end several times on the slippery marble floor, which had no drains whatsoever and was sloppy after a full day of equally squishy people.

Alberto and I practically collided as I was on my way to the bathroom, which was indicated by a mysterious hieroglyph that I assumed meant "little girls' room" in ancient Egyptian. Alberto seemed a bit put out that I had not waited for him, and proceeded to launch into an explanation of the set-up.

This immediately lived up to the purpose of the spa by stimulating my olfactory sense, since Alberto, my guide, had really tragic halitosis, an affliction shared by many of his countrymen who believe that too much brushing wears out the teeth. Alberto explained at great length and with what seemed to me an unnecessary aspiration of air the purposes of the various saunas and pools, which were heavily chlorinated, a contradiction I hastened to point out to Alberto.

"People don't come to a holistic center to be poisoned," I declared, with a deliberate lack of tact. His breath spurred me to ever-greater heights of rudeness. Alberto and I then engaged in a lengthy discussion in which we each repeated our divergent points of view, with increasing heat, until I managed to exploit a momentary distraction to squish at high velocity, heel-toe heel-toe, toward the Poisoned Pool, as I mentally dubbed the jacuzzi in retaliation for the stupid names that were posted all over the place. "The Chamber of Silence" (i.e. a room with nothing in it), "The River of Life" (a bunch of stones you were supposed to walk on but which hurt so nobody did).

The Poisoned Pool was not very well-lit. I squished carefully into the pool area to the strains of "Tequila," which I swear to God was being played by a band out in the park grounds, and didn't notice until the last minute that there was a couple in one corner of the pool, the female of which was being humped from behind by the male, wearing glasses and a plastic shower cap. Da duh, dada deeda dada/ da duh, dada dee da daaaah...I fail to see how anybody could get their sexy on to Pee Wee Herman's theme song, but whatever.

In any case, I was forced to reflect at that moment that, far from being part of those who love a lover, I often find them distinctly annoying.

Having said as much, I would now like to talk briefly about The Lovers card in terms of the Tarot.

Just as I personally have mixed feelings about Lovers in general, The Lovers is a card of duality. The original name of the card was simply Love, but at some point it became The Lovers, and I consider that a stroke of genius, because love is always conflicted, isn't it? Has there ever been a love story that was simple and devoid of second thoughts, ambivalence, illusions and even betrayal?

Love is not a thing that comes nicely packaged in a box from LL Bean. Love is more like a Rubik's cube that most people will never figure out but will die trying.

The whole point of The Lovers is, two heads are better than one. You will never figure it out by yourself. But you also don't need another person to have love in your life, or even a dog or a gerbil. Each of us have love because we are love. Love can take on many forms, but in its most essential form, love is energy. But just as God needed to create the Universe to see the reflection of Its greatness, love, too, needs to witness itself, and that's where other people, and animals and the like, come in.

If you don't believe me, think about the people you have loved and who have loved you. What are they, who are they really that is so great, except for mirrors to see yourself in? If that sounds narcissistic, let me give a concrete example. A person who lets you see your beautiful self, your giving self, your sexy self, your dutiful self, your sassy self, and the list goes on. Those selves are already there, inside us, but we don't know it until we see our reflection.

Now think about the people who should have loved you, but didn't. Didn't they show you a reflection of yourself, too? So who's to say they didn't love you? Stop telling yourself tales of defeat. It's all love. If anyone is familiar with Stop the World I Want to Get Off, there is a touching song at the end where Littlechap asks Evie how she could have loved someone like him, when he couldn't love her back. And without getting too far into it, she tells him that if they could live twice, she would love him all over again.

And that's why The Lovers is a card of duality. It's going back and making all the same mistakes, with the same person. Love me Two Times Baby. It's the Me that's in You and the You that's in Me, it's the One that is Two and the Two that are One, and two is just a number, because The Lovers card is infinite, like a series of circus mirrors, where you lose track of what is "reality" and that's how it should be. It's kind of like Carlos Castaneda's dreamers who get lost in a dream and never return, not even with their physical bodies.

The Lovers is the Beauty and the Beast, the love that heals and the love that hurts. It's getting what you want, and not getting what you want, and which is worse? Anybody who has ever gotten what they want knows the answer to that.

It's the reality and the reflection of reality, and knowing the difference or not.

Oftentimes we don't. We get lost in the mirrors, and we don't know how to get out, and we live in this happy fantasy until one of the mirrors breaks, and then we feel this sense of loss, and betrayal, without realizing that we lost nothing. That part of us we saw reflected in our lover is still there, but now it is a fully integrated part of us. The breaking of the mirror just means that we don't need it anymore.

And yes, there is a way of connecting to other souls, and yes it is love, so it is all about Me Me Me? Yes and no. Because that form of love is there, all the time. We are all connected, all the time. Nothing you can do will change it. Getting married won't change it. Breaking up won't change it. Hating somebody won't change the fact that you love them.

First Corinthians, which is such an amazing revelation on the subject of love, says that "Then you will know fully, even as you are fully known." And I think that when we talk about love in its human form, knowing is a big part of it. To know is to love, if not to like, because the two are really not necessarily connected. Like is on the merit system, love isn't.

And so all those people who are in bad relationships, I want to say this. You love this person. Love is never a bad thing, so don't beat yourself up about it. Celebrate that love. Take that love to bed with you at night like Linus with his blankie. But get out of the relationship. Because love and relationships are not the same thing, in fact, they are diametric opposites.

Love is an absolute. It has no boundaries, and no rules. It can't be trapped, it can't be commanded or commandeered.

Relationship, on the other hand, is another word for "rules". The only way for a relationship to work is if everybody knows the rules and sticks by them. Otherwise the relationship will crumble, which might be a bad thing or a good thing, depending on our objectives.

And this duality is in The Lovers too, because on this earth plane, love will lead to a relationship, and a relationship will always involve love, of some kind. The two are almost inseparable, like Siamese Twins, for most of us normal folks that haven't been Enlightened and aren't quite sure we want to. (Is there Dunkin Donuts in Nirvana?) And the trick is finding that delicate balance somewhere in between reality and its reflection, so that the love relationship can stay alive, somehow, like the same Siamese twins that would die if separated and so live to have a weird but unique and even somehow satisfying existence.

Kind of like the Sensory Baths. Tuscany is a sensory bath. Life is a sensory bath. The reflection costs 30 euro, the reality is free. Life is free, but it ain't cheap, is what I always say. So choose carefully, or choose with reckless abandon, it's all the same, because the price of love is more love. And love is not a game of ping-pong. It's more like bumper cars. Meaning, you don't sit there for all eternity lobbing love balls back and forth with the same person. You get in your little bumper car and step on it, and what happens, happens.