Putting the final touches to this book, I search through my mementos for an academic essay of Karl’s. I come upon a page with lyrics from a song by Kirtana, “Blessed Life”.

Karl had typed it out and added his own subtitle: On Finding The Journey.

I stop, breathe, consider it, and weep.

I had erroneously assumed that Karl, being in some ways an uncommunicative “guy”, was living a barren emotional and spiritual life. Now, I am positive he believed he was living “a blessed life”. He writes: 

What a blessed life
What a lucky find
The ending of the search
The stopping of my mind
How can I express
The changes taking place
The only words I guess
Would be amazing grace

And I cannot say how
This blessing came to be
I only know that now
An arrow’s piercing me
And so you have my heart
And nothing is the same
I am falling into love
Like a moth into a flame…

And I am falling into love
Like a moth into a flame

What a lucky heart
Burdened by the weight
Of a love too big to bear
And what a hopeless fate
To be in the tiger’s jaws
Having lost the chase
Dying into life
What a deep embrace

What a blessed life

Dying into life

In common with Kirtana, my sweet Beloved is “dying into life”.

What a deep embrace!

At the bottom of that page, Karl types a quotation from Rumi:

“Lovers of God, sometimes a door opens, and a human being becomes a way for GRACE to come through.”

Karl chooses to capitalize Grace.

Fortuitously, I discover these gems from Karl’s journal during the writing of this book to clarify my perceptions.

It’s good to be wanted

Karl’s writing about “it’s good to be wanted”, “The Love,” and “Grace” is remarkable because the man speaking these words vowed to keep his feelings to himself – at all costs – as a basic form of self-protection he learned as a small child.

SECRETS

In mid-May 1993, two months after we met, Karl writes this in his journal:

It’s amazing how hard it can be to talk about the way you feel, especially when you adopt as one of your principles “not to tell anyone anything that could be used to your disadvantage or divulge things (language, actions) that cause you pain.”

After wrestling with the question for a few days, he cries out:

Fuck the control. Give it the works!