Eloise and Abelard

I could forget. I could forget it ever existed. Trade one mania for another. I could create an amnesia. Dismiss the very existence of my sorrows.

In Buddhism, they teach you that one way to dispel suffering is to dispel desire. Well, what of dispelling the memory of it.

If I can recall, I can desire and or detest that which I have recalled. I do not want the element of destruction in my life or in my mind, however natural or unnatural it may be, and I do not want to desire something that I cannot, should not, or am not allowed to have.

It would be so much easier if I could just forget it. But I can't. I wear it everyday. I see it everywhere I go. And I hear of it on every radio station and TV show.

I was much happier when I was clean. When I never knew of unrelenting desires. When I was a child and the world and the things in it were the concerns of other and not of mine.

There is a Poem called Eloise and Abelard, from the English Poet Alexander Pope. It is about a forty year old French teacher 'Abelard' and an eighteen year old student 'Eloise' who he falls in love with in the eighteenth century.

As the story goes, and it is a true one, Abelard gets Eloise pregnant. They marry in secret against the wishes of her her family and her family in turn contracts a gang of thugs to castrate Abelard as he sleeps.

Abelard being a teacher and philosopher takes this in stride and adopts the life of a Eunuch, first joining a monastery and then living the life of a hermit.

Eloise does not take it so easily. She is still in love with him. She still want to make love to him and dreams about it even though it is physically impossible.

They exchange a series of four letters which become the subject of folklore and history and the subject of Mr. Pope's poem which takes the point of view of Eloise who lusts for the love of Abelard but is unable to be quenched of it.

Instead she begs to forget. She says only God can take the place of her dear Abelard and wants to forget that he ever became.

Such is my pain. Such is my dementia.

I cannot dispel desire when it arises and I will not create destruction so I can detest something. My own personal morality is my folly.

I want what is not possible. I have experienced a fantasy and believed it to be real. Yoda said to Anakin, you must learn to let go the things that you fear to lose. Wise words.

"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;"
Eloise and Abelard,
Alexander Pope