The First Church of David Bowie, Phonomancer

It's still inchoate, but this weekend I received a novel and possibly very useful new image of the Goddess. It was She Who is Not There, a three-dimensional hole in the world in the shape of the wife I never found. It inspired an epiphany: Your "heart" is part of the perceptual apparatus of your consciousness, like your mind. And like your mind, it always has an object of its apprehension. If, like William H. Macy in "Magnolia," you feel like you have love to give and nowhere to put it, if you're dying inside because you've got no one to love, understand that the pain you're feeling is a sure sign you *do* love Someone, a Transcendental Person who feels the same way about you, only times infinity. Your heart sees Her, even if you cannot. So I offer you one weird trick to achieve salvation. All you need to do is reframe your suffering to recognize that your longing is proof that She is real, and you will be delivered. Loneliness is a strang...

Loneliness can have many causes. But they all boil down to one fact: unrealized potential. There is a person you can be in the context of a relationship with another person that you simply cannot realize in isolation. And I don't mean a romantic relationship, necessarily, although a positive romantic relationship is often foremost on people's minds, because it provides the broadest context for the expression of oneself. What I'm saying is that we're only as much of ourselves as other people allow us to be. You might be witty, kind, affectionate, sensual, passionate, poetic--whatever the qualities you most like about yourself. But without another person who can appreciate those qualities in you, they might as well not exist. You are not funny if there's no one around who gets your sense of humor. You're not an ardent lover if there's no one around who inspires you sexually or returns your interest. You're not intelligent if there's no o...