"Are you saying that Ross' model of the sun is incomplete. Are you saying that his model still reflects the Byzantine model of a top down, vertical flow? It appears to me that it does. He should have put up many suns, because love unfolds as a lateral flow, a flow that is not imposing, but is a flow in which we can unite. Is that what you are hinting at?"

      Anton nodded. "This didn't come from Ross, do you agree? It came from Nicolai. Actually, it came from a woman by the name of Olive," Anton added.

      "Olive got the idea from me," I said to her to her astonishment, "and I got it from a woman in Leipzig, named Helen, and she got it from some historical records of the year 1648 when a great peace was created, and all that came out of the Renaissance," I said to her. "My problem has been that I didn't understand what it all meant, until recently, and even then, it seems you had to remind me of it, so that I could acknowledge it."

      "Does this change anything?" she asked.

      "I think it adds something," I replied. "It seems to me that we made a breakthrough that has already been made a long time ago, that apparently needs to be made again and again."

      "But that doesn't take anything away from what we have accomplished," said Anton. "It makes it more precious to me. Just imagine, Peter, our breakthrough in love may have been build on a foundation that was laid over six-hundred years ago." Anton paused. "Except, why do we find it so difficult today to understand it?"

      "Difficult is an understatement," I said to Anton. "When I made my speech in Moscow on the Byzantine model, it appears that I didn't even understand the words that came out of my own mouth. I had a notion of something that appeared to be extremely important, and I ran with it. Sure, I got the technical aspects correct, but I didn't understand what I was saying. I said a lot of things in those days that I didn't understand. I made a great big speech about these things, and I didn't hear my own words."

     "I realize that you didn't," said Anton, "but I didn't realize that then. That's why I hurt so badly. You were saying one thing, and did the opposite. I saw it as a sign of dishonesty when your actions where in complete denial to what you had said. I felt insulted. It didn't occur to me until the very end of the conference there was no dishonesty involved at all, that the apparent dishonesty was merely the result of mental blindness. You simply hadn't heard your own words. I couldn't despise you for that. You were so engrossed with the Byzantine model, so intensively, that you began to embody it yourself with knowing that you did. I said to myself that it wasn't a rotten trait of character that you couldn't hear what you had said yourself, nor understand what you had told the world, and me and that I was right. It was through Nicolai, however, that I found all of that out. Of course, that's all ancient history now."

      I felt ashamed suddenly and apologized. I felt sad that painful memories were drawn into our beautiful evening together.

      "Don't get me wrong," she countered my sadness. "I am glad that you had brought the Byzantine model into the open. We might not be sitting here if you hadn't. Even though you stumbled and crashed, you were like an ice-dancer that pioneered the quadruple jump at a time when everybody was doing just doubles. So what, that you crashed. It would have been worse if you hadn't tried. We have moved ahead because of your daring."

      I thanked her for those kind words with a kiss. We kissed right across our little table.

      "Do you realize that Nicolai might have been the only person at the conference, if not in the world, who actually understood what you were saying in Moscow. Nicolai said that you were exceedingly daring, and he loved you for it. He was especially impressed by your presentation of what the opposite of the Byzantine model must be. Nobody had ever dared to present love as a lateral flow that unfolds from self-love. That was unheard of. But you said it. You said that even a mother's love for her baby comes from that self-love that unfolds as an out-flowing expression of what she values deep in her heart. You said that this outflow of love comes from our self-love. Nicolai thought that this image of love was absolutely marvelous, and so did I later on."

Next Page

|| - page index - || - chapter index - || - Exit - ||

Stories about  Love from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche