In further preparation of Valentine’s Day, I share the following reflection from an email I sent to friends in May of 2007. I was returning to the United States after two months of living on the shores of Lago Atitlan, Guatemala. I was “searching for love in all the wrong places, looking for love in too many faces.” It was a time of wonder, beauty, confusion, and many maniacally misguided adventures in love.

Rob Brezney May 16th 2007 horoscope for Virgo:  Welcome to the never-ending brainstorm session,” reads an advertisement for Barclays Bank, one of the most successful financial institutions in the world. It’s an approach that has some similarities to the ethic that prevails at Toyota, the company that makes the world’s best-selling car. Its core principle is kaizen, a Japanese word meaning “continuous improvement,” though it can also be translated as “to take apart and put back together in a better way.”

A blend of these attitudes is what I recommend to you during the coming weeks, Virgo: kaizen meets the never-ending brainstorm.

I’m praying for an eloquent way to communicate the latest developments of this traveling heart. Since I feel fairly lost and mortally shortsighted, I opted to introduce this, my latest traveling update for my beloved host of angelic friends, with this apt and uncanny Brezney horoscope.

Even before knowing this word, the concept of “kaizen” has been my life obsession, and only it can explain why I’m currently wandering lost and confused through this Twilight Zone version of the California mind-space.

At least that is what I’ve been comforting myself saying over past few months of dramatic ups-and-downs. I am endlessly grateful for this traveling adventure that I have created for myself, but sometimes it feels like my heart is being spooned and slurped down by the heartless gods of fortune.

Leaving Guatemala was really hard.

During my last week in San Marcos, I had a bon-voyage love affair with a beautiful blonde Swiss man of twenty-five years named Pan. My magical goddess friend, Mara, dubbed him “The Cherub” because he looks like a curly-locked, golden-peach version of Jesus Christ ascending to heaven. He speaks five languages, although English, not so well, which of course added to his considerable charm. Pan was raised by two lesbians and loves to give marathon sessions of cunnilingus. I love to receive such attention, so for a few blissful days, we were quite the match.

Of him, I was truly fond, but I was a bit disappointed when he bailed out of our plans to gshroom trip together on my final night in San Marcos. He looked at me with those deep, sensitive, blue eyes and said he was feeling the need to have private time. I could definitely appreciate that, but we had not spent the previous two days together, and it was my final night. Beautiful or not, a closed door is a closed door, and a fling is a fling. I give thanks for the affection shown me, and I gracefully exit when the dance is over.

I took my gshrooms solo with style and dignity. With my typical bravado and sense of humor, I kissed the boys – Pan and Alexicoco, another beautiful and seductive example of the male form whom I was lucky enough to not get amorously involved with, and stumbled in the night along the narrow, unlit, dirt pathways of the Guatemalan highland selva to the house of Balam. Balam is a young and promising prince of the Mayan mysteries being the son of a professional priestess, and during my time in Guatemala we played many intriguing social games of hide-and-seek with each other becoming glorious friends in the process.

Balam bolstered my heart with loving kindness, hilarious fun, and attention. He allowed me to interrupt his viewing of the movie, The Matrix, to share my experience as I rolled around his bed deliriously crying out, “I don’t want to go! I want to stay!”

In the two months I spent there, San Marcos became my home- the first place I could honestly say I was quite content to remain. Despite all the poverty, dog shit, and intestinal parasites, Lago Atitlan was heaven on earth for me. It burned my heart to self-evict from its shores. Balam gave me a lollipop and promised it would make me happy.

Balam also gave me sweet, gentle kisses, and tender caresses and told me everything would be alright. He told me he was proud of me. I told Balam I loved him, and I always will. I meant it too, although sadly we no longer talk, which is another story.

Our last night together in San Marcos was a riotous rock-and-roll rompous, jumping around Balam’s bedroom and laughing like a pair of drunken banshees on his jaguar-print blanketed bed. Our beautiful friends, Sandy and Rebekah, arrived in time to write messages of humorous love all over my body with a black Sharpie marker. Sandy wrote on my belly to not let me on the plane as a bomb was hidden inside me, and she drew a heart on my shoulder that said, “I <3 Sandy.” I cradled the huge Herkimer diamond I had just rescued from Alexicoco and returned to Balam. I told Balam, if he ever wanted me to come to him, all he had to do was to send this Herkimer diamond, and I would come. One day he would, and I did, but that is another story.

My only regret is that in my hedonistic joy, I didn’t think to move this spontaneous party to my beloved Mara’s place where she lay fighting fever and intestinal sickness. She would have loved that. Sometimes, I am completely self-absorbed, and I hope to make up for it one day.

Mara and another traveling gypsy named Shashona accompanied me to Guatemala City the next day on a shuttle so that I could catch my 7am flight to Miami on Saturday morning. Mara had a painful stomach infection and fever, but she insisted on accompanying me anyway. I have to call that love in the highest order. It killed me to leave, and Mara being by my side was the only thing that made leaving my darling lake bearable.

We spent the night in Guate Zona 5 at the house of Sandy’s brother, a Guatemalan dj and artesano whose path has been illuminated by mescalero-guided visions he experienced two years before. We met him a month before at Rik’s house partying. He had these huge, tranquil, green eyes that always made me feel suspended in time and space whenever he held me in his gaze. As he looked into my eyes and held my hands, he thanked me for embodying the spirit of happiness for him. I was exhausted, but I felt like I was being escorted by angels out of Guate back to the United States.

My flights to Miami and San Fran were long, but love held me in its open palms. I sucked on Balam’s lollipop on the flight from Miami to San Francisco, and it was the most delicious gum-centered lollipop I will ever eat. It did make me happy to remember Balam’s love, and I’m sure it made Balam laugh to imagine me sucking his lollipop of guaranteed happiness.

Aaron and Erik, friends I had made the previous year at the 2006 Burning Man were there to pick me up at the SFO airport. During my last night in San Marcos, I called Erik, the past lover I had set my hopes on, to solidify my landing plans. I was to spend the night with Erik, and I assumed the week since he said he’d be there several days for business.

Initially, I enjoyed a superstar reception thanks to Erik. Aaron dropped us off at the Hyatt Regency Hotel where we enjoyed a view of San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf from a seventeenth floor balcony. Erik drew me a perfectly temperatured bubble bath, and we had orgasmic sushi at a sumptuously posh restaurant called Chaya while being serenaded by the soothing sounds of a live jazz ensemble. The love-making was pretty exciting too, as everything seemed to glow with fated romance.

It was a positively floor-leveling, wet dream that blew away any possible contenders for my heart out of the water .  .  .  .  .  .

That is until I learned that Erik would be dropping me off at 4:30pm the next afternoon so he could spend time with some woman named Inger. I heard him tell his sister on the phone that she would be joining him at his sister’s dinner party at 6:30pm the following evening.

OUCH!

I know it was never his goal to deceive me. That was clear enough. I was sitting in the passenger seat of his rental car hearing all of this clearly as he had turned down the music to speak with his sister on his cellphone.

It was my own damn hope that some part of him was secretly crazy about me. I thought if I showed up with intentions of relocating to California, he would feel free to pursue a love relationship with me. Hope and attachment are twin motherfuckers. I am my own greatest dope. I would have chosen to come to California anyway. I was just harboring the hope that he might be a part of my destiny.

In my brief experience with him, Erik seemed to answer straightforward questions truthfully. Even though it hurt my pride immensely to ask a question I already knew the answer to, sometimes life demands that I act like an adult. So I plucked up the courage to ask him, after lunch, if he was seeing anybody.

Uggh!

He said that he wasn’t having sex with anyone currently, except for me that morning obviously, but that he was “dating.” From what I could see, I had the sole honor of being his shag bunny on this particular occasion. I have to admit, he took expert care of me for nearly twenty-four hours. Did I mention he spent the morning after he picked me up doing a 5k run with his sister, and he did not invite me to meet her? He never pushed for more than I was willing to give him with open arms. I don’t believe he tried to deceive me or manipulate me, and throwing a fit did not seem advantageous to me.

As painful emotions threatened to engulf me and my tear ducts began to flood, I maintained a dignified silence. I was not going to behave like an amateur monkey for this man. He could sense the rigidity of my energy in response to his answer. He tried to reason with me by saying “You don’t even know where you’re living.”

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!

That statement sounded so logical and unfeeling. It successfully shredded the grandiose view I had of my traveling adventure being one of romantic freedom and self-reclamation. I experienced yet another death of my romantic ego and pride. Erik didn’t even consider me a candidate for dating, because the question of where I would live was up in the air.

I thought my unsolidified plans for where I would live come September made me the ideal woman to begin courting. I can bend like the reeds and plant myself wherever the soil is richest and the sun brightest. Instead, it seems I am only qualified for flaky flings of an exotic and random nature.

I swallowed my pride some more to ask another question I already knew would yield another unflattering answer. I asked him how he felt about me.

He seemed confused by my questions, and without answering, he asked what I was thinking. I said that I wanted to know what his feelings about me were, separate from facts, logic, and my current lack of a permanent mailing address. Blood drained from head leaving me woozily anticipating his answer in mute dread.

He said he liked me.

He said this as if he was offering me a slice of pizza.

Instead of a reunion with fated love, I was facing cold dispassionate facts. He wanted to know where he could drop me off. I had been riding such a wave of self-delusion, I had made no plans for where I would go once Erik inevitably returned to Los Angeles. In truth, I thought I would be spending at least a couple more days with him in San Francisco since his trip was not finished. The time he had allotted for me was clearly through though.

I quickly gathered my wits enough to call another past lover in San Franisco to ask if I could spend the week at his place before I left for Esalen in Big Sur. Thankfully he was willing and able to take me in, because in that moment, I was completely at a loss to think straight, and I had two huge suitcases that were obnoxious to carry around solo. After all, I had been entertaining secret hopes to relocate for good. The disappointment and anguish were crashing like storm waves in my head and heart.

I can dress this last attempt at love any way that I like, but that’s all it would be – me dressing it up. Right now, I feel like cupid dressed in drag singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” with a grizzled, smoke-strained, contralto voice. I led myself astray in the pursuit of love again. Lord! I could die blissfully laughing if I weren’t the butt of my own joke. As it is, I will probably die laughing anyway- because it feels better than crying.

Somehow, at this moment, I’m not angry with Erik. I don’t like expecting anybody to be anyone other than who he is. I gave him a sincere goodbye kiss as he disappeared into the Sunset section of San Francisco to pick up his date for his sister’s dinner party.

It wasn’t his “dating” other women that really hurt me. I could have even accepted if he had other lovers. It’s been many moons since we’ve been far apart geographically. I had not been in touch during the two months I was in Guate. I certainly have been satisfying my need for sharing physical intimacy.

I’ll tell you what cuts me jagged. I was so crazy about that man that I was only too happy to reschedule flights, clear schedules, and invent romantic stories about detours in the interests of  spending more time with him while he was dropping me off early so he could take someone else to his sister’s.

Why did I set myself up for this profound disappointment?

Because I wanted to believe he was “The One”. I made up a love story and cast him as the leading role while I cast myself as the elusive, spirited, gypsy woman who would gladly lay aside her adventures to become his muse and helpmate. Instead of asking for the guidance of the Universe, I made up a fantastic adventure romance and set out to live it to the fullest with great earnest.

At the moment my friend is sleeping next to me waiting for me to finish writing so we can go food shopping at Trader Joe’s. He knows all about this most recent fumbling and a few other romantic debacles, and he is still is kind enough to have me stay at his house until Sunday and to spend quality time no matter where I end up living. He is willing to be my friend which means a world of goodness to me.

As Blanche DuBois said in A Streetcar Named Desire, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” With each day that passes, I grow to recognize the strange as my friend. I sense I am fated to a love more profound than any of my child-like fantasies, and I may have to grow up quite a bit before I realize it. Let the never-ending “kaizen” session continue.