jungle fever

We had a work friend of J's over for dinner last night and he's recently married a Brazilian woman who we've never met. I love gatherings like this, a bit of the unknown, wine, decent food.
A and S met and fell in love in an extraordinary way. S is a world traveler, a truth seeker, a man who vibrates on a non-material plane. He had been headed to the Amazon, and on his way through he met a girl, a lovely girl, A. A and S hit it off smashingly, in five days time had fallen quite towards each other, but S was off to the jungle, his nomadic spirit calling him. She wrote her number on a slip of paper, he shoved it in his pocket. Promises were made to call on his way back and off he went.

S trekked for several days from one intentional (experimental organic hallucinogenic) community to the next. He was traveling solo, but had made a few friends. He was hiking one early morning and noticed a bridge up ahead, and in that instant the world went dark.

He came to in a rudimentary hospital, where people he didn't recognize were sewing his ear back onto the side of his head. He had been attacked viciously and left for dead. Robbed. His skull was cracked open. A farmer found him floating face up in a shallow stream. He saved his life, this farmer. He loaded him into the back of a truck and took him to the hospital. Dropped him off and drove away. This man saved his life and S never saw his face.

A nurse found that slip of paper in his pocket while he was still unconscious. She called it and found A. She was informed of what had happened and asked to help. A immediately arranged for S to be flown back to the city, and after more time in a bigger hospital she took him home. He was battered, broken, and had no memory of what happened. She took two weeks out of her life and brought him home and nursed him back to health; spoon feeding him yogurt and sponge bathing him. She cared for him around the clock. She'd only met him the week before.

This was four years ago. They engaged in a bi-country relationship for several years until getting married and then finally, the curse of american immigration processes lifted, A was allowed to come to the states.

After sitting captivated by their story I sat thinking about the cosmic forces at play, the world literally knocking S on the skull to alert him to this love, this path. And as I am thinking this J says wow, that's a lot of psychic shit to deal with as a couple, getting married after she saved your life. The cosmic weight of that must have a huge role in your relationship.

I railed against that at first, the true love, my heart screamed. The divine intervention that was needed to tame the nomad. All because of LOVE. And yet J is right too. But right in a way that doesn't feel quite as romantic. We talked a bit more about it, obviously something they've rattled around already over the years. And I realized again how much I romanticize the concept of love. And yet I can't help myself, this incongruity always present in my view of the world, a blessing and a curse both. And yet I choose to believe.