Relationships are feedback loops. We are in sync of we are not. There are activities we can do together to bring us back into sync. When we are apart our bodies keep pinging for our connection. If we are happy in ourselves, this alone time is a period of renewal, discovery, creativity, adventure. Yes, away from our partner, and still invisibly tethered to our heart’s desire.
Our hearts’ desire attention. Listening. Delighting. Ravishing. Laughing. The best sign of a growing compatibility is the presence of laughter. Genuine belly laughs with your partner are as close as you can get with your clothes on. Physical passion is another level of the feedback loop that is essential to understand.
In connecting with another person physically, we want to merge our hearts and minds. The deeper we go, the more we crave the attention and affection of our lover. Our intimacy deepens with every conversation, every bone ballet we practice. Bringing our hearts closer together, bringing our secret bits to a white-hot heat. Ah. I do miss that. I crave that. I am not chasing a partner.
I am back to preparing myself for showing up fully-empowered and alive. I am attending a modern dance workshop this afternoon with a dear friend who invited me. My friend is ten years my senior and has been dancing his entire life. I have been writing since I was ten. We have a lot to share. We delight in each other’s company. We interrupt and ramble on with chaotic attention and focus.
He and I share a healthy feedback loop. There’s no sexual context, so it’s simpler than it would be if we were in a sexual relationship. He sees me. Reads my books. I see him. Encourage his creative inputs and outputs. Our feedback loop is high-definition and asynchronous. Even when we are apart I can feel his encouragement.
Therefore, take this a step further: you and I are in a relationship right now. I may have written these words a while ago, but you are encountering them for the first time. Are you listening? Do I have your full attention? Are you reading or doing an aural input? (audiobook)
If we tune in to a writer’s work we begin a conversation. The initial questions and answers occur in our minds, often while we are reading. “Oh shit, you didn’t just kill the main character? WFT?” The echoes of great work will continue to pull threads in our minds. The misadventures of Holden Caufield for example. Or the Movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, we all want a Ferris in our lives. He makes things delightful even when it’s falling apart. Approach the day like Ferris.
I don’t know what’s going to happen today, but I’m ready. Or like Winnie the Pooh, “What’s for breakfast?”
Your approach is up to you. Listen. Ready. Study ideas that light up your soul. Develop a writing habit as a way of conversing with yourself. If you are not listening to your thoughts, if you are blasting podcasts, Tiking and Toking, you’re missing the sound of your own voice.
Listen to the sound of my voice. I will lead you home. To you. I will listen, even in my writing, in a way that encourages you to reach out. To others. To me, if you like. But the point is to open yourself up to the fabric of life happening all around you. The present moment of you. Your thoughts. Your obsessions. Your habits. Let’s foster healthier habits. Healthier relationships. There’s a deep longing in my body at the moment to call my most recent sublime lover.
“Hey, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
I won’t. She is not the path forward for me. She has more work to do. More dragons to slay or ride. I cannot teach you to ride. I have dragons of my own.
When I realized my girlfriend (of several years ago) was scrolling Instagram as I was reading her a poem, I paused.
“I’m listening,” she said, noticing.
“That was it,” I lied. No sense trying to self-promote to my partner. She’s not that into poetry.
“Did you like poetry in school?” I asked her several months earlier.
“Not really… But I love to hear you read to me.”
The sound of my voice. Not the words. A soundtrack. I began to realize talking was a much less efficient way of getting my ideas out of my head and into the world. On to paper, and I could share it with more people at once. I shut up and started writing instead of speaking.
Don’t talk about your story. Share your story when it’s finished. Releasing energy to discuss unfinished work is like masturbation. It feels good, but it gets you nowhere.
I stopped reading her my poems or stories. She didn’t follow my work online, so she didn’t hear what was coming. After we broke up for the last time, I went to upstate New York for a music conference. While I was tooling around New York City, I was writing my heart out. I was blogging about the loss of my relationship, my rebooting process in a foreign and energized city. I had a breakdown and an epiphany in a tent on a cold and rainy night in the Adirondacks.
I was worried about my troubled son. I wanted the comfort of checking in with my daughter. The two last people on Earth in my immediate line. I could reach no one. There was no cell service. I reached out to god. I got no answers. I remembered that letting go, non-attachment to the outcome, was my lesson. I was alone. God didn’t really provide comfort. The comfort came in the community of people playing and studying music in the mountain valley with a rushing ice melt stream and nightly rains that seemed to be intent on sweeping us campers down the valley to Woodstock, New York, below.
I was released. I released myself. I fell into a tearful joy of YES. I am okay. I am one with god, my kids, my mom, my favorite sister. I was alone. I was never alone.
We are a loop, you and I. I write. You read or listen. For a moment, we’re in conversation. If you continue, we will have more conversations. My thoughts or words begin to recur in your mind. Weeks later, something happens and you think of me. These words right here are the tether between us. You and me. For now, it’s one way. You are reading. In the future, let’s find the time to meet. To smile at each other in space and time. While I’m here as John, I’m available. Open.
Here’s the message: be open. Or in more modern terms: #beopen
dig into the deeper meaning with the Cloud Pilots
> back to index: see dick run
Look >> There’s a new Facebook Group on *hyperfiction*
Jill On the Beach by Gemini
“Since I can’t find her, I’ll create her with AI.”
marginalia of texts
© 2026 john oakley mcelhenney, all rights reserved
