I wrote: I must ask you to be more detailed about love, more specific. What is love? Exactly? Well, that's impossible, but the sense of love, feeling love has so many different forms and tones, I wonder if we can find metaphors to express what this quality of love is that we value so highly?
MB and Ken have begun to respond, though I hope to hear more!
As the day goes on, I will add more to this post. For now, I would say love is:
That sacred place of the heart where you care for another's happiness and well being with a sense of permanence. Love is the deep caring, no matter what the outcome, because there is a serious intent beneath the surfaces that is trustworthy, reliable, strong, withstanding. Love is letting someone love you. It is easy with our children, this deep committment to love through all the joys and all the trials. I would put the strength of the mother-child bond at the heart of what I understand about love, because it is resilient, never-ending, deep, caring, strong, rather than the model of romantic love; in other words, the deepest love for me is familial, and romantic love is most pure and strong when it approaches the lifelong trust and comfort of the familial.
12:03pm. Ah, now, no, that doesn't work either. See Adriana Bliss's post on the mother as couch.
Not to throw out lovemaking with the baby and the bathwater! Romantic love, with its roots in courtly love, the adoration of the beloved from afar, is based all too often on illusions. What I mean, I think, is if romantic love could have the depth and continuity of familial love then it would be invincible. When I see this with couples who are as in love with each other 20 or 30 years on, that's what I think the miracle is. There's no separation of the muse from your partner. Romantic and familial love converge and nourish each other in spectacular ways.
Sheath of feeling. Words groping to touch air.
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ReplyDeleteforever. Exquisite love is partner to certain loss - certain loss, but what of that? Which real lover would drink less deeply of the draft for knowing loss? And even there, love is no less forever. Do I understand light correctly in thinking that light, once let loose in the universe, goes on forever? If so, then light and love are kin, and I mean to live there. -mg
Mary, that's poetry. Pure and simple. Like you, I've always thought the true opposites weren't love and hate, but love and grief. Always loss, yes. But drink deeply... which is also very Sufi, and actually is what the title, Rubies In Crystal refers to, the wine of life, the 'draft'... and light is expanding, has been since the big bang, and defines the universe itself... beautiful imagery.
ReplyDeleteI kept coming back to re-read this yesterday, stumbling over your last two sentences. I finally realized that while the last sentence I agree with wholeheartedly, the second one I don't. Or perhaps I misinterpret. I can only speak from my experience, of course, but my muse has not been the same thing as, has not resided in, my partner. But maybe you didn't mean that?
ReplyDeleteOh, I meant that the inspiring person is your partner. Not that it resides in them, though, I suppose, in a way, it does. My friend who's quite a well known choral composer has been utterly in love with his wife for 15 years, this a man who was unable to settle before, such a turn over of women. She is his muse, most definitely. Because he loves her so deeply, she inspires him. There is a convergence of the muse and the partner... does that make more sense now?
ReplyDeleteThank you for pointing out the difficulty of that sentence; it needs more clarification. If, that is, it could be a more-or-less true statement in certain very good marriages.
So beautiful are your pictures of love, Brenda, so ideal. As I read the descriptions of love, I find myself immersed in its complications - in the rarity of it. Those who can live the convergence are supremely lucky.
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