LOVE AND ITS MANY GUISES

Love reckons by itself—alone—
“As large as I”—relate the Sun
To One who never felt it blaze—
Itself is all the like it has—

by Emily Dickinson

 

LOVE AND ITS MANY GUISES

What does reckon mean? Reckon is to calculate,to accept something as certain, place reliance.

What does love mean? Love is many things. The sun says immense.

Love reckons by itself. It seems ackward to say love can calculate itself. Can it mean love can measure itself? And the Sun answers, as large as I. The sun is exhaustible, almost eternal though we know it’s finite. That’s what love is,ED says.

Love is hard to describe accurately. But those who had been in love and experienced it, felt what it is. Even them are lost for words to describe. The first line is almost asking the question: Have you ever been in love? Itself is the like it has. It seems to say: there is nothing like it.It has to be experienced. Does it mean that ED is describing what she had experienced? Or ED is saying: I’m in love.To be in love is to be ablazed, on fire, like the sun. Love is undescribable and consuming.

Why alone? Because love is sufficient by itself and doesn’t need any descriptions. It will only be all the like.

What about those who had never been in love, the One who never felt it blaze.?They can only observe those who are in love but it is only a reflection of what is experienced. One can only say love is like…?

An article in the Guardian,UK of What Is Love:Love

says what love is:

A theoritical physicist says “love is basically chemistry” citing released of different brain chemicals.

A psychotherapist says “love has many guises” and she cited the different types of love.

A philosopher says “love is a passionate commitment.”

A writer says what love does: “Love drives all great stories.”

Sr. Catherine, a Benedictine nun says what love does: “Love is free yet binds us.” She says we encouter “love: in the life of another – in acts of kindness, generosity and self-sacrifice.Love is life’s greatest blessing.”

ED seems to say love is all these things and more.

Or is this love one of the POSSIBILITIES from the House of Possibility? To write poetry or prose or simply write is like being in love. One becomes attentive, starts to listen, becomes caring. One who is in love notices what’s happening around, words become a song, stories heard become treasures. A writer cherishes small moments. To be in love is to be patient, sensitive, passionate.A writer when ablazed with her works, works alone, alone with her muse.

“Love has many guises”.

 

Decisions, decisions

We have daily choices
Though one may prefer to walk a narrow lane
In perfect balance playing an accordion
Color and line are inseparable
Like peanut butter and jam
And most things in life.

Does survival means choosing one over another
Mortals drink from a glass or a cup
But sometimes we become too choosy
Even when selecting between a peach and pear
As if only one leads to imagination
You walk alone thinking of beauty
Among the terror, the forbidden, the sacred

Should we not be in tune within ourselves
To understand the nature’s resonance
The inner calling? Some gather mushrooms
In the forest, others watch the circling birds
To connect with the sacred.

What is fiction?

“Fiction is the lie through which we tell our truth.”-Albert Camus
note: quoted by Albert Flynn DeSilver in his book,Writing as a Path to Awakening

Greatness & mediocrity

“Neglect nothing that will serve to make you great.”- attributed to Stendhal

“Laziness is a sign of mediocrity.”- attributed to Voltaire

note: both quotations are quoted by Julian Barnes in his book, Keeping An Eye Open, Essays on Art.

Pure crystals

“Pure crystal are those that have perfectly repeating units. You told me this after I asked you what you found beautiful about chemistry. But what of the repating units in life? Most often imperfect.”
-Weike Wang, Chemistry

note: Yesterday Mrs. Abstract and I toured the Degas and with other Impressionists’ exhibit at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

Today I finished Chemistry by Weike Wang. I added Keeping an Eye Open, Essays on Art by Julian Barnes in my reading list.

Uncertainty

Remembering certain moments of elation of the afternoon
And not the whole idle expansion of the day
We walk towards the fountain expecting a cooling mist
It’s windy, we laugh as our hair and faces get wet
The changing detachment and tone in the photographs
Overhead a falcon practices its dives,
Hiding a new flying patterns and surprises
The day ends and we go our separate ways
Not knowing if there is a new day.

Why I like chemistry

“That’s dispersion. That’s when boring white light goes through a prism and comes out a rainbow. Blue light disperses the most, hence the blue sky you see everywhere. Yellow light disperses the least, hence the yellow sun you see in one place.”- Weike Wang, Chemistry

note: I finished reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck just in time for this Saturday Book Club. I’m finishing Journal of a Novel, The East of Eden Letters by John Steinbeck
which is an added reading for the discussion of East of Eden.

I’m reading a new set of books:
Chemistry by Weike Wang,
Forest Park by Nicole Krauss
Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing by Daniel Tammet
World Without Mind by Franklin Foer.

I put back on the shelves the other set of books I was reading before and didn’t finished.

It escapes me

I’m looking at the white heron
stepping daintily on the muddy riverbank at low tide
I’m thinking what I want to write today
The thought escapes and now a fugitive
To search between coherence and acceptance,
silence is not easy, formlessness can’t remain.
The pendulum will swing back
carrying some words stitched together
one half haphazardly, the other half arranged like a quilt.

I’m between thoughts
being ahead or being behind has no meaning when one is not hurrying,
still, we want to reach the finish line.

Finding you and continue our dialogue
can be exhausting though you are buoyant
I want to share your optimism.

Mind over matter

Mark Beaumont did it. Cycling for 79 days to circumnavigate the world. CONGRATULATIONS MARK.

Celebrate his feat: cycle

 

 

Shall I hurry?

Eat the crackers and pick up the crumbs
Never mind the absence of oysters
The atmosphere is warming up fast
Where will you go, she ask
I want to say I mean to ask you.
What is left is the last prediction
The sea will rise and swallow the mountain
We will climb higher and higher
And we may not reach heaven.