Oh, love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away,
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.
New York
November 10, 1958Dear Thom:
We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.
First—if you are in love—that’s a good thing—that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.
Second—There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you—of kindness and consideration and respect—not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.
You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply—of course it isn’t puppy love.
But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it—and that I can tell you.
Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.
The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.
If you love someone—there is no possible harm in saying so—only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.
Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.
It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another—but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.
Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I’m glad you have it.
We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.
And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens—The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.
Love,
Fa
Late Fragment
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
Raymond Carver, from New Path to the Waterfall (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989)
(thanks apoetreflects)
…and if it were a question of poetry we would likely find that she is the daughter of love.
What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.
Creativity is almost a mortal sickness. It’s not easy to be happy and creative: With creativity comes great anxiety, great effort, great desire for love. To be creative, you have to be curious, generous, to want to try to understand.
You also have to want to be loved.
Source: Wired
How much must be forgotten, out of love,
how much must be forgiven, even love.
Source: hateshiploveship
my darling
since you and i
are thoroughly haunted by
what neither is any echo of dream
nor any flowering of anyecho(but the echo
of the flower ofDreaming)somewhere behind us
always trying(or sometimes trying under
us) to is it
find somehow(but O gracefully)a
we,entirely whose leastbreathing may surprise
ourselves
—let’s then
despise what is not courage mydarling(for only Nobody knows
where truth grows why
birds fly and especially
who the moon is.
Norman Maclean | Young Men and Fire
Works of art of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch them and be fair to them.
Truth and beauty are not all I need to know. They never were.
Though important, I need something more. It hums and whirs.
Who Wants to Know What Love Is Worth?
All my friends abandon me to work and the joy of their own livesand name their babies after myrtle trees and the dead. And so
to hell with the object and correlative. I am sad and blame
everyone on this earth for sadness. And so to hell with the dark
capabilities of birds. Let the sad catastrophe of breathe beginits lame circulation through my lungs and let this dream of life
after death make its course in a blue journal few will read.
I do not care who knows my secrets and don’t want yours.
The wisdom we glean is small change. Who wants to knowwhat love is worth is a sucker. The force of two bright wings
on the smallest bird imagined haunts who imagines and the engine
is small like the kind on a chainsaw. Two cycles. All I want
from life is to turn and turn and fall once again deeply in lovewith love and be delusional to the point almost exactly
of incarceration. To say it is spring and stall Time long enough
to watch my lover undress and oink like a pig at slaughters
when she comes to bless my body with hers. When she says Oh,yes. It is spring, John Keats, and you are dead and I am sorry.
Truth and beauty are not all I need to know. They never were.
Though important, I need something more. It hums and whirs.
Elle Sinclair | excerpt: “IV: The Liminal” | pg. 46
