Is it possible to use the same word for such different emotions? Love is: To be run off the course. The unexpected happens. It conquers, silently or rapidly, unnoticed, inevitably, also concealed and restrained, but still, it completely captivates. It gets under the skin, right into the nerves, the thoughts. It paints a clef all across the body, a melody of joy. The sense of belonging. Of being at home. Lightness. For how long? For as long as it lasts. “Ne me quitte pas,” by Nina Simone. How long? For how long still? Is it easier to be in love than to love someone? Is love using up, is it burning up? Is it mistaken? It hurts. It demands. It is projection and it blows up its own boundaries at the same time. It does not stop in front of the impossible. It does not care and remains honest. Honest. Love is a new departure every day. Poetry and severity. Radical and tender. Crying. Laughing. Humor. Humor. Humor. ”Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom: “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and let it come in.”
Love as if you have never been hurt. The smell of rain on hot asphalt. Wandering through grass in morning dew, barefoot. Silence after joy. Speaking your mind without fear. Finding comfort in the tenderness of a gaze. Infused with heart – the abyss as embracing as the heights. To dare. To be understood where you do not even understand yourself. To be able to pull back, create space, breathe. To come back, to be there, to be. The smile on a normal day. “The way we were” with Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford. Explore. Let the other be. Jealousy. Eroticism in the monotony of everyday life. Beauty. Uncertainty in being together – the door to exploration. Wild. With the years, love takes longer, marveling at the intimacy. “Don’t Look Now,” a hymn to love and the act of love that becomes the act of life. Love is the most complicated and the hardest and the most beautiful thing in the world. Rustling leaves. Joan Didion “The Year of Magical Thinking.” Love is an ongoing occurrence. Free Fall. Eyes. Skin. Lips. Soft breath. Regular, then more intense. Asleep or awake, the beating heart. Breathless. To sit on a cactus or not?
David Grossmann in ‘To the End of the Land’: “It was not love at first sight, I loved you long before, before I knew you, loved you backwards, even before I existed, because I only became myself when I met you.”
