What Is Love?

and how can you know for sure when what's there is not merely a flicker of something familiar,
or that which we're not letting in for fear of being loved differently? newly?

when is love a burden? is it possible to be shut off from more love?

where is love when you need it the most? can love be un-generous? can hearts be full of heartbreak and still let in a tiny shaft of new love?

it's dreadful that we can love and hurt with the same depth, the same violence, the same grief.

i am a hopeless romantic and yet i chose to be alone today. i have placed someone close, far. i have created an impasse. for quiet and contemplation and a wish for clarity.

energetically love and grief posses a similar trait. their core is untenable, but their echo is heard by every pore, every sense. and these sounds, these waves, they are heard and felt in varying degrees of the core and its echos for years and days and hours and minutes until we're no longer consciously alive.

like a slap that is a shock, and then a reaction, skin red where blood rushes to the surface, our own hand reflexively coming to meet the place on the cheek, the confusion, the spiraling-- feeling lost, the tingling skin electrically trying to rewire the flesh, the settling, and later the replaying of a split moment. and forever after-- the memory which is both true and untrue for all parties witness and engaged in the moment.

the memories are the echos, the reverberation from the core, a core we can't touch. we think we know it. we think we know how much our hearts can encompass. we make distinctions about love and grief to box it in, make it safe, tower over it to say we understand it. we look for the best adjectives. but in the end these are vast beyond comprehension and can only be conveyed, as information to ourselves and that which we attempt to convey to others, in person. touch, scent, taste, sound, sight.

what is love?

Comments

[HungryHippo]

Cheers and happy Valentine's Day from another hopeless romantic! As well as being uncomprehensible, love is a wonderful thing to reflect upon and spread around. Thank you for a great post and something to think about on a cold day in February.

[kudzu]

Clicked on last year's post and saw that Biggles and I were the first two commentators. My take on the situration is very much the same and I find it impossible that it has been a year since then!

Meanwhile, thanks for another heartfelt post that speaks bravely.

[Jill]

I think love in a universal sense has an "is" ness, in fact may be all there "is". But love in a human, day-to-day sense is much more of an action verb than a to-be verb. We choose to love when we choose to make eye contact, to let in a touch, or phrase, or to offer same; when we move from kindness and compassion rather than fear and contraction; when pay deep, close, unadulterated attention. When we do this, the objects of our love open, blossom and grow.

[hungry girl]

I like your complex take on a day that can be sickly sweet - you've added some rich and interesting and paradoxical flavours, as usual.

[betsy russ]

Love is God.