When Chris and I were a month or so into dating, deeply taken with each other and craving every detail of the other's life, we went on a hike at Land's End in San Francisco and surprised a skunk. His spray literally rained down on us. Chaos — and baths in tomato soup for everyone, including the dogs — ensued. It was one of those situations that in normal life would be considered a total nightmare, but in falling-in-love life was completely charming.
I've been thinking about love a lot recently, in large part because of the crushingly patient love detailed in this photographic essay about the gay marriages in NY over the weekend. Some of the people who got married had been together for decades, long past the time that half of most marriages end in divorce, and yet they raced to the courthouse to make it official. (Civil rights are pretty darn motivating, but love weighs heavily in the mix, just look at these pictures.)
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| Photos from http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/24/nyregion/20110724-gaymarriage-portraits.html |
On a totally separate (love) note, I was at a meeting last night and a woman mentioned that her seven-year-old son was attempting to sell delphiniums at the farmer's market but hadn't made a sale yet. When the meeting concluded, a crew of women headed straight over to the market to buy him out. There was some love. Sweet, protective and innate love for that woman and for that boy, but also for any mother in distress and any child full of expectation.
Last week, I ran across a quote and a poem about love that I've been stewing on for days.
From Ranier Maria Rilke:
Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.
From Pablo Neruda:
Sonnet 17
I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz, or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom, and carries hidden within itself the light of those flowers, and thanks to your love, darkly in my body lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I know no other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you; so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that I close.
Who can tell it like Pablo Neruda?
Man, I love that guy.
Does his experience of intimacy conflict with Rilke's notion of distance between beloved, or can they coexist? That's what's teasing my brain.
I fear this may have been a long and rambling post, worthy of a reward for anyone who's endured. Here's what I've got:
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| Big Sky Love. |
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