Perhaps Love

  "When we usually say 'love story' we imagine, maybe, a story about, people getting together. We're usually talking about courtship stories. This isn't a love story in that sense."  ~Kazuo Ishiguro, novelist
 
        In Ishiguro's  book the "The Buried Giant", an aging couple must try to make it to a mystical island by boat to find their son. In order  to reach this island a boatman tell them,
"Only those couples who can prove to the boatman that their love is perfect and true, without bitterness or jealousy or shame, can cross the water together, in the same boat, to the island."

    John Denver's song about love is full or puzzles and riddles:

"Perhaps love is like an ocean full of conflict, full of pain."

  In Denver's interview below, before he sings "Perhaps Love" live, he describes his own personal life and marriage that ended in divorce. His personal love story seems to be similar to the love described by Ishiguro.

    Can love always survive? Can love overcome the conflict? These questions are huge and not easy to tackle or understand. 

    Love and the memory of love are our best defenses against the torrent ocean. 

There are no guarantees that any of us will reach the island. The trip itself is what is most important. In any language the sentiments of the song seems to be its universal appeal.

Love and the Apocalypse

 

                                                                        Tiny Apocalypse by David Byrne

   Love is the only sensible action when you are near an apocalypse. WE  must turn despair into action and love. The day doesn't really end at midnight; it ends when we can find a way to say "I love you" and try to find away to spread love into the world.
   We all live in this world. How do we help each other? How do we save each other and the planet? We first have to ask ourselves a question, can we solve the world's problems with less love or more love for each other?
     Viktor Frankl,  writer and survivor of a near apocalypse, the concentration camps of World War II, said it best in his book  Man's Search for Meaning:

“For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.” 

Rain and Paradise

                   

             Masaaki Kishibe "Rainy Window"

                          

 “After Paradise,” by Czeslaw Milosz

Don’t run anymore. Quiet. How softly it rains
On the roofs of the city. How perfect
All things are. Now, for the two of you
Waking up in a royal bed by a garret window.

Read more here

  Many people complain when there's rain. They forget that love is like a portico (covered porch) protecting us from the rain and snow.  The rain on the roof is just a soft reminder to pay attention. Czeslaw Milosz tells us to slow down and listen. If you have love in your life, then you have a precious gift.

 When you are deep in love,  you are transformed to a life without bitterness.  You create a new world, an earthly paradise. If you are "grateful and attentive" to this gift of love,  then after finding paradise,  it will remain beside you when you awake each morning. The poet Milosz reminds us that there is rain even in paradise, but it is soft and perfect. 

Sunshine and Sunglasses

Where there is love, there is sunshine. The whole world shimmers and creatures seem brighter, warmer and iridescent. Living things grow in sunshine and love is no exception. Read Nikki Giovanni's poem (below) from her book of poems "Bicycles".

"In Migrations, one of her strongest poems, she explores those forces that drive wild creatures from one seasonal home to another."

The sun returns

To the arctic circle
From its winter rest

The grasses sprout
Seducing the winged
And the hoofed

Polar bears and their cubs
Must flee
Before the ice
Breaks up...

... unflinchingly face:

Hunger
Thirst
Predators
Winds
Rains
Uncertainties

As would I
For you

   Now that the season of sunshine is beginning, let us take out our sunglasses and open our hearts to love. You can read Nikki Giovanni's advice on how to write a love poem here.

Blackbird Song

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

    by Wallace Stevens (excerpt)

Section VII

"O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?"

  The things in life that give us the greatest pleasure are often right in front of us.  If we recognize that fact, and respond to local beauty, there is no need to "imagine golden birds" or other mythology. Watch, Look and Listen for Love. 
Love feeds us both physically and spiritually. 
   Listen to the song of the blackbird above. When I hear it, I am no longer a thin man of Haddam. I feel like I have heard a beautiful song. Perhaps it is also serenading the women around us. At that moment, the man, the woman and the blackbird are one.

"Three Men Walking" - Alberto Giacometti 

                                     
                                        

Seeing Love

Whenever you see love, you can somersault over the hurtful obstacles of life. That  love can be for beauty, nature, a person, or a song. Love is a force or energy more powerful than anything that opposes love.
   In Milton's  Sonnet, O Nightingale, the nightingale's warble symbolizes love as a "fresh hope" for Lovers.

 

O Nightingale

John Milton
O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy Spray
Warbl’st at eeve, when all the Woods are still,
Thou with fresh hope the Lovers heart dost fill,
While the jolly hours lead on propitious May,
Thy liquid notes that close the eye of Day,
First heard before the shallow Cuccoo’s bill
Portend success in love; O if Jove’s will
Have linkt that amorous power to thy soft lay,
Now timely sing, ere the rude Bird of Hate
Foretell my hopeles doom in som Grove ny:
As thou from yeer to yeer hast sung too late
For my relief; yet hadst no reason why,
Whether the Muse, or Love call thee his mate,
Both them I serve, and of their train am I.

Instead of the nightingale, we have the pretty "liquid notes" of Steve Wariner to serenade us, in this most propitious month of May.

Breath

  

 

"To take someone's breath 

away" is an English idiom that means  "to overwhelm someone with beauty or grandeur; to surprise or astound someone."  Examples are "The magnificent painting took my breath away."  or  "My darling looked so beautiful that she took my breath away."   
     

Breathing is not easier when you are in love.  You can count your  breaths till you see each other again. You can get become breathless with anticipation. Still a life with love is the best way to breathe. Open the windows to love.