A Change in the Wind
In my medical experience as well as in my own life I have again and again been faced with the mystery of love, and have never been able to explain what it is. Like Job, I have had to “lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer.”
–Carl Jung
From an untitled post at Soaked in Soul: "I used to be a hopeless romantic. I am still a hopeless romantic. I used to believe that love was the highest value. I still believe that love is the highest value. I don’t expect to be happy. I don’t imagine that I will find love, whatever that means,Continue reading “Love as a force of nature: Jeanette Winterson”
While walking the Appalachian Trail with a friend a couple of weeks ago, all through Georgia and into far western North Carolina I found myself in the company of wild violets. Brought to mind this quote from the fourth of Rilke's wide-ranging and ever-fascinating Letters to a Young Poet: …all beauty in plants and animalsContinue reading “Rilke: gathering the sweetnessnesses of plant love”
How to live (and love) with despair in our hearts is a question our disaster-prone century must face. And with the possible exceptions of Shakespeare and Chekhov, no dramatist has shown us how to face emotional disaster with the verve of Tennessee Williams. That's the subtext of this lovely essay on Williams, who turns 100Continue reading “Tennessee Williams: How to live (and love) past despair”
Basketball is as difficult a game to referee as any, it's widely agreed, which is why refs able to take the pressure get paid the big bucks in the National Basketball Association. If they're respected they can work for years, far longer than players or even most coaches. This makes them in a sense theContinue reading “A ref for the ages: Dick Bavetta refuses to retire”
From a fascinating exchange of letters between Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac: . “Realize, Allen, that if all the world were green, there would be no such thing as the color green. Similarly, men cannot know what it is to be together without otherwise knowing what it is to be apart. If all the worldContinue reading “The world and we are green: Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac debate love”
So writes Charles Bowden, in the award-winning Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing. This is an "environmental" book, but I don't believe Bowden ever mentions that word. Yet unlike nearly every other book about nature I can think save a couple written by John Muir or Edward Abbey, this "environmental" book does bring up "love"Continue reading “Love is the engine, but love is not remembered”
An amazing true story, via poet Kimiko Hahn and Daily Poetry. Hahn's new book, Toxic Flora, was inspired by science stories in The New York Times. Xenicus Longipes The four known species of bush wren in New Zealand are, by now, endangered or extinct. Possessing trifling tails and wings, none fly far— instead they hopContinue reading “Love and extinction”
So says, in effect, Vera Pavlova: Multiplying in a column M by F by Vera Pavlova Multiplying in a column M by F do we get one or two as a result? May the body stay glued to the soul, may the soul fear the body. Do I ask too much? I only wish theContinue reading “Only Russians can still write love poetry”
Finally will it not be enough,after much living, aftermuch love, after much dyingof those you have loved,to sit on the porch near sundownwith your eyes simply open,watching the wind shape the cloudsinto the shapes of clouds? Even then you will rememberthe history of love, shaped in the shapes of flesh, everchanbgngas the clouds that pass,Continue reading “The Future of Love”
Kit Stolz