Love, Always Love
Image
7
Tag Archives: Romance
The Way It Ought to Be
I’m not what you might think of as a big traditionalist in the ways of romance–at least, if you think of those things packaged in the way that American commercial enterprise would have us think the norm or the appropriate mode. It may be that I’m a little too tomboy at heart and in physique to wear either the girly or the sexy look with any credible panache. There’s more than a small chance that I’m too lazy and cheap to buy cards and flowers for my nearest and dearest with any regularity. Chocolates, yes, but you know that I’m going to expect to share in their consumption. I’m far from selfless enough to be a true romantic either, I guess. Otherwise, around our place the romantic expressions are more often found in filling an empty gas tank, caulking the shower door, making lunch, washing socks. All of that sort of glamorous stuff.
I’m so unromantic in the popular sense, in fact, that despite being both shy and kind of prudish, I moved in with my intended life partner before I married him–yes, before I even warned him of my intent to marry him. Or to stick to him like glue for the rest of my life if he was shy of the whole getting-married thing, having done that before. Despite my love of pomp and circumstance and ritual, I was prepared to forgo the whole dress-up extravaganza and either commit to the partnership in heart and hand only or just keep the legal transactions simple and stand in front of a Justice of the Peace somewhere and then party later with family and friends. (Because, let’s face it, any excuse for a good and love-filled party is not entirely to be passed by, wishes for simplicity aside.)
As it turned out, we had a pretty spectacular wedding day, but it was really icing on the proverbial cake. One of the central beauties of that day was an anthem composed for us by our dear friend, with a text my intended chose from the enigmatic and marvelous Song of Songs that includes the phrase ‘love is as strong as death’–this accompanied by other close friends playing organ and horn and a superb choir of yet more friends (also conducted by the composer). Hard to get more romantic than that. But that was all well after I’d realized that a big spectacle wasn’t necessary to validate the spectacular thing that had already happened within.
All of this because at some point pretty early in our relationship, I knew with complete and unshakeable conviction that when I was with this person I was where I ought to be. It was so clearly and plainly the place and state in which I was meant to exist that I felt it in my bones. I was at home in his house the first time I stopped by for a visit–even though you all know full well that I reinvented that physical space from Day One around the two of us. The music that I heard was not just the glorious sound of his choirs welling up around me but was also a new rhythm in my heartbeat that was more confident, more joyful, and more purely contented than it had ever felt before, in those days before I even knew it could feel this lovely new way. A new sense of the world skewing into proper perspective that suffused my brain.
And that, to me, is how true romance ought to be. Genuinely loving and playful and silly and passionate and supportive and all of that, yes, but most of all, merely having the recognizable quality of a homecoming, every single time we come together. Flowers and candy and frills and thrills are all very welcome in their own right, but they have nothing on a sense of wholeness that only grows with time and no matter how it evolves and changes iterations over the years, will not go away. It is both transcendent and, when it’s so well ingrained and incorporated in the truest sense, also wonderfully, perfectly ordinary.
Today, on my beloved‘s birthday, I have another reason to remember all of the reasons why I am grateful for him and his place in my life and my love–and I in his.
Beloved Mysterious
Beloved Mysterious, if you could see
The blood-dark river hid inside of me
With longing deep as chasms unexplored
Through which, from which, in which that love is poured
In endless flood of hope and of desire
As hot and wild and dangerous as fire
Then you would know the depth, the liquid breath
That carries love for you beyond my death.
One Never Knows . . .
. . . what might happen when romance is in the air . . .
And so, my friends, ended Another Enchanted Evening.
Just Another Love Song, if You Don’t Mind
Appraisal
What’s the current market value of a hug, caress or kiss?
Why would any self-respecting person get engrossed in this?
Isn’t it a tad surprising we’d make such hullabaloo
Of this silly, unproductive, non-remunerative goo?
That’s the miracle of romance and of loving: that we choose
To pursue ridiculous intangibles among the ooze
Of lace valentines and candies, in hand-holding, making eyes
Like moo-cows and fuzzy puppies at each other—but the prize
Found in all this crazy weirdness, wacky though our loving be,
Is the exponential return on this small investment that we see
When beloved turns to lover and responds in foolish kind:
That’s the truth toward which we hover when two loves get so entwined.
Pardon My Love Letters
Adjusting the Balance of Powers
I make no pretense of refinement,
Charm-school graces, savoir-faire—
I’m no more mannered than a monkey
Picking cooties from its hair—
In fact, I’d never boast of
Attributes I’d likely waste,
Having little use or need for
Proving further I’ve great taste
Than I did when I selected
You as partner, lover, mate;
All alone, that one maneuver
Proved my social skills are great,
Even if the sorry outcome
On your side is to undo
Any special social standing
That once appertained to you!
Foodie Tuesday: Love is an Everyday Thing
Oh, yes, Ladies and Gentlemen all, it is Valentine’s Day. At least, here in the good old US of A, where we constantly rebel against being told what to do and how to live our lives but are terrible sticklers for traditions that may or may not even suit our beliefs and needs. Now, celebrating the life–and, let’s face it, not-so-charming-to-celebrate death, since 14 February recognizes the officially accepted date of the martyrdom of St. Valentine by clubbing and beheading–of a possible whole group of Christian martyrs, who all have become conflated in the popular mind as one really nice guy who pitied and assisted the lovelorn, all of that is a matter of personal belief and taste, to be sure. Celebrating the highly adapted holiday of Valentine’s Day is one as well: as it’s been popularized, it’s a day for telling people we love them, filling them up with romantic food and drink and notions, showering them with flowers and sparkly gifts, and paying homage to our love in generally showier ways than usual.
There, my friends, is the rub where this stubborn old lady is concerned. I’m not really as curmudgeonly as all of this sounds however arguable my crankiness is on other topics. It’s just that I feel mighty strongly that if the love isn’t expressed on a fairly constant basis, in (as one might say) thought, word and deed, it means nothing whatsoever on Valentine’s Day, an anniversary, a birthday, or any other celebratory occasion no matter how the gifts and gooey treats are piled up and the lyrical words flow. It’s got to be the real, the every single day sort of deal, or it’s so much useless fluff.
That said, I am among the biggest mush-meisters inhabiting the supposed real world, never tiring of being madly in love with the one person who’s crazy and silly enough to love me back in equal extremity. When we’re sitting at our respective desks down the hall from each other–which we have positioned conveniently so we can see each other across the way while working and maybe sneak a wink for no better reason than that after more than 16 years we still have a school-kid crush on each other–we are both inclined to chirp I Love Yous back and forth at intervals just because we actually do. He cheers me up when I’m feeling low and cheers me on when I’m flagging, chauffeurs me because I’m not fond of driving, works long hours to keep our accounts balanced, and tells me I’m smart and pretty like he really believes it.
So I am delighted to make a favorite dinner for him on Valentine’s Day. Appropriately enough, I can operate on the K.I.S.S. [Keep It Simple, Stupid] principal on this day of romantic silliness, because he likes things unfussy. So all he gets is a slab of tender, untrimmed Texas filet mignon, skillet seared in butter with salt and pepper (my blend of black, white, green and pink peppercorns and whole cloves) and a pinch of ground coriander, a handful of fresh-cut Romaine lettuce and some juicy tomato pieces and a few ripe strawberries, a flute of South African bubbly, and a piece of dark chocolate with toasted almond bits and crunchy salt in it. Couldn’t be easier. No recipes, no muss, no fuss, and because I made big steaks, we both have enough left over for steak and eggs in the morning.
Because romance is not a one-day deal, and expressing love should be the most important practice of the everyday. Bon appetit!
The Googly-eyed Romantic Point of View
Admit it, you start to slip into a coma the instant someone else starts spewing the horrifically saccharine details of their great love story. I do too; it just doesn’t stop me from being the mushy bore myself the moment I see a hairline of an opening. Honestly, don’t we all do it? There’s nothing much any of us are more inclined to brag about than our happiness, and nothing much that gives us greater happiness than fancying ours the Greatest Love Story in History.
You can be forgiven if you didn’t know yet that that title was already mine.
Particularly since I’m quite certain my love story doesn’t conform quite perfectly to your–or anybody else’s–idea of the ideal romance. We’re not much, around this household, on many constant and overt expressions of commercially endorsed couplehood: bouquets of roses, spontaneous gifts of expensive jewelry and sports cars, and going out to chateaux with extravagant four-star restaurants to toast each other over mortgage-worthy vintages are just not high on the list of things we often do. On the other hand, I am in the company of someone still teenager-enough to really like holding hands, hugging like there’s no tomorrow, and blurting out “I love you” pretty much every few minutes or so, even if we happen to be sitting right next to each other. He also reads to me, cuts my hair, laughs at my pitiful jests, cooks for me when there’s time, takes me on meandering road trips or spectacular world travels when the opportunity arises, covers my eyes when the really gruesome surprise is coming up in a scary movie he’s seen before so I won’t have to be tranquilized later, and sings me ridiculous made-up songs in the car.
Thing is, being soggy Romantics isn’t just about the stuff or the standards. It’s about finding pleasure not only in those storybook moments of ecstatic bliss but especially in the ongoing and real kindnesses and shared tasks that fill up the everyday, because the everyday is such an insurmountable percentage of our lives, singly and together.
So there’s no question that one of the things I find most romantic in my partner is that he does have an appreciation for all kinds of beauty and learning and amusement and work, from nature’s resources to friends and family, from rambling around a run-down part of town to finding starlight in the arts that we share as both as passion and as vocation. It’s reassuring, after all, that there’s not some impossible measure of queenly perfection I myself am expected to meet but that he sees good in the ordinary me and values it as though it were something romantic.
All the same, it doesn’t hurt that he’s fed me filets, tirelessly supported my “Expensive Hobby” career of being an artist/writer, and he’s taken me to castles and cottages, forests and mountains, cities of great sophistication and incredible vividness and hidden hamlets with more shaggy livestock than human population, and to seas both of the stormy north and those surrounding tropical islands. It is, truthfully, pretty romantic to stand at the shore of the ocean with the best person in you whole life right by your side.
The most striking fact of our coming together as such a love-sodden twosome is that we were both quite content in our single lives and expected to live that way perpetually. I’m convinced that because we both liked who we were and how we lived our lives, had surrounded ourselves with a constellation of astonishing friends and loved ones, and had endless interesting things to do with our time and attentions, it was easier in reality to fall in love than if we’d been avidly hunting for something either of us felt too keenly that we lacked. And that is for me the romance in any part of life: that we don’t necessarily require it to make us whole or contented or excited or whatever-it-is; it’s a genuine, unexpected, unearned treasure. A gift, a bonus. The prize.
As the Murky Mermaid Cried, It Never Seems to Work Out for Me with You Mortal Twerps!
Has our romance tanked? Or were you just horsing around the whole time anyway?
Deep Anxiety
Azure the swell of the ocean
As it laps at my ankles and knees
Returns me to innocent ages
With its salt-scented tropical breeze
Enticing me into the water
To dance with the angels and clowns,
Those colorful fish,
Whose great subversive wish
Is that every two-legs of us drowns
- Is my luminous love anemone of the people?
Jellied Love
Wrap your arms around me, Dear,
Your thousand arms diaphanous
And slinky; pull me closer thus
And squish my spleen right out my ear—
A hug is only so refined,
Caresses valued most and best
That find me mashed against your chest
Until I’m quite out of my mind—
Crush me with adoration, squeeze
The living daylights from my heart
Till I this earthly plane depart
To ocean’s bottom, pretty please!
When love comes the raw prawn and leaves you blue . . .
Ice for the Drinking
Has love grown cold? Didst run too hot?
I’m lost now that I’ve got it not,
And plunged into a deep abyss
Where everything is dark, amiss;
Neither is it quite blue or green,
But rather some miracle in between,
That diamond shimmer’s cold allure
Demands my fealty for sure
When sun sears high and day grows long;
It plies the perfect siren song
Toward leaping in the drink to freeze
My overheated soul with breeze
Tinted with mint or Curaçao . . .
Say, I could use an ice cube now!
Ah, Ophelia, you are not alone in falling into the drink!
Art-Colored Glasses 