Backtracking on some bloggy friends entries of the past year I found this, a poem by Sharon Olds, "The Knowing." Ever find something you wish you had written yourself? this poem is like that. It cuts right in deep, not one superfluous sound.
Later I was thinking about that term, "making love." I say it or hear it so often I don't remember ever thinking about what it meant. I wondered who the first person was to coin that phrase? How did they come up with that? All of a sudden it struck me as amazing. Creating something like. Not the old fashioned marital manual version of sexual euphemisms. ahem. no, but making a thing that is love.
Love. Is it an emotion? Is it a phenomenon? Is it a commitment? A recognition? Is it something made? or uncovered? discovered? ignored? Love within a sexual relationship, is that different than friendship love? and falling? how is that different from making?
I know my own experience in it, that's all. The last time I was in love was about 7 years ago. We had compatibility in many amazing ways, but he was newly separated when we met. I had a dream shortly after our first lunch meeting. He was with me in my bed, although not physically, but in my dream it was so vivid that I thought he was truly there, and he said, "I love you." and i heard the words ringing in my actual ears. I felt, still do, that the dream meant we had a connection that moved through time and space. It was more than a year before I heard him say that for real.
When he did he said he didn't remember when it started, that he'd loved me for some time. He made me look him in the eyes when he said it.
Sometimes still I wake up in the middle of the night aching for that truth.
But I never felt that we "fell in" love. I just felt happy with him. I have had the experience of falling before. And the experience of comparing other loves to that feeling and believing they weren't enough. The "fall" was what made it real for me at that time. Not now. not since my last love.
I believe that we can fall in love many times and also find many people who are enough to love romantically without that falling thing. now, that's what I believe. and believing it, how does that shape the love we make? there's something here about meaning, the meaning we attribute to these experiences. Probably lots of these things are shaped in us before we can begin to articulate them- cultural norms. But romantic love is a universal theme, cross culture, time and place.
That's all I have for now. Except for this: all this talking about love and theorizing, is it my way of kind of having intimacy without risking actually meeting new people? and risking rejection or some other kind of hurt? maybe I want some vague prince charming to see through my words to my, dare I say it, need. ? someone smart and creative who isn't a drinker/ drugger/ married who could love me with pulling my hair out, unemployed and sleeping in my car while I'm 50 years old? now I remember why i do this. It's a semblance of remembering, maybe. Maybe it's my way of making love.
That's not the only thing I do here, i do really appreciate the whole of you and so many wonderful individuals here who write and think and feel. It's something I just have thought about this week, though.
back to the original ideas.. How about you? how do you think love is made?
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