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Permalink Reply by Cheryl Roshak on April 26, 2012 at 1:40pm

It is true what you say but the English language is limited as it only has the one word, "love" to use for all the variations of the types of love there are in this world. French is far more sensitive to this and has many different words to express the various types of love that exist. It's a far richer language in that respect. The only other word we can use instead of love is the word "like" and that has less impact. I like you but I don'tlove you. Or, I love you but I don't like you. Both statements can be true.

What is true love? And how would you know it if you found it? Idealized love? Romantic love? Lustful love? Platonic love is said to be the truest form of love as it was originally explained. Each person born is only half a self, to put it simply, and their other half is living in someone else at the time of their birth. Only when these two people meet to complete each other will they find true love, according to Plato. This is a very condensed version of the concept. It could also be called finding your soul mate. 

But yes, I agree with you and believe in love and forever keep a hopeful eye out for it. Not desperately looking or waiting for it. And I think as we grow older our concept and what it means for us changes. I have known great love in my past. That love can never be replaced or achieved again. I consider myself blesses. But I know that if I have loved once, I am able to love again. It has been a very long time since I have loved and been loved, and maybe it shall never come my way again, but hope springs eternal.

But I ask you once again, would you know love if it came your way?

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Permalink Reply by Glenn S Dorfman on April 26, 2012 at 2:46pm

D.H. Lawrence recites his poem, "The Mess of Love"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcO6hiiVyjI

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Permalink Reply by Johanna Mackey on April 27, 2012 at 1:25am

Cheryl, you don't have to "look" for love -- it's always right there, just right there in front of you.  don't complicate it.  nor does "love" necessarily need defining save for the gifted beauty in the contemplated wordings.  and Bobbi J. -- what beautiiful thoughts toward the undefinable!  thanks for the post (brought me tears, it did!)  reminds me of the old, lost romantic me..... (alas and woe).  now, i stop looking, and there it always is.  always someone needs love as much as i do, and that gracious gift to another can be delivered and recieved via the simplest of means -- even just a smile, a kindly word, a gesture, a touch... and then all freely flows again -- if naught else but through the memory of such holy ground -- as once might have been, and yet truly remains in all beings... perfection. 

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Permalink Reply by Johanna Mackey on April 27, 2012 at 1:30am

hmmmm... D.H. Lawrence has some interesting angles Glenn.  i think he is saying that words get in the way.  and that love is one coin with two sides.  to know one face, you must equally embrace its other.  for all of everything comprises the essence of being human.  to love you, i must also know your counter opposite "sides," and yet remain true to who you are -- in that whole, that entirety.  right?

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Permalink Reply by Gatzby on April 27, 2012 at 4:58pm

"Quel est lamour veritable? Celui qui aime et ne parle pas"

What is true love? That which loves and does not speak

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Permalink Reply by Glenn S Dorfman on April 27, 2012 at 5:55pm

One of my favorite Lawrence poems, A Short History of Love. Re-reading the Complete Works and finding my undergraduate and graduate school comments immature and childish. The person reading these poems is so different than that person there and then.

D.H. LAWRENCE

A Short History of Love

After the sweet red wine and the dry lecture,
“The History of Love in Western Imagination”
(history is loveless without imagination)
we could not abide another listless lecture

and so we slipped into the castle library
and pushed highbacked chairs against a door
that refused to lock (so jam the door!)
and knelt to each other in the library.

I confess my fear of patrolling watchmen;
you seemed courageous and sure, as always:
I have learned to adore your myriad ways
of taking us back into man and woman . . .

And when we lay naked among the books,
the bookshelves enclosed a sacred garden
for Adam and Eve safely restored to Eden,
ourselves immersed in a paradise of books.

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Permalink Reply by Rusty Blades on April 28, 2012 at 12:59am

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3054628?utm_source=TellAFrien...

Never Again No More

Russ Polsky

His words tempted her in to look

Temptuous and revealing

Their intensity rife with storm

She found herself drifting about in them

 

He found her and looking at her vessel for a moment felt sure

He could toss these words about like seaweed

They would ball up upon crests

And fly apart like schools of fish as a predator threatened to eat them

 

They floated above the murky page on ink black seas of hope

They blew upon shore after shore

Finding no earth on which to root

Yet still he cast them like nets into the sea for one true hope

 

And he wondered

If they were to root

Would they cease… perhaps.

Or would they birth new seeds to float upon oceans of…. What

 

Love

No don’t talk to me of these things

Does a fish love the sea or merely swim in it

Does a gazelle love the grass more than the belly of the lion

 

In finding his end, does he feel more comfort than that which makes him run

No don’t talk to me of this

 

His words tempted him

He wrote them and he swore

Never again to write them

Never again no more

 

 

 

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Permalink Reply by BobbieJ on April 28, 2012 at 8:54pm

Thank you so much, Johanna! What you said was so encouraging. I tend to be my own worst critic, doubting the moment I finish anything whether it was worth the time to write in the first place. But I am trying, at least on this site, to write without giving myself the time to over think--- and above all to stay away from the delete button! 

So thank you to everyone who responded! I never really expected that anyone would and I've so much enjoyed reading everyone's replies.

To answer Cheryl's question, I think I am very much a Romantic. And I do believe in the romantic ideal of love. So I believe that everyone has a soul mate and that it is impossible to meet that person without a part of you knowing at once that they are the one.

On the other hand, life happens. And we all of us have private scars and traumas in our lives that can make it more difficult to see, or perhaps more importantly to trust love when it is right in front of us.

Not trusting love more than not recognizing it, is I think the greatest tragedy of life. Love, itself, is easy; Trust takes time.

But thank you again everyone for your thoughts and poems, I have really enjoyed them! --BobbieJ

“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”-- William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well

“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.”-- J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

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Permalink Reply by Johanna Mackey on April 28, 2012 at 8:56pm

now... (what were we talking about again..?) 

So many words lead to so many different branchings... thus therein leading to potential confusion and misunderstandings -- and little knowing of whom we are, or whom nears us -- in this maddening thing called "love." 

Now I know, oh Mishi friend... "less is more," he told to me. For my buffet has come of every table everywhere and i am sated to excess, too much i'm filled, so all to grasp (for me, it's sadly true) to seal my lips in what I know and never speak it thus...

"never again no more."

:)     :(     :0     :D      :(

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Permalink Reply by Rusty Blades on April 29, 2012 at 2:21pm

Few are the worlds that so exhilarate and devastate a man so completely as the fullness of love unrequited. Unrepentant love that at once demands both hope and fear then feasts upon him. He willingly offers his flesh for just one more taste of the purity of the moment when one woman has loved him completely, even if for a moment. No matter if it is fate that spirited her away on a train, a boat, a plane or even in the arms of another. For having tasted its purity for but that moment, that man so afflicted will not be able to deny its existence, and for it he will clamor across continents leaving all he has known just to catch a glimpse of she who laid this gift within his soul. 

Where then my benevolent creature shall I lay my kiss upon you? Should it be as before, in unlit places known only to us, or perhaps in the public square for all to see? And should their eyes fall upon us could they know the heavenly bliss of your lips? Could those moments sought bring to me comfort or would it be that the nourishment I seek would instead befall upon me an appetite even more ravenous than the first? Oh sweet maiden unfold thy hand upon my face so that in those moments I again may feel alive as once before. Let the treasure of your loins grace this beast and restore the subtle nuance of happiness. Oh yes let it be lest I squander these breaths I take.

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Permalink Reply by Johanna Mackey on April 29, 2012 at 6:26pm

ooooohhh  my, Mr. Blades!  Words as those writ will make even the middle-aged and silver-haired little ol' ladies hearts go naked-dancing to a beat of pitter-patter within thier drooping, throbbing bosoms! 

Where does one land that kind of passion? -- and isn't it mostly short-lived?  amid the foolish and the youth?  and then after the mighty fires die, the lovers part in boredom and perhaps go looking elsewhere to re-kindle those kinds of "addictive" fiery flames of feeling agian?  falling head-long into the "instant gratification" traps -- with another new lover perhaps?

Actually friend, real "true love" shows its face in witness of the elderly -- the Endurers! -- they whom "roll up thier sleeves" and faced the "hard work" of marriage, whom keep their vows, whom struggle through hardship, whom endure the thick and thin and soft and harsh of relationship.  working as a "beginning nurse" showed me the "end of the road" -- where romance really, truly blossomed.  Umpteen years married -- 50, 60 plus and more -- and then The Vow offers its real test.  Life makes its hairy curve -- people land in nursing facilities and such -- but there are those cases where the spouse visits thier loved one faithfully, every day, spoon-feeding them or bathing or visiting or talking to the loved one locked within their own imprisoning body (after a stroke or some other horryifying physical disease that overtook most all of whom they once were).  But Rusty -- those faces!  Those eyes peering deeply into its other one loved -- there... no words.  no words.  "That which loves and does not speak."

such love as that cannot be easily neared.

but don't let me spoil the "idea" of such romantic "entrant" love for the young!

i would just offer one soul to "taste my lot-of-old" someday... until then, I'll sing these old songs until the one day when again I die, because for me, back then, never was i so blessed to be surrounded by so much truth. 

Bobbie J... Never stop believing, but I challenge any of you excellent writers (whom want to write on the subject of true love) -- gather your inspiration by witness first -- spend a day at a facility and watch the one still married.  Participate in helping and there will come definitionin-doses of "true love" more than can be handled.

"What more blessed than such kiss of knowing grok vouchsafed unto the holy heart as from Music's very own." 

Beautiful beginnings.  The lovely memory such tender kiss partook.  Rusty, Gatzby, Glenn, Cheryl, Bobbie L.... thank you for the Music. 

(I swoon, i swoon!)

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Permalink Reply by Rusty Blades on April 30, 2012 at 1:12am

uhm like totally wow

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