On being in love
My own laundry list for being in love – easy on the eye (check), makes me laugh (check), fits in with my friends and family (check), wants a child in their life (check) – it’s the lagniappe that I forgot to mention in my own list to myself. That someone could love profoundly like me, have the depth of person to unfold slowly, and then to top it off profess that love in such a fashion as to make me swoon over an email, a text message, or save the sweet voice mail message to replay over and over. Alas, my love seems to have a list that is boundless in its own right and sends me sweet missives such as below:
Kafka: Letters to Milena
Since I love you (and I do love you, you stupid one, as the sea loves a pebble in its depths, this is just how my love engulfs you–and may I in turn be the pebble with you, if Heaven permits), I love the whole world and this includes your left shoulder, no, it was first the right one, so I kiss it if I feel like it (and if you are nice enough to pull the blouse away from it) and this also includes your left shoulder and your face above me in the forest and my resting on your almost bare breast. And that’s why you’re right in saying that we were already one and I’m not afraid of it, rather it is my only happiness and my only pride and I don’t confine it at all only to the forest.
February 28th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
“Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain.”
Shakespeare, from Venus and Adonus
February 28th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
i always said in the heat of hard times you need to be able to look over at your partner and recall in a flash why you are with them – so the spring has got to be earth moving so that you hold that in your memory for a long time to come. Thanks sweetie and good luck with ballet.
February 28th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Bueno querida amiga ahí te envío parte de un poema de mi amiga Aixa Ardín, un poco de sabor del caribe:
Ya que estas aquí
olvida tu pasaje de regreso,
pospón hasta el olvido tu fecha de partida
y quédate traviesa hurgando mis escondites.
February 29th, 2008 at 9:11 am
I love that line – the last one – but we are looking up hurgando because I interpret the line to read “and stay here and explore my naughty hideaways” but T wants an expert to interpret seeing how she is an academic and doesn’t want to be guessing the interpretation willy nilly like I am doing.
February 29th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Poetry is so hard to translate, I have checked with my friend Vivian who is a translator by profession and this is what she told me:
and stay mischievous delving into my secret places or
and stay mischievous rummaging into my hideaways
March 1st, 2008 at 9:05 am
Awesome – we haven’t heard from T’s friend who is un peruano – but will give you his take when I get it. But I like the first one better from a poetic meaning of the line with the second one being a more close translation of those words.