a sense of love, within & without
Instead of being a haven for each other, it’s a constant revolt.
— La Pointe Courte, Agnès Varda
When you are in love, you begin to think of your Other, the Beloved of the Moment, as your One—the Beloved Always. Love steps out of you, into the light, its existence transforms you and the one you love, and you are carried on its wings that spread, not to contain or entrap, but to beckon you and your beloved into its fold of passion and devotion, and you, beguiled and bewitched, let it light you, let it light everything you are and everything they are and everything that the two of you hold the promise to be.
Really, what is love then? I have been in love thrice and each time, I felt myself torn asunder and then, come alive and it was beautiful and it was magic, and yet, each time, I begin to know things about myself that I did not know before. The first love affair and its heartbreak was a catastrophe. At the time, I did not know where to begin or where to end and when faced with the devastation of my own being so thoroughly uprooted, I resorted to mulling over all the love I felt and all the ways I could let it go. For the longest time, I could not untangle myself from what I had become when I loved him. Now, when I read what I wrote then, I feel myself disappearing. Indeed, not only was I romantic about suffering, I turned it into poetry.
And then, I tasted love. Love tasted me. I had a lover and my lover had me. I would have turned mountains to dust for him, I would have turned myself to dust for him. Perhaps, that is why when he left, I wanted to return to dust. I could not know myself without my lover in my orbit. I thought I would never love again, never be loved, never become someone’s beloved. People drifted in and out of my life – almost lovers, potential lovers, please-be-mine lovers. Not one of them became a lover. I could not bring myself to love any of them. I could not do half-measures. I searched for traces of my ex in every touch, every glimpse, every sigh. I was becoming less of a stranger to myself as I saw love evolve in front of my eyes. My love was not to be placed inside calloused hands, it needed softness, it needed light.
In truth, I came to face my mirror and the reflection echoed that love, for me, was possession. I let myself be possessed and I wanted to possess. No wonder then when love left me, I became the room, forever deserted and dusty, the windows open, everything passing through except for the stillness of time. Was I a phantom, then? A tortured ghost? A haunting vision? Or anything but real—a girl, a woman—who would love and love and love until she emptied herself of her. And so, I went on and on, circumferentially around myself, where I loved and I lost, and so, I loved again, and I lost again. I am here now, in the very throes of another heartbreak, a practice I have mastered in just over two years, and yet, if you were to ask me how I feel, I would not say I am heartbroken again. All I know is that I do not know and that I am not possessed anymore.
In the library today, I witnessed quietness and light together and I browsed through the shelves and of course, life will never not be cyclical, I was in the literature and poetry section again. There, Emily Dickinson. The revered poet, the lonely poet. And I found myself between the lines of these verses:
You left me, sweet, two legacies,—
A legacy of love
A Heavenly Father would content,
Had He the offer of;
You left me boundaries of pain
Capacious as the sea,
Between eternity and time,
Your consciousness and me.
Love and pain. Always, the story goes: love, pain, love, pain, love, love, pain. Have I not known these things before? Have I not been engulfed by them that I forgot who I was? I can still recite the words I wrote for another lover, when I could do nothing but wait and wait and wait, just to hear a word from his lips. The words, they go:
Though my experiences have not been many, they have been enough, and I have seen legacies of love and boundaries of pain. In Varda’s La Pointe Courte, one of my favorite films, the story follows the cracks in love between a married man and woman. They are torn apart and yet, they cannot bear to be without each other. Even in the darkest of nights, they see each other as forever entwined together, even if they hurt each other. There is love, there is pain. They walk and they talk and they are happy and then, they are sad. The pain feeds the love, the love feeds the pain. I guess that is the fate of men and women who fall for each other. Up until a while ago, that was my fate. Not anymore because I am, now, out of the ensnaring tentacles of love. I am light, without the need or want of an Other, the One, the Beloved Lover.
so poignant and beautiful 🤍🤍