Bad Miss Cakewise! I have spent far too much of the last few days curled up in bed with The Boy, instead of working or filling in application forms like I should have. But it really is the nicest thing - to snuggle up with a beloved body, completely naked, and listen to their heart beating as you drift off into dreams together.
Every day, The Boy amazes me more and more. He is forever catching me by surprise, with sudden unexpected silliness that makes me chuckle or incredibly unselfish gestures. He makes me want to be so much better - to try harder to be the best person I can be, to be worthy of him.
I think I finally understand what Rilke wrote about love:
"For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love... Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances. Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), may young people use the love that is given to them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time, save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough."
I've been thinking about the importance of love - romantic love - a lot lately. The imminent end of university is forcing me to consider where I want to go and what I want to do next. And I wonder: is it wrong that the most important question to me is who I do it with?
Am I being an utter anti-feminist and burying my own individuality and independence, to say that being with The Boy is, in the end, the most important thing to me? The one factor in my life that will make me the most happy, that I want to stay a constant more than anything else? I don't know.
I do know that wanting to stay close to the person I love doesn't mean that I'm letting go of my own daydreams for the exciting work I want to do and the places I want to see. I also know that some of the most successful people in the world - who have achieved all of their wildest dreams for their careers, finances and travel - are sad and lonely because they haven't found somebody who they can imagine spending every day of their life with and still being madly in love. And I believe with all my heart [some scientific studies suggest it's true, too!] that this kind of love exists. That, far from limiting you, it pushes you to pursue your passions and take off on incredible adventures - all with the person who means the world to you by your side, too.
Is it really that misguided to want to make that person your priority when you find them? What do you think?
Am I being an utter anti-feminist and burying my own individuality and independence, to say that being with The Boy is, in the end, the most important thing to me? The one factor in my life that will make me the most happy, that I want to stay a constant more than anything else? I don't know.
I do know that wanting to stay close to the person I love doesn't mean that I'm letting go of my own daydreams for the exciting work I want to do and the places I want to see. I also know that some of the most successful people in the world - who have achieved all of their wildest dreams for their careers, finances and travel - are sad and lonely because they haven't found somebody who they can imagine spending every day of their life with and still being madly in love. And I believe with all my heart [some scientific studies suggest it's true, too!] that this kind of love exists. That, far from limiting you, it pushes you to pursue your passions and take off on incredible adventures - all with the person who means the world to you by your side, too.
Is it really that misguided to want to make that person your priority when you find them? What do you think?
"I always feel this pressure of being a strong and independent icon of womanhood, and without making...making it look my...my whole life is revolving around some guy. But loving someone, and being loved means so much to me. We always make fun of it and stuff. But isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?"
-Before Sunrise
When you find a man
Who transforms
Every part of you
Into poetry,
Who makes each one of your hairs
Into a poem,
When you find a man,
Capable,
As I am
Of bathing and adorning you
With poetry,
I will beg you
To follow him without hesitation,
It is not important
That you belong to me or him
But that you belong to poetry.
-Nizar Qabbani
Fifteen months on {crikey!} - I'm still crazy, happy, head-over-heels, dancing-for-joy, can't-quite-believe-it in love! I say my prayers to Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn that long may it continue!
I will remember your small room
the feel of you
the light in the window
your records
your books
our morning coffee
our noons our nights
our bodies spilled together
sleeping
the tiny flowing currents
immediate and forever
your leg my leg
your arm my arm
your smile and the warmth
of you
who made me laugh
again.
-Charles Bukowski
