Romantic Musings: The Paradox of Passion

Nothing is inevitable, except love.

Some might contend that the only inevitabilities are death and taxes. To that, I say, not everyone pays their taxes, and those who truly live are the ones who never die.

What does it mean to truly live?

We often ask ourselves: “What is the meaning of life?”

What is it?

What is it, not?

Although there are goals to accomplish, dreams to fulfill: artists who wish to create & change the world, ambitious individuals who wish to accumulate mass amounts of wealth, performers who long to stand center stage before adoring fans, etc; the meaning of life is deeper than that.

Dare I say that the meaning of life is to live for someone else?

Not “for” as “in place of,” but “for” as in “we complete each other.”

What is a moon without the stars?

What is a kiss without meaning?

What is a life without love?

It is nothing. And yet, nothing is inevitable, except love.

Love.

Love in its myriad of forms and stages, like a rose.

Love… that sweet obsession of a spark that flares and illuminates your heart like a match, and dwindles away as it struggles to breathe.

Love… that torch you light and carry for the one you will place on a pedestal, to kindle your memories, and guide you through the loneliness of your dreams.

Love… that brazier that warms your soul in the autumn of your days, and the winter of your life.

Love is the force capable of transporting us back to when we knew no heartbreak. A portal of inter-dimensional space and time through which we may journey, consciously or not, to the moments we lived and those we wished we had.

Love changes us, or more accurately reveals what lies beneath the surface. Akin to nourishing the seed within the soil, love is water for the soul.

It is liquid courage for the heart, for alcohol reveals the truth in an analogous way. A wine of the gods, a special vintage that gets better with time, even after it has been sipped. Perhaps it is the one true elixir of youth.

Various blends that we sample with inexperienced palettes as we frolic among the frivolities of innocent enchantments, until we find the flavor that we hope to relish forever.

Forever, though, is such a long time. It is infinite, even if the universe is not.

Yet, when we fall in love, when we fall truly, madly, and deeply in love, we hope that it will never end. Hope is, after-all, the air of our existence.

We inhale, and hold our breath.

We exhale when our hope is realized.

Realized when we fall in love. Be it at first sight, or over time.

We meet love as we meet a friend. Strangers at first glance, acquaintances along the journey of life, and partners with destiny entwined, eternally.

The connection is unparalleled, the bond is unbreakable, and the realm knows no boundaries, for when kindred spirits merge their horizons expand.

Galaxies collide.

Their energy, fervent desire, fuses as two souls become one. From the merger, an event horizon, luminous, and inescapable draws you deeper into love, and moves you forward in time.

Forever.

Bursting through the portal of passion, perhaps creating a universe all it’s own.

The cycle of creation, perpetuating the purpose of life.

Love.

Created by that collision, we wander through the universe like a comet on a trajectory determined by destiny. We search the darkness for the star that will lure us in. Circumnavigating the heart that burst into existence to complete our lives.

Living to love another unconditionally is to live for the truest purpose of all. To do that, one must know everything about the other: deepest fears, darkest secrets, and the idiosyncrasies that makes each person who they are. The legacy of that love lives on for generations. In that regard, one truly never dies.

Death is so final, whereas love is inevitable.

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” ~Mark Twain.

(Dedicated to Kath Bergin, my high school American Studies teacher, and her husband for their recent 49th wedding anniversary). 

Romantic Musings: Fires of Friendship and Love

Friendship is to love what the wick is to the candle.

Once passion is sparked it will dance, and breathe, and illuminate even the darkest corners of your heart.

Desire will liquefy beneath it, like wax. Shedding slow meaningful tears that will solidify over time.

Like a statue that has immortalized an image of beauty, your memory will capture the image of that candle we refer to as first love.

Friendship is to love what wood is to the fireplace.

It will flicker to life with laughter. Moving along the bark tentatively as it gauges a new level of trust.

You will prod it with romantic expressions, moving the wood to encourage the flame. Gradually, your earnest intentions will ignite a fire in the hearth of your heart.

The heat will radiate across the darkness of your tomorrow. Reach you, caress you, and comfort you as it casts dancing shadows against your soul.

You will add more wood as you fall in love. You will long for autumn evenings to revel in the luminous glow of your predilection for inner peace.

In the cold, loneliness of long winter nights you will snuggle with your partner and see your future in the frenzy of flames.

Friendship is to love what coals are to the fire.

From the shadows of your heart’s desire, will emerge the fate of unrequited love.

It could be a love you never finished or a love that never started.

But it will burn.

A kiss you never shared or a touch you never felt. It will haunt you. It will echo in the deepest valleys of your heart and follow the breeze along the meadows of your memories.

Real or imagined, you will remember this love that never was.

It is the truest lie that writers will ever tell and lovers will never know.

A longing so intense you will shield yourself from its glow.

This love of which I speak will break your heart and cause your soul to shudder, for this love burns in the dark forest of your fantasies.

It will never have been intended, not that love ever is, but some fires are sparked with the intention of being extinguished and others will rage beyond control.

No circle of stones will contain it, and no measure of precaution will protect you from its will.

The desire will be fierce. The flames will flutter like the wings of a butterfly. It will be the secret you won’t know how to keep, for it will be your eyes that shall betray you, the windows into a tortured soul.

Perhaps it’s only logical that damnation is equated to an eternal inferno.

Paradise lost when you lose yourself to the throes of passions that cannot be, that must not be, lest we lose the desire to find it.

This is the curse of the writer.

Our first love is the poem. Short and sweet like a candle, its kiss and scent are meant to awaken our hearts.

The short story is our second love. Deeper and stronger like a fireplace, but it is never meant to last.

The novel is our true love. The coals of creativity burn, and long to reveal our dreams and our nightmares. We struggle with revealing the secret, agonizing over every word, every scene…the beginning, and the end. The characters that we remember, and the people we never met…the lovers we never loved.

Maya Angelou once said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

This holds true for the writer that chooses to pursue passion along the path blazed by broken heart. Each rejection, each revision is a reminder of our imperfections. We will long to tell the story as eloquently as we can. We will long to love without conditions, and live the tale that will always be remembered as one of the greatest love stories, ever.

The friendship is reading. The writing is love.

“Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.” ~Bruce Lee

Romantic Musings: For the Love of Gods

Once upon a time, the gods fell in love.

Secret poets who wandered the world disguised as humans, pursued their passions, and indulged in the innocence of intimate encounters. Maddened by the scent of human sensuality, they fled from their realm for the most unforgettable experience of all. Love.

Perhaps it is only fitting that the daughters of Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, are the Muses who inspire poets to recount the romances veiled by the shadows of time.

What then will become of us?

Will our romances be remembered?

Will the poets of tomorrow be inspired by our passions?

Will the Muses reveal the secrets of how deeply we loved?

I daresay the answers lie within our hearts. The symptoms of love pumped through our veins after an arrow dipped in the poison of passion infects us as it did Apollo.

Enter the writer.

Stage left.

Who comprehends love better than the poet?

Who clings to the innocence of the untainted heart as fervently as a hopeless romantic?

The writer.

It is no coincidence then that the cultural symbol for Apollo and other poets is the wreath he crafted in memory of his unrequited love, Daphne.

The writer is, in essence, the historian of the heart. Despite the confusions of love caused by the chaos of sweet obsessions and inexperience, we possess an innate understanding of the idiom of emotions.

We interpret the impressions left on our souls—sentimental verses akin to Enochian script—that lead us to deduce that a lover is an angel, and falling in love is a heavenly experience.

We are defined by our heartbreak and destroyed by our heartbeat.

When the potion of love is emptied from our goblet of fire, we drink the tiny droplets of tears that die on our lips.

The name of our love trapped in a whisper. Taken with the wind to the land of shadows where the dead linger and the gods search for the ones they once loved.

As mortals we are blessed with the unlimited capacity to love in a limited amount of time. That’s what makes our existence unique, for it is in these brief instances—like in the moment of creation—that desire burns hottest.

The gods envied us for that.

They needed us in order to experience true love, because it is love that should last forever. The memory of it should echo across time.

It is our destiny as writers to recount our experiences lest the purpose of poetry be forgotten, and countless others suffer the loss of the legends of love.

The few who remembered had begun to forget, because time is the sister of Death. She has no patience and cares nothing for the gods who once fell in love.

“The hottest love has the coldest end.” ~Socrates