A Hurtling-knowing
Love that lands doesn’t measure its hold.
This is the first excerpt I’ve ever shared from Splendor, my essay collection about love.
What of, what is, what and who to quantify,
it’s not in the duration, it’s in the depth,
a shallow river surfaces in the wet season and in the dry,
the town salivates over dreams of blue,
but a dream of water is not enough to sustain you,
and there’s another place beyond the reach of doubt
where you don’t have to ache from thirst or live on hope
and you won’t need to dream of water because you’re already soaked.
The few wet months of the year won’t have to last you,
and there won’t be scraps of paper and fear of the blank space
because when you think into things beyond the border of the would-be river,
you realize that a would-be river is one that disappears more than it reappears,
makes you adapt to scarcity, teaches you how to survive on less,
and there is probably something deeper, something more in the earth,
beneath all of the rock and salt and grime.
Turpentine ran,
pigment bled,
canvas absorbed.
Helen Frankenthaler poured thinned paint onto unprimed canvas laid flat,
huge, body-sized and more.
They said it looked like a rag, not a revolution.
Wasn’t control she was after.
It was absorption.
A letting go.
Letting form arrive by way of surrender.
“But this is the most powerful thing that can be done: surrender. See.
And love is an act of surrender to another person,” Alan Watts said.
You do not need to live a life fertilized by nothing but parched sun,
the shallow river and its uncertain rises and falls,
so much of life is this way.
You should claim a little more.
I hope he seeks, follows what brings him
open-mouthed, glistening joy in this life,
how lucky to expect nothing, carry no forecast,
just the click of timing, instinct, a hurtling-knowing.
Love that lands doesn’t measure its hold.
And right now he strums where his fingers take him
as I face him with my laptop between my knees,
never been a more right now, perhaps because
I learned this lesson before:
that no one owes anyone anything, it is only
the commitment of the journey hand-in-hand.
I trust the way we arrived here.
How the road rose to meet me.
How it could be this forever.
How forever is not a permanent concept except that
what I mean is a forever in the depth,
not the clock, but the duration.
How I will gladly take part.
Frankenthaler let her pigment fall without bracing for it.
You don’t lay the color on top.
You let it soak.
Watts said the fall and the creation are tied,
to let go is the only way anything begins.
You gamble. You keep the faith.
This is the kind of madness that makes a life.
I love him.
No hows about it.
No small love, firework flash,
this is rushing headlong into the waterfall.
I have seen his pools and am learning them
and I loved him from way back there
and now this close up,
I love him even more.
Works Referenced & Inspired
Alan Watts, “Falling into Love”
Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains & Sea
Thank you for reading. If this stayed with you, a single 🫧 Lava Drop helps keep the light on.