1 post tagged “poetry”
* Title shamelessly adopted from an Explosions in the Sky piece, "The Birth and Death of Day"
NorCal's recent rapturous weather has stricken me speechless. I've spent large sums of time to lounging outside, not at all beholden to the vices of studiousness and productivity, for better or worse. Suffice to say, it's been every positive adjective you can imagine.
During one of these idle exercises, a thought struck me and hasn't really left. I was reading this Tom Hoagland poem "Patience" describing the need for someone on whom you can "lavish your affection in perfect safety", someone to love without fear of love in return. These lyrics from Voxtrot's "Your Biggest Fan" sing a similar sentiment:
The argument here is that there is a significant value to added by someone un-fazed by endless devotion, by someone you can enslave yourself to with confidence that even as a result of your actions, between the two of you, nothing will change. It is an expectation game of sorts: with this person, you will always fall short of expectations, and so, there are no real expectations. Also, it is an act of purity, or a sense of innocence renewal when you can give without agenda.And then I saw you in a doorway
For a moment you looked tender and I know
That I could never ever ever ever ever touch you
Because you might touch back
I guess that sounds about right. Or at least, the fact that it sounds paradoxical and counterintuitive gives it some merit... If so and you have such a person in your life, a person on whom "you can lavish your affection in perfect safety", cheers to you. Or even better, if you are such a person in somebody else's life, if you are a person that receives endlessly, doubly cheers to you.
This explains it, or it is just a crippling fear of commitment. I'm fairly amused how little sense this makes. But that's okay. That's a recurring feature on this particular reel of film.
but it's taken me a decade to recognize that I love John,-- not for his cuteness (he is)
or his endearing manner of being always on the brink
of falling apart,
but precisely because he doesn't ever threaten to love me back.On someone like that you can lavish your affection
in perfect safety ----
that's nothing to be proud of, I suppose ---
and, yet, obscurely, I am.
--- Tom Hoagland, "Dear John"
"Your heart beats 900 times a day
And there are enough gallons of blood to make you an ocean."
Anis Mojgani, "Shake the Dust"
