Replies to post #994 on Poet's Corner

[xtheunknown]

Onec you stop seeing the world as wonderful, and interesting and surprising, you might as well crawl in the coffin, since you are already dead, even if your optimistic heart continues to beat

[Koikaze]

Poet, with regard to: "... do you mean romantic love or a more general sense of wonder?", you know that love escapes description.

When I refer to love, I'm referring to the heartbreak of having a very poor little 4-year old boy run up and say "Mr. ---, Mr. ---, look at my new shoes" and point to the discarded galoshes he's wearing. I'm talking about the rush of warmth and pleasure that follows learning that someone you care about, who was abusing alcohol, is finding a better way to get from one point in their life to another. I'm talking about the sense of responsibility we have for those who are close to us. I'm talking about the gentleness of touching someone who cares. I'm talking about understanding that there are other people in the world.

I mean romantic love, too, Poet. I mean it in the sense of the flood of these feelings, when they are narrowed and focussed on a single individual ... when "I" cease to exist ... when I reach a state that it is impossible to reach alone.

To those readers who find this maudlin, I apologize for intruding my thoughts. To those who understand, I need not say more.

Fred

[alexed]

Whether it's writing poetry, playing bridge, teaching, the sense that the you have much to learn from the world is, to me, a very special kind of love.



That is why I say I know nothing.Everyday you learn something new that makes you think about what folks have always said was the way to do things.To me to close your mind to whats happening around you is to close off life itself.