No One So Much As You

At the end of a final letter I should write:

"That is all: I have kept / Only a fretting // That I could not return / All that you gave"

Edward Thomas, "No One So Much As You"

In conjunction with the Jane Addams' quote

We're better than men, so we don't need to be equal to them.

Anne Fadiman, "True Womanhood," in Ex Libris

Easy love has taught me the hard way that love is hard.

I hadn't understood this poem when I first read it. I just knew that it is about love and that it is very beautiful. Perhaps now, perhaps because I am experiencing what Creeley must have experienced, I am coming closer to his meaning. Easy love has taught me the hard way that love is hard. "if you did not / I wouldn't either" Ah the reciprocality of love. If you did not love me I wouldn't either. But would you still love me if I didn't?

Upon re-reading Robert Creeley's "For Love"

Love only hurts if you feel it too much. I learned it the hard way that love is hard (hard, because it is so impossibly difficult, and hard, because it is sometimes like a head-on collision to something solid and unmovable).

Upon writing back to Emily on love

Essays in Love

Not to find the right words is paradoxically often the best proof that the right words are meant.

Alain de Botton, Essays in Love

I cannot find the right words, but I find comfort in the words above. Perhaps the reason I write so much is because I am looking for the right words, hoping I will, in the end, have them in my hands, but I realize that I can only come closer to finding them. 

August 1, 2011

I am scared of You. I am scared You will do something terrible to me. And I am scared of this fear.

     Something terrible did happen to me but I refuse to be terrified.

Written prayer, August 1, 2011