Sunday, June 30, 2013

Speak to us of Beauty

I've been opening Kahlil Gibran's _The Prophet_ at random with the intention that whatever passage I open it to will answer a question my heart is seeking. My own version of tarot maybe.

Here is where the book fell tonight.

.

And a poet said, Speak to us of Beauty.
And he answered:
Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide?
And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?

The aggrieved and the injured say, 'Beauty is kind and gentle.
Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us.'
And the passionate say, 'Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us.'

The tired and weary say, 'Beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit.
Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow.'
But the restless say, 'We have heard her shouting among the mountains,
And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions.'

At night the watchmen of the city say, 'Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east.'
And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, 'We have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset.'

In winter say the snow-bound, 'She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills.'
And in the summer heat the reapers say, 'We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair.'
All these things have you said of beauty,
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart inflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.

People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

Home&Wondering

Having a travel blog was fun, and I'm lucky to have had those experiences, but there is something to say about home.
It has been a long few weeks here with me, and I realize I'm doing a terrible job of maintaining this blog, but mostly I am happy, and that's an important thing for me.

Tonight I just want to ruminate on love a bit more, because honestly... it's on my mind a lot.

I am trying to stay positive, honestly. And I am happy, really. Every day I am happy for at least a minute and usually more.  It is not hard to keep smiling and to put a smile on my face--a real one where my eyes squint and wrinkles appear.

But I do have to acknowledge how much time I spend thinking about love. And whether or not I was ever really in it. And whether or not I'll find it again.

I want to be in love again. Or for the first time maybe.  I do. but I also question if I know how to give myself to a person. I wonder if companionship is really the end-all-be-all. Is that all that I'm looking for?  And what is it about the idea of being "in love"that offers me more than I feel like my friendships can? Or what is it that I am missing from myself that I feel like I need to seek from someone else? Is it sex? Is it physical&mental intimacy?

I miss holding hands.
And I miss kissing.
And I miss being able to lean over in the store and put my head on someone's shoulder if I'm getting sleepy or just want to feel that connection of my warm body to theirs. And then they would put their hand on the back of my neck
and I would feel safe.
I miss waking up next to somebody, and I miss falling asleep with my feet tangled between their shins.
And I miss smiling at someone and having them now exactly what that smile means.
I miss talking on the phone
and I miss saying I love you when I meant it at least sometimes. When the fullness of those words came from the fullness inside my soul.

But, again, do all those things add up to love?
And, if they do, do they add up to a love that is greater than the feeling I have of being able to live for myself? And learning to love myself?
Of being able to enjoy my rituals of drinking tea
or journaling
or writing poetry
or going to yoga
or sleeping in
and not having to worry about the time those things take and how the cut into my time with someone else.
I like being alone
and being able to decorate my room and my space without concerning myself with the tastes of someone else and whether they appreciate nudes as much as I do.
I like being able to eat refried beans cold straight out of the can
and not do laundry for weeks
and not shave my legs or shower
if I don't want to.
I like being able to enjoy a bar of chocolate or a chocolate cake and not worry about being judged or where those calories are going to sit when I am undressed&naked, sweaty and rolling my hips in intimacy&ecstasy.

I like so many things about being alone,
but I wonder if those things add up to outweigh the weight of being in love.
What is it to be in love?

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Paris, In One Fell Swoop.

Paris casts a spell on anyone with an artistic heart, I think. To me, it's perfect. I idealize it. It was my third trip and I want more.

Maybe part of it is that the city caught me up in its endless neighborhoods and histories and museums, and kept me spinning so that after four days, I was left with only vague memories and an impression of falling in love with the places my footsteps fell.  I'm happy that I take a lot of pictures, because without them, I find myself questioning if I was really there at all. 

It was raining until our last day, but even that helped it feel more like Paris, the fabled city of lights and dreams. Ian and I are lucky that we kind of grew up outside so we didn't mind the weather, and I'm lucky that I somehow associate umbrellas with being cultured and romantic. I love that when you walk into any shop or restaurant in Paris, it's polite and expected to leave your umbrella in a stand by the door. And I love that the French pace of life is such that, when the clouds break, even Parisians with umbrellas simply stop under the closest doorway or awning and simply wait out the storm. In France, the moment you arrive is exactly when you should have gotten there.






This trip we focused on museums and macaroons mostly, and spent several hours one morning wandering the Père Lachaise Cemetary to see the graves of Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Edith Piaf, and Jim Morrison. We staged mini-memorial services: we played Piaf's 'La Vie en Rose' and The Doors 'Hello, I Love You,' by their respective graves; we read Stein's 'Sacred Emily' next to where she is buried with her lover; and we stood next to Oscar Wilde's granite tomb and recited as many of his cynical quotes as we could think of.






We went to the Museé de l'Orangerie and Museé Marmottan and saw countless Impressionist masterpieces by Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, and Picasso, and I fell in love with the work of Marie Laurencin, a woman I can't believe I haven't heard of before.


(I wish our museums looked like this)


(I know. I'm sure you all would rather see a picture of an entire Monet, but instead just marvel at his brush-strokes and layers)


We avoided the metro as much as we could and wandered through miles&miles of cobblestones instead. That meant we got the see the vineyard that grows on the hill behind the Sacré Cœur, and we somehow stumbled upon the crêperie I ate at four years ago with my ex-fiancé.





In Bastille, we almost got swept up in a celebration of the Paris rugby team (complete with riot police), and Ian found a shop that had four bottles of limited-supply Belgium-monk-brewed beer (he bought them all for 13,90€ each). On our last evening, we sat in front of Notre Dame eating Pierre Hermè macarons before we went in to hear the opening hymns of evening mass being sung to the stained-glass windows. 






It was all beautiful, and it was all a little sad. It's impossible to deny the romance of Paris, but sometimes I wish I could.