Posts tagged love
The Beauty of the Days Gone By

My sisters sent this to each other on their Facebook walls. It's lovely. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nnjs194Gu4&w=700]

When I recall just how it felt When I went walking down by the lake My soul was free, my heart awake When I walked down into the town

The mountain air was fresh and clear The sun was up behind the hill It felt so good to be alive On that morning in spring

I want to sing this song for you I want to lift your spirits high And in my soul I want to feel The beauty of the days gone by

The beauty of the days gone by It brings a longing to my soul To contemplate my own true self And keep me young as I grow old

The beauty of the days gone by The music that we used to play So lift your glass and raise it high To the beauty of the days gone by

I'll sing it from the mountain top Down to the valley down below Because my cup doth overflow With the beauty of the days gone by

The mountain glen Where we used to roam The gardens there By the railroad track Oh my memory it does not lack Of the beauty of the days gone by

The beauty of the days gone by It brings a longing to my soul To contemplate my own true self And keep me young as I grow old

And keep me young as I grow old And keep me young as I grow old And keep me young as I grow old

UncategorizedJack Dysonbeauty, by, days, gone, love, music, of, van morrison Comment
A line-storm song, by Robert Frost 
The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift,  
  The road is forlorn all day,  
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,  
  And the hoof-prints vanish away.  
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
  Expend their bloom in vain.  
Come over the hills and far with me,  
  And be my love in the rain.  

The birds have less to say for themselves  
  In the wood-world’s torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves,  
  Although they are no less there:  
All song of the woods is crushed like some  
  Wild, easily shattered rose.  
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
  Where the boughs rain when it blows.  

There is the gale to urge behind  
  And bruit our singing down,  
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind  
  From which to gather your gown.     
What matter if we go clear to the west,  
  And come not through dry-shod?  
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast  
  The rain-fresh goldenrod.  

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells    
  But it seems like the sea’s return  
To the ancient lands where it left the shells  
  Before the age of the fern;  
And it seems like the time when after doubt  
  Our love came back amain.       
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout  
  And be my love in the rain.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/0QM1QdRpFxU&w=700]

UncategorizedJack Dysonlove, poem, poetry, robert frost, sigur rosComment
A real love letter. Heart breaking.

So the 15th of February, the day after Valentine's day, seems like the perfect time read this, from the excellent and irreplaceable Letters of Note:

In June of 1945, Arline Feynman — high-school sweetheart and wife of the hugely influential physicist, Richard Feynman — passed away after succumbing to tuberculosis. She was 25-years-old. 16 months later, in October of 1946, Richard wrote his late wife the following love letter and sealed it in an envelope. It remained unopened until after his death in 1988.

(Source: Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman; Image: Richard Feynman, via.)

October 17, 1946

D’Arline,

I adore you, sweetheart.

I know how much you like to hear that — but I don't only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.

It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you'll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing.

But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.

I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together — or learn Chinese — or getting a movie projector. Can't I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the "idea-woman" and general instigator of all our wild adventures.

When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true — you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.

I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don't want to be in my way. I'll bet you are surprised that I don't even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can't help it, darling, nor can I — I don't understand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don't want to remain alone — but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real.

My darling wife, I do adore you.

I love my wife. My wife is dead.

Rich.

PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don't know your new address.

--

Postscript - Dana sent this, saying "soundtrack to the love letter you just posted". I interviewed Richard Hawley once, he absolutely blew me away. No gimmick to him. Just an amazing song writer.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG6itlFun5A&sns=em&w=700]

UncategorizedJack Dysonbereaved, bereavement, darling wife, feynman, high school sweetheart, letters, loss, love, love letter, movie projector, physicist richard feynman, richard hawley, tuberculosis, valentine s day, wild adventures, writingComment
Real sound

Sometimes the old ones just can't be beat. 01:55 with Etta and she just FEELS it. So passionate and Dr John is perfect with his growly gravelly scratchy voice. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyMd19sE6U4]

Just raw and beautiful. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvmqKBGQO44]

Listened to this for years - beautiful song. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF3IktTk_pQ]

UncategorizedJack Dysonetta james, jimmy cliff, love, love songs, many rivers to cross, music, old music, there he isComment
And on 14 February we...

Right, well with the origins of Valentine's day covered, it would be churlish not to get into at least some of the better bon mots and billets doux.

"A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave." Mahatma Gandhi

"A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous." Ingrid Bergman

"A lady of forty-seven who had been married twenty-seven years and has six children knows what love really is and once described it for me like this: 'Love is what you've been through with somebody.'" James Thurber

"All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love." Leo Tolstoy

"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye." Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"And think not you can Direct the course of love, For love, If it finds you worthy, Directs your course." Kahlil Gibran

"I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love." Mother Teresa

"A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge." Thomas Carlyle

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEdBndu0YUM]

"How is it that she can sleep when I am so near? We must stoke the furnace of love, must we not?" Pepe Le Pew

"But madame! I have overstoked the furnace, yes? Madame! Your conduct is unseemly! Control yourself! Madame!" Pepe Le Pew "At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet." Plato

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." Martin Luther King, Jr

"I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes" James Joyce (Molly Bloom in Ulysses) "I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, - and the stars through his soul." Victor Hugo

"I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are." J. D. Salinger (Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye)

-

And, girls, a little tip if anyone is being too persistent:

"I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox." Woody Allen

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ps - can't have love poems without Pablo Neruda. This one is called "Your hands"

When your hands leap towards mine, love, what do they bring me in flight? Why did they stop at my lips, so suddenly, why do I know them, as if once before, I have touched them, as if, before being, they travelled my forehead, my waist?

Their smoothness came winging through time, over the sea and the smoke, over the Spring, and when you laid your hands on my chest I knew those wings of the gold doves, I knew that clay, and that colour of grain.

The years of my life have been roadways of searching, a climbing of stairs, a crossing of reefs. Trains hurled me onwards waters recalled me, on the surface of grapes it seemed that I touched you. Wood, of a sudden, made contact with you, the almond-tree summoned your hidden smoothness, until both your hands closed on my chest, like a pair of wings ending their flight.

UncategorizedJack Dysoni love you, love, poetry, quotes, valentinesComment
E. E. Cummings, I carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it inmy heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

---

It might look as if the punctuation and flow is all screwy, but this is in fact enjambement at its best: a way of breaking a line between two verses and forcing the reader's eye to move on to the next sentence. Meaning flows as the line progresses. It's very pretty.

UncategorizedJack Dysoncummings, enjambment, i carry your hart with me, love, poem, poetryComment
Love & Theft

(spotted on someone else's Facebook) [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEUxlwb2uFI]

"And I'm still carrying the gift you gave, It's a part of me now, it's been cherished and saved, It'll be with me unto the grave And then unto eternity." (Bob Dylan)

Script, direction: Andreas Hykade Design, animation: Andreas Hykade Animation assistance: Angela Steffen Art work: Natalia Eck Compositing: Christof Hoffmann Sound, Music: Heiko Maile Funding: MFG and FFA Production assistance: Simone Fischer Production: Thomas Meyer-Hermann Studio FILM BILDER 2010

UncategorizedJack Dysonanimation, cartoon, film, love, theft Comments
Love is evil

I've blogged a few nuggets by Slovenian philosopher Zlavod Zizek a couple of times before (once on the hypocrisy of conscious consumerism, once on America's own problems with fundamentalists). Now it's time to listen to him on love.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg7qdowoemo&w=700]

The man

does not

hold back.

"Love feels like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures."

Hmm.

Anyway, if you liked that, you might like this article by Kathleen O'Dwyer, which goes into a little more detail on his thoughts on and attempts at unraveling the nature of love. Here's a taster from the intro:

The postmodern psychoanalyst-philosopher Slavoj Žižek is noted for his flamboyant style, his embrace of contradiction, and his often controversial exposure of the dualities, deceptions and disavowals which characterize contemporary culture. Reflecting on these aspects of Žižek’s work, his biographer Tony Myers states that “Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher. He is, however, no ordinary philosopher, for he thinks and writes in such a recklessly entertaining fashion, he constantly risks making philosophy enjoyable.” What makes Žižek different from ‘ordinary philosophers’, according to Myers, is his persistent sense of wonder and amazement, which he expresses in a limitless questioning of everything: “With all the guile of a child asking his parents why the sky is blue, Žižek questions everything that passes for wisdom about who we are, what we are doing and why we do it.” As an astute commentator on historical and contemporary disasters and difficulties, Žižek examines political, social and individual issues with a combination of philosophical reflection and cultural analysis. One such issue is the concept of neighbourly love.

Žižek’s analysis of the Christian injunction ‘to love one’s neighbour as oneself’ queries both its possibility and its expediency. His argument centres on the assertions that the universal love so promoted disavows that which is unlovable in human nature, and that love must in some sense be an autonomous decision (simply, that love cannot be commanded)...[read the rest here]

UncategorizedJack Dysonlove, love is evil, philosophy, quote, quotes, slajoj zizek Comment