Friday, February 19, 2010

Why Do You Love Me: An Essay

Why Do You Love Me?

To be asked, ‘why do you love me?’ is such an interesting happening. It must surely come up within almost every romantic relationship, where there is mention of the word love, or certainly after some period of time of maintenance of the relationship. It seems to me that it likely arises as a question verbalized from one of two, perhaps a combination of, thought processes. One of those could be a lack of or need for affirmation or seeking it, or perhaps in pseudo jest, for pampering of the ego. The other way could be out of a thought process of doubt, uncertainty, self-criticism or self-esteem issues.

I find myself gripped with positivity that I would never myself ask the question of an other because there is a danger in knowing the answer, depending on how it is delivered; and for the most part it is delivered as condition, despite the frequent denial of it so to the self and the other. That, for knowing, then makes one wonder whether it is productive or good or better or worse to feel the conditions of being loved, the certainty or doubt of them able extant aside.

For someone to lay out or try to explain why they love another is to ask themselves categorically the specific things, of which there are many that make up a person, that they identify as being characteristics greater in that person than in others. Knowing these things, whether they are true or false or allowed change or not or permanent or temporary inflicts the subject with a most likely back of the mind keeping that without them or for loss of them their being loved may be opposed, questioned or liable to dissolution. Furthermore, for the subject asking the question, if they are requesting so from a true uncertainty of themselves and what makes them attractive, desirable, great or anything they define as being loved for then it can possibly have the effect of growing their confidence or aiding their realisation of who they are, what they can be. Still, however, there is the danger of them fixing those things, those affirmations of why they’re loved, to why they’d be loved by anyone and the thereafter association of those things as forefront offerings to anybody whom they desire attention or affection from.

Personally, I do not believe I can justly answer the question, at least not at present and perhaps not ever because I am not convinced, nor convicted I know what love is. That the subject asking feels so, and must in order to ask the question, that they are loved is enough and should be so because that tells to me they are experiencing a feeling greater than they’ve known and can imagine knowing. Perhaps the question that is sought, veiled in the ‘why’ is actually the ‘how’. How do I make you feel? And that question is something for which there is only a very personal contention available. And so that does imply that love is not something able to be defined because it’s definition exists as different and fictitious in the way that we read fables or fortunes or poetry or song, the way that mirrors tell different truths to every eye and to every day.

I could come close to an answer, perhaps one to quell the need for hearing an acute response in, ‘I love you because you are exactly who you are and because of how you make me feel.’ To say other than this is to impose condition and it seems apparent that love should strive for the absence of conditions. But that answer also opens the doors for the wondering out loud of who am I to you and how do I make you feel. This brings me to the intellectual feeling that more than love, or perhaps what we truly define as love, is seeking and understanding who we are and how we can feel and what we do feel. Love is just what we call the mirrors that people are to us, reflecting the different, unseen, skewed, changing aspects, impressions and views of ourselves. And it seems the ones that reflect the most satisfyingly, profoundly, intensely are the ones we say we love, the ones we call love, because we are so overwhelmed by the visions and vastness and surprise and wonder if dream or not that we feel without vocabulary for expression.

In summation, though hardly truly conclusion for the endlessness of this issue and questions’ wonder, I love you because; you make me believe that love exists, draw me closer to the things that it might be and without you I would not feel the magnitude of myself that I cannot duly describe but wish to so fervently. Whether this is truth or not, whether you can understand its implication or not, is up to you but I would guarantee that you were unable or would be unable to, without pause, without momentary contemplation, without consideration to the extent of everything you know and can feel, respond seriously and with sincerity to the question yet remain without still feeling as though it was unanswered. If you’re the subject asking it, you would likely feel appreciation, gratitude and enough satisfaction in its response’s attempt. After all, maybe that’s the only reason it’s ever asked; to just hear a lover’s voice, wanting you, desiring to please you, drawing to be close to you. Listening to hear the sound of knowing who you both are, together.


Friday, February 12, 2010

The Silhouettes Of Memory's Pirouettes

looking through some photographs
of a time when I was in love
I felt this urge to race away
towards when the past was enough

because I've become reliant
on the moment feeding my lust
for life and living and feeling
but now the future beckons to trust

and it does so with a soft
touch of a lover's hand in dark
with their look that pierces
and the searing ways their gifts mark

is it truly the feeling of then
that I remember in these photos
or is it what I wished I'd felt
and maybe not again's knowing so

sometimes I think they write
with their eyes upon my heart
and what I feel is the etching
but can't read it til we're apart

and that's what this feeling is
being so close you cannot see
until shadows lift and move
and their figure shows complete

imagination lets your dreams
wonder away with silhouettes
before you know it you're dancing
and your memory remains in pirouettes

all I do is turn and over
many times the ways we'd come
together as lovers and the leaving
with which I never can feel done


other people waiting

we're not strangers anymore