FTN_list

TROPARION: COMMITMENTS

24. Passage: Eiland 't Hooft

     For relationships . . . must be like islands, one must accept
     them for what they are here and now, within their limits —
     islands . . . surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and
     continually visited and abandoned by the tides.

     Yo que viví en un puerto desde donde te amaba

I’VE come to this island where I don’t care
if you love me, though now I see your love
runs clear through me. What was my total fare
to this place? Well, I surrendered, above
all else, my rank tattered ticket to where
my clinging kept me from seeing who you
are, a pool I could not swim out of, snare,
delusions, dreams that never will come true.
     We reach each other through the deep, through arm
     and inlet, mouth, sound, sump, cove, bay and bight.
     The rush and churn, the quiet sea brew’s barm,
     the flood and drain are love’s career and rite.
          O something deeper than the inflect sea
          tips, braces, sips, and bodies you and me.

The EPIGRAPH is from Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea, 1955, p109. And even David Brooks writes, “life comes to a point only in those moments when the self dissolves into some task [I wish he had added, ‘or relationship’]. The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself” —The New York Times, 2011 May 31. On the other hand, the complementary truth is that “If . . . I do not need another in order to complete my own identity, I can see the other for what he really is in himself rather than simply for what he is that correlates to my own needs.” —Herbert W Richardson, “Three Myths of Transcendence” in Transcendence, 1969, ed Richardson and Ronald R Cutler, p112. In L'Erotisme, 1957 [Erotism: Death and Sensuality, 1962/1986, p15], Georges Bataille writes, “We are discontinuous beings, individuals who perish in isolation in the midst of an incomprehensible adventure, but we yearn for our lost continuity.” And Tom Robbins, Tibetan Peach Pie, 2014, p126, writes, “it’s a privilege to love someone . . . ; and while it’s paradisiacal if she or he loves you back, it’s unfair to demand or expect reciprocity. We should consider ourselves lucky, honored, blessed that we possess the capacity to feel [this way] . . . and be grateful even when that love is not returned.” E2: “I who lived in a harbor where I loved you” —Pablo Neruda’s “He ido marcando” in Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada, 1924. A sump is a kind of pool of water. A bight is a curve or bend in the bank or shore of a body of water, or the water thus embraced. Barm is the yeasty froth or head on malt drinks like beer. Rite: “The perfect ceremony of love’s rite” —Shakespeare Sonnet 23.6 (baritone setting by Tadeusz Baird).