Love is necessity, all else about it is up for grabs. Love’s hold is primal, its manifestations baroque, arcane. In the tended garden of the personality or soul, love is the weed of startling loveliness. Flowers of a more acceptable configuration – duty, kindness, citizenship, concern – may take deliberate root and bloom. But love needs no planting, it is sown by the win
We can choose whom we live with, whose hand we shake, whose cheek we kiss, but we cannot choose who in this wide world, out of the millions, we truly love. Our emotions ride air currents whose sources we cannot name. Love is an infinite feeling in a finite container, and so upsets the intellect, frustrates the will.
This is our human problem, one common to parents, sons and daughters, too – how to let go while holding tight, how to simultaneously cherish the closeness and intricacy of the bond while at the same time letting out the raveling string, the red yarn that ties our hearts.
Laughter is our consolation prize for consciousness.
My life is like that – I don’t stop myself from going into the feeling, the emotion that pulls like gravity. Surely there are gentler courses, switchbacks, but for some reason I can’t bring myself to take them.
Hold back! Stop! I panic, unprepared for change, but it’s too late … I cannot gather back one moment, only marvel at what comes next.
All from The Blue Jay’s Dance, Louise Erdrich
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11 Comments
Beautiful!
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Lovely. And all too true for some of us.
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Yeah, that chick can write, can’t she? Lovely.
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Love IS necessity – All true!
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How am I not surprised (but yet, still…) to find this quote here today on my blog.
Seven years ago when I was vastly pregnant with my twins, I visited my midwife one day and shared with her passages from this very book, The Blue Jay’s Dance, Louise Erdrich.
There is much pondering to be done through it’s wisdom and pages. And I feel it a blessing to see it here, and remember.
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Terresa Wellborn Reply:
February 20th, 2010 at 10:34 am
I meant **your** blog. I’m a fast typer & often don’t re-read my blog comments. Sorry.
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Beautiful! Thanks for sharing, Lindsey.
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This was a wonderful read, thanks for sharing Lindsey!
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I like the last sentence best. I am always unprepared for change
and change is always right there
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A friend recently reminded me to embrace my emotionality. It is what makes us human. I think this quotation is a perfect companion to my friend’s remark.
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Love, the most mysterious force the defies the law of the universe. It’s only source can be the Divine.
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Just love it. Beautiful.
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