I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
Pablo Neruda’s Extraordinary Life, in an Illustrated Love Letter to Language
Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda was not only one of the greatest poets in human history, but also a man of extraordinary insight into the human spirit — take, for instance, his remarkable reflection on what a childhood encounter taught him about why we make art, quite possibly the most beautiful metaphor for the creative impulse ever committed to paper.
The story begins with the poet’s birth in Chile in 1904 with the given name of Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto — to evade his father’s disapproval of his poetry, he came up with the pen name “Pablo Neruda” at the age of sixteen when he first began publishing his work — and traces his evolution as a writer, his political awakening as an activist, his deep love of people and language and the luminosity of life.
…Book, let me go. I won’t go clothed in volumes, I don’t come out of collected works, my poems have not eaten poems– they devour exciting happenings, feed on rough weather, and dig their food out of earth and men.
I’m on my way with dust in my shoes free of mythology: send books back to their shelves, I’m going down into the streets. I learned about life from life itself, love I learned in a single kiss and could teach no one anything except that I have lived with something in common among men, when fighting with them, when saying all their say in my song.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke | Pablo Neruda (?) | Louise Glück, Vita Nova | Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro | Vladimir Nabokov, Mary | Etel Adnan, Jebu | Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary | Bangtan Sonyeondan (방탄소년단), 봄날 (Spring Day) | Artwork by Claude Monet
Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth, let’s not speak in any language; let’s stop for one second, and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines; we would all be together in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea would not harm whales and the man gathering salt would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire, victories with no survivors, would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused with total inactivity. Life is what it is about; I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve and you keep quiet and I will go.
You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land.
But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine.
-Pablo Neruda, ‘If You Forget Me’, from The Captain’s Verse, 1952
[Text ID: But above all there is a terrifying, a terrifying deserted dining room, with its broken olive oil cruets, and vinegar running under its chairs, one ray of moonlight tied down, something dark, and I look for a comparison inside myself: perhaps it is a grocery store surrounded by the sea and torn clothing from which sea water is dripping. It is only a deserted dining room, and around it there are expanses, sunken factories, pieces of timber which I alone know because I am sad, and because I travel, and I know the earth, and I am sad.]
—L.M. Montgomery, Anne of The Island/ Louisa May Alcott, Little Women/ Unknown/ John Keats, To The Ladies Who Saw Me Crowned/ Anne Sexton, Suicide Note: The Complete Poems/ Irish Murdoch, The Italian Girls/ Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath/ Anne Sexton, The Truth the Dead Know/ Virginia Woolf, The Waves/ Pablo Neruda, One Hundred Sonnets
I can see it. This one moment when you know you’re not a sad story. You are alive. And you stand up and see the lights on the buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And you’re listening to thatsong, and that drive with the people who you love most in this world. And in this moment, I swear, we are infinite.
Ever tried playing Rodrigo’s Drivers License on repeat and full volume, while actually driving/riding away from home, away from the hubbub of life. Consoling feelings creep in and take anxiety’s place. The rage and agitation, all drains away as she beautifully end the chorus with :
‘Cause you said forever, now I drive alone past your street’
You could love someone as much as you want, but, That Love exists because of this nucleated core of hatred seated dormant within you. So does Hatred survive on this tiny, but effective piece of love somewhere in you. It is basic symbiosis. They feed on each other. Which is why there is not one without the other.
But when I looked, all I could see is a mark of profound knowledge and ideals. A trophy for all those late hours spent reading and the subtlety of underestimating your own achievements.
Look at how the moon so silently pulls the ocean towards itself. How cleverly brave it is to seduce this massive bulk of water. The crests of the waves reaching out to it as if diving in for a kiss. While the moon shines where it is, with adamant refusal.
Imagine recieving a letter a day. The joy it would cause. The strength it would have to lift up your dull mood. The heat it would contain to melt your heart. The icepack to calm down your brain. A mere piece of paper that would make your day…..The charm it would posses to entrap your soul in The Moment …
“Everyone you love is gonna die…But, darlin’, so is everything, don’t cry…The stars will blink out one by one in time…And everyone you love is gonna die”
~ The End of Everything ( Noah Cyrus )
Meanwhile Me *hastily* : How do I salvage every second of this precious life ??
