A. F. Elliot – Lola's Curmudgeonly Musings

John Edward Bale, watercolor November-1874 — “November” (1874, watercolor, found in an unpublished manuscript by Surgeon Major A. F. Elliot)
by John Edward Bale

“…the desire for love, the one
that costs everything, that shocks you
when someone else casts a shadow on the map
of the earth for the first time larger than your own.” ~ Deborah Brown, from “Reprise”

Got shots all over my head and back today. Feel like a very sore pin cushion. Sorry, no real words.

However, ran across some bits and bobs that struck me as particularly beautiful.

For example, this passage:

“I hear you putting on your night dress. But it doesn’t stop there by any means. Again there are a hundred little actions. I know you are hurrying; clearly it is all necessary. I understand: we watch the mute gestures of animals, amazed that they, who are supposed to have no soul, line up their actions from dawn to dusk. It is exactly the same. You have no awareness of the countless moves you make, above all those that seem necessary to you, and remain quite unimportant. But they loom widely into your life. I, as I wait, feel it by chance.Love is also apparent in feeling, marveling, enthusiastic, tender hearing and observing.” ~ Robert Musil, on his wife Minerva, as quoted in 1913 by Florian Illies.

and then this short poem:

For You

For you I undress down to the sheaths of my nerves.
I remove my jewelry and set it on the nightstand,
I unhook my ribs, spread my lungs flat on a chair.
I dissolve like a remedy in water, in wine.
I spill without staining, and leave without stirring the air.
I do it for love. For love, I disappear.

~ Kim Addonizio

More later. Peace.

Music by Scarlett O’Connor and Gunnar Scott, “Fade into You”