Sessions from the Balcony: Love

There are the great misconceptions about love and writing about love. It would be inaccurate to believe that one has to be in love in order to write about love. There is the misconception that one would have to experience heartbreak to be able to write about the absence of love.
Love is only love.
Love is us. Love is the way we think and breathe. The same as we are alive, love is alive. Anything we write or say about us is true. Even if what we say about our love is not true; our lies are still true because somewhere, deep down beneath the layers we hide behind and deep beneath our public image, and deeper beneath the roles we play in a back and forth chess match, and behind all of our push/pull mentalities, behind the nonsense and the make-believe, somewhere in there is a dream and a wish. Somewhere in us is a love we only hope could be true. Somewhere in us is the desire to be more.

Meanwhile, there are these elusive ideas we have about love and the way love is supposed to be. We have these errors of thought and misunderstandings; as if love comes with a specific face or happens at a certain age. Love is only love. 
Yet, there we are, sifting through ideas about love as if we were someone eager to find the right page with a perfect picture in a magazine.
The only problem is nothing is picture perfect. Life is flawed and therefore, love is flawed too. There is nothing perfect about love, per se.
The only thing perfect about love is that the flaws do no matter. And this is the magical part. Love has the ability to make imperfections meaningless and unobjectionable.

Love is warmth from the hand. Love is a hug from someone you haven’t seen in years, and yet suddenly, the moment they walk in the room, their hug fits perfectly.
Of all I know, I know this; There are less stars in the galaxy than there are ways to love someone or something. Love is as infinite as the universe.
Love can range from brotherly to sisterly, to friends, acquaintances, family, to the people we admire, and of course, love can range from least intimate to most. 

Love can be a romantic dinner or a moment by a fireplace in a little shack in the middle of nowhere. Love can be an empty wine glass with a tiny puddle of burgundy at the bottom of the glass, clothes strewn about the room, and the bed unmade with the sheets all crunched as an aftereffect while the shower runs in the bathroom.

Love is this. And yet, love is so much more.
Several years ago, there was a story about a man and woman that celebrated 80 years of marriage.
Somehow, I doubt the long hours of love making are still in effect for them. I assume their life has seen all different times. I am sure they experienced hardships. Of course, they experienced losses. 80 years and still together.

I don’t know if people are built this way anymore. I don’t know if love to them is the same as love is to anyone else. I only know that love like this is perfectly unbreakable.
It has to be. 

I think of all the times we have quit on ourselves and on others in our life. I think about all the senseless bickering. I think about the time we spend arguing when meanwhile, there are better things to do.
There are so many ways to share our time together. Eat something. See something new. Do something different. Never get old. Never allow yourself to become so cynical that all you see are the mistakes and mishaps. Quit looking for the conspiracy. Stop arguing over politics. Take off your shoes and stay for a while. Quit with this need to be right because right or wrong, in the end, none of it matters. 
Stop quibbling with your fears and anxiety (and believe me, I get it!) because nothing about anxiety is rational. This is only our fear receptors overreacting to an idea that ran out of control.

As for love, man . . .
There is no emotion braver than this. True love is the most daring experience known to our species. Love is this thing we feel, we see and we know in our heart.
Love is not dependent upon someone else. Love is an energy that we either use, reserve or waste it away.

There was a man that told me a poem about love. His was a different kind of love and at the time, I was too afraid and too judgmental to understand his kind of freedom.
Then again, I was just a crazy kid at the time so what the hell did I know about love?

A friend of his wrote a poem. He never told me who wrote this or why. I don’t know who this was written for nor does any of this matter. I’m just glad to know that I remember a lesson that reaches back nearly 30 years

He told me:
A bell is not run until you ring it
And a song is not sung until you sing it
And love in your heart was not put there to stay
Because love is not love until you give it away.

At the time, I was twenty-something and out of my head. At the time, I was mad at the world. I was pissed off and I wasn’t going to take it anymore. At the time, I was so guarded. I was so buried deep beneath all the vulgar lies and hidden behind the masks I wore as a means of protection.
I was sad and yet, somewhere in there was the truthfulness of hope. 

And sure, I hoped. 
My first real poem went like this:
If I listen, I can hear you in my thoughts
And if I look, I can see you in my dreams
And on the movie screens behind the inside of my eyelids
But I only hope that someday soon
I will hold you in my arms forever.

The way I see it is somewhere between the two poems, is the couple that stayed married for 80 years. They know the secret.
God bless them!