I am cast as an apostle of stasis.

and a shiny blue bell.

love in the context of political upheaval is my favorite. then, love against the backdrop of intelligent speculation. the unbearable lightness of being comes to mind, the english patient, mating, the goldbug variations. i scanned my bookshelf for novels that make love central without giving it context (love and bach and dna, all tied up, or love and WWII, or love and prague under communist rule, or love in the kalahari (more intelligent speculation in this one but the socio-political does not go untreated), and the novel that was the purest love story to me, or so i decided, was lolita. which endeared me to the book more than i could convey. because the implication in these other grand books is that love outside of political and/or social and/or intellectual strife is trivial.

and though i acknowledge that certainly it might be i viscerally react against the notion. not that i don't love the books either. i do. all those above mentioned i can mention because they effected me in a way i kept with me, that i noticed and continue to notice. even in young adolescence my two favorite books were gone with the wind (rhett kissing scarlett during sherman's burning of atlanta -- love in history love in war) and les miserables. and even in young adolescence i believed in not such a small way that romantic love was huge, as huge as war or oppression or philosophy or religion. love was the biggest thing ever, and that once you had it, you were also huge.

the true love myth. and while now i don't dust off the cannons when i go in for a kiss, i still swell up a little when i think of how much in love i feel. the difference being i don't expect the rest of the world to register my big emotions. they need to register the socio-political and intellectual strife and their own big emotions.

i'm a silly girl, i know. but so much the better as we're all silly in our own ways, and better to know where we're at so we can't be doubly accused (once of being silly and then of not knowing how silly).

i will say this though -- i learned years ago that love (even love against upheaval even love not against upheaval) begins with a metaphor, a tower a railroad a small path home, then sings the alphabet. how it ends is a whole other matter but i always liked to believe with nothing else to be said. omega. zed. amein. et alii.

just like that.

the weather is thick today. walking down hope i found my hand stretched open in pre-clutch. like the air could be caught in such a way, dense as it was. i appreciate this weather, the fullness of it and that it impresses itself, makes it self known to those who would otherwise walk with perfectly loose hands.