Reflections on Affections

I have been thinking of love of late. For those who have known me a while, this is not news. I become enamored quickly and love to dote on friends and especially sweethearts. I overthink things. After considering various terms of endearment, I decided that "sweethearts" is preferable to just about anything else. Not only is it gender neutral, it is heart-warming and endearingly jaded. Words that have fallen out of use earn my affection.

That isn't the same kind of affection I am thinking of though. After a knockabout month of travels at the beginning of the summer (all I posted in the month of May was a poem by e.e. cummings), I have attempted to abstain from romantic entanglements. There are reasons for this which I will not here go into. What I think has developed over that period is a perception of the affection of others. (I hope you're not getting tired of literary devices, I fear they will be coming around again in this post.) The previous year has set me in a community where I am around friends and colleagues noticeably older, and sometimes younger, than myself. I am happy for that. Just like the year before that I was allowed to appreciate my mother more thoughtfully and more graciously than I ever managed in high school or college, I have been given the gift of expanded perception.

I have been reading Kenneth Grant, an occult historian and magician (or whatever the preferred nom for the magically inclined) who refers heavily to Aleister Crowley. Crowley and Grant both have a great deal to say on how reason, the sentiments, and the self interrelate. Perhaps it is surprising that these considerations are rather challenging to me. Though I have not read Ayn Rand, I think the effect is similar: All of a sudden, one realizes that one doesn't exactly believe the agenda set forth, but it seeps into one's mind all the same. What I mean to say is that my conceptualization of love comes to mind regularly in both reading (whether it is Grant and the Vincenzi story or on cohousing and community building) and day-to-day reflections.

What gets me is that these wonderful pairings of people have a real sense of one another. The women - as is my habit, I am better acquainted with the women of these pairs - have a profound sympathy with their partners. Sympathy meaning "same feeling" (sun/with - pathos/suffering or feeling) and it is clear that that reality of same feeling is lived for these couples. What further excites my attention is that the relative longevity of their relationships doesn't make them any less youthful from time to time.

Let me relate an image. Love is often considered a flame, a fire burning between two people. It can be in the heart, mind, or spirit. Sometimes that flame is out of control, as in Romeo & Juliet (this is one of the reasons I have never taken to the play) or a passed relationship described in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver. When one is young or inspired to youthfulness by love, the fire is hot, uncontrolled, and wild. Its tongues whip the air all around it and threaten the stability of nearby trees, passers-by, buildings, and such. Any attempts to control the fire can force it even higher. (This is actually the case when attempting to use water to squelch the most dangerous of forest fires because the water breaks down into hydrogen and oxygen, which only feed the fire.) This can also be the case when one or both of the partners involved is poorly controlled; that is the person at the party who keeps feeding the fire when it is already good and hot, especially when "feeding" involves the more combustible of fluids. Love, in this case, is deliciously chaotic and lively, but potentially terrifying and aggressive.

Though I think of myself as a passionate person, even from time to time as a romantic person - a sense of myself I've never been able to shake - this is not a love that I am especially enamored with, so to speak. Rather than the over-the-top blistering heat of a wildfire, I become more and more invested in the slow, smoldering burning love. I think it is odd that "smolder" is a term that sometimes describes young lovers who "burn" for one another. What I see more and more is smoldering love that has lasted through seasons, has been tended through rains, and has had its heated peaks and its cool offs; what remains are the embers that persevere and reignite the fire after distance and - heaven forbid otherwise - the partners know that the flame is burning bright after a twilight session. (This is more than a little inspired by the fireside soirée a week ago when the embers of the fire remained sheltered under a terra cotta pot and burned slowly for hours.)

Love, the long-lasting smoldering of affection I have been witness to of late, has that power for those around it. Whereas the wildfire affections of the young (of which I am, nor really most anyone is, not exempt from) consume their surroundings and require the addition of greater and greater quantities of fuel, this other affection warms those around it even if they are not party to it. It can be fierce and insistent (I noticed the terra cotta pot was untouchable in no time), it can tug you by the hand and pull you along, but it provides as much if not more than it takes. In a way, this is perhaps an expression of gratitude to those in love around me, those who have allowed me the pleasure of enjoying the warmth that they radiate. Then, there is also the way that seeing it, knowing it even if from the outside is keenly educational. I was told recently of the maturity I have as a young man and the perspicaciousness I have - on occasion, at least - concerning the feelings of those around me. This is an echo of comments I have heard before, but do appreciate it. I think, though, I am being humbled by the behaviors and emotions so pleasantly, wisely, and sincerely manifest around me.