(April 19, 2006)
Been thinking about love. All the different kinds of love. . .
I've always been hung up on ROMANTIC LOVE: to love and be loved by this special other. It never really happened for me. Mostly, it expressed itself as this incredible unfulfilled longing. And the emptiness of This-Thing-That-Was-Always-Missing. Which I guess they call "loneliness" or "heart-ache."
Then there's the LOVE-YOU-FEEL-FOR-YOUR-FELLOW-MAN kind of love. Which sometimes, but not always bisects with Romantic Love. All these different forms of love bisect with eachother. Its "one love", and all that corny crap. I guess describing the different sides of love is like describing the different properties of water: rain, ice, rivers, H2O.... Its all still water. The Love-You-Feel-For-Your-Fellow-Man type of love is that "spontaneous feeling of tenderness that arises on its own accord," as my guru Swami Muktananda put it. Its the feeling that makes you want to do a favor for another person without wanting anything in return. The feeling of "love" itself is its own reward, and we're all humble servants to it. Its the one aspect of human life that isn't a "deal."
Then theres the LOVE OF NATURE. The appreciation you sometimes feel for the awesome splendor of this natural universe (mixed in with the less-than-splendorous feelings you have towards parasites, fungus, contagious diseases, and TV sit-coms). You can feel that affection towards a tree, or a flower, or a dog, or a child, or a sun-set, or whatever. Or even for a special spot; your home or your hang-out.
Then theres another form of love I just thought about: I guess you could call it NOSTALGIA LOVE: that wistful, poignant feeling you get, looking back on all the places and people of your past. Its not so much a love for these places and people, but for the totality of all your life experiences. Like all the things you've been through -- and you go "WOW!" Like its been the most amazing movie, with all these weird, indescribable peaks.
Then theres the LOVE OF DOING. This friend of mine who loves working on cars described it this way: "When I get underneath a car and start working on the engine, I'll look up and 8 hours has gone by just like THAT!" I know exactly the feeling he's talking about. Labor-of-love. Or maybe somebody gets that feeling from going to the movies or watching sports. That fascination where time is no longer a burden, but a delicious food you want to keep eating. That feeling is the best, ain't it?
I'm sure you could slice the pie of love up into many more sub-categories. But I guess the only other real important one is LOVE OF GOD. That one surely encompasses all the other categories. Its the feeling that nothing exists but God, and that every molecule and atom of this world is made up of nothing but Pure Love. Love is what makes the blood pump through our veins, and the sperm shoot out of our penises, and the earth revolve around the sun. When we lose that feeling of love, we feel our physical being start to shrivel up and die, so fundamental is it, our cells crave the experience of it like our lungs crave air. All that we do, we do for love (though the experience often gets sublimated and warped into all sorts of convoluted plot-twists). It is always there, somewhere, behind every aspect of the human story. "Even at its most sordid, life is a profoundly spiritual affair," I once said as I looked up from a gutter in the Tenderloin.
We wonder sometimes if God loves us. "How could a loving God do something like this to us," as we survey the wreckage of our wounded, suffering lives and the myriad diseased calamities of human existence. And you wonder -- if in fact it is all love -- why there is so much of this other stuff: all the seeming non-love aspects of life: the pain and suffering, the anger and rage, and the boredom (which I suspect is the true opposite of "love, as opposed to "hatred" -- the fascination of love is the antithesis of boredom.).
Again, I always come back to the hide-and-seek aspect of Hindu mythology: God, splitting Himself into pieces, slicing His body up into a zillion so-called separate beings, cutting Himself off from Himself, from His eternal throbbing Cosmic Love. So that He could play the game of mortal existence -- of being you and me -- and of seeking and ultitmately finding Himself again. In essence, putting a veil over His love. All the non-loving aspects of this life -- the seemingly impure and imperfect thngs -- are merely the veil that God placed over His gold. And the little beams of love we pick up now and again, are like the clues left at the scene of the crime, to keep us moving in the right direction.
I'm sure the next life, our ultimate destination and destiny, is nothing less than the eternal throbbing of 100% pure love. Now and forever. But in the meantime . . .
"Love is an angel disguised as lust," went the Patti Smith/Bruce Springsteen song (and somehow, I suspect that line was more Patti's than Bruce's). Something about that line always said a lot to me. As if, under the fumblings of my spastic attempts at Romantic Love, was something deeeper. This all-encompassing love. You can write off Romantic Love as "just sex." And most of human love is just "buying-and-selling." And the kind of love we seek from the applause-of-the-crowd is usually just the flipside of our preening, insecure egos ("Geez, maybe somebody will read this brilliant blog and love me!"). And yet, even there, with all those "shallow" forms of love, Show Biz Love ("They LOVE me!" squeals Sally Fields as she clutches her Academy Award), theres this deeper thing, just beneath the surface.
Like I was thinking how I ran into this woman-from-my-past last summer. She was The First Love of My Life 30 long years ago. That bit. Now, she was a middle-aged housewife. To her, at the time (1978) I was just another-face-in-the-crowd that passed by her for a couple days and then was mostly forgotten. And yet to me, she was this Goddess, this Angel, this Vision of this Pure Thing. And yes, theres the whole bullshit of putting a person on a "pedastool", turning them into an idol in your imagination (as opposed to the actual love-less reality). And its all false on that level. Just like it was also "just sex" -- this beautiful 19-year-old sex goddess that she was, sticking her fat, ripe ass in my virgin face. (Now THATS love for you, baby) (Lets make so-called love!). And there was the "ego love" of the "trophy girlfriend." ("If only I could win this sought-after person, that would prove I was a Great Man after all!")
And yet, in spite of all the banalities, falsehoods, and shallowness that is Romantic Love (i.e. "lust"), when I ran into Her on a street corner nearly 30 years later, there were still all these "feelings" lurking just beneath the surface. Feelings that could never be dismissed as "just sex." For there's the all-encompassing aspect of Love -- with a capital L. And these minor loves, these spastic, all-too-human loves -- with a small l -- are like a tone hit on a tinny toy piano. And yet, just behind the tone is a complete symphony, and the song of the angels sweetly singing. . . .
