‘Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside of it’. - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet.
Hello all,
Greetings to you on a blue sky Dublin morning after a long tail of grey.
I’ve been thinking a lot about love of late- love as a force, an animating principle, a practice of being present and alive to life unfolding- the kind of love I believe Rilke is referencing when he writes of those vast distances of love which one can travel without having to step outside of it. I’ll be writing more about this, and how it relates to our creative practice, but for the moment, for the day that is in it, when love is attempted to be packaged and sold to us as something we could possibly contain, I thought to offer a little counter exercise. Today’s Press Pause is all about writing some tiny love notes to ourselves, noticing all the ways love - big love, small love, feathered fluffy or watery love already shows up. Here’s some of mine. You may want to write some for yourself too. The format below gives a good opening structure to begin.
A huge thanks too for those who have filled in The Wild Edge survey. It has been so so helpful, and I appreciate all your inputs and comments. I’ll leave the survey open for another week. If you have not already filled in and would like to help me sense into the next phase of the Wild Edge, here it is..
I’m delighted to say that I’ve pulled two names from the hat for a six month membership and Stacy H and Maria M are the recipients. (I’ll send you both a message- welcome!)
Tiny Love Notes
Love. It’s in the air. A starling has come to feast on the crumbs outside the cafe window where I’ve come to write. I watch its rain-glistened feathers shine luminous against the grey day.
Love. As I wake. A tail wags, beating out the music of life in the space beside me. The day ahead is for living in, loving in, unconditionally.
Love. It is on the tip of my tongue. The coffee may be bitter in my mouth but it is filled with travel tales of Ethiopia and hints of Columbia. The world tastes delicious, especially just after dawn.
Love. As I listen. It is a piece of jazz music which takes me back to a tear-filled moment on the mountain, that time when the light was golden, and she was telling me this was the song she danced to with her husband in his last days, into the love that never dies.
Love. It is in the light. Touching everything, even the cracks, and especially the grief.
Love. As I write. The day folds into the night as the page is astir with chatter and characters, seeking to be known. The stories come to me as the stars rise, line by line. This is a love story to the earth, born in the world of the imagination, which I think is made with love itself.
Love. As I sit. We picnic by the lake and eat a tangerine in silence, segment by segment, leaving room for the kind of presence which words can never touch.
Love. As I read. Poems in the bath. Stories under the covers. Text messages from a friend who writes their life with wonder.
Love. As I swim. The sea knows a lover’s embrace. Our love is a homecoming, a union. Skin to skin, we make room for each other to know what it is to flow.
Love, it’s in the spaces in-between. Across oceans, whale song travels. Across skies, wings beat. Just because it can’t be seen, it can be felt. Love’s resonance moving towards me as awe.
Love. As I cry. The anniversary of a soul friend stirs the grief still knocking inside my heart. My heart opens that bit more, to feel the depth of all it can still contain.
Love. As I dance. Lights out. Curtains closed. The music is suddenly in my hips, then elbows, then spine. Who is moving who I do not know, then turn the music up, louder.
Love. As I long for deeper love. The longing is an opening, a moving towards that which feels sacred, holy, home. The longing is an awakening to the possibility.
Love. As I walk. The river sings beside me. The trees sway. Birds, in their spring-ness build a temple of budding song. The moss is glowing. The tips of the wild ramsons poke the muddy soil. It feels like I am walking into a love story, and I know that I am.
Love. As I am. It’s everywhere, this thing called love. It feels like I am living in a love story, and I know that I am.
A date for your diary.
Our next monthly gathering is a writing sanctuary of Sunday 8th March, 6-7pm Irish/UK time.
Thank you all
Until soon
Clare.
