DAY 4: Love - The Perpetual Jukebox of Emotion is Always Under Construction

A last sonnet of goodbye
To three girls I have loved with all my heart…

…Please forgive me.

Hallelujah

And then-

The feeling of having your heart ripped from your soul and knowing it’s your fault.  The consequence: being alone.

To my College Girlfriend,

I will always remember you.



The first song on the cassette tape I made.  I’m guessing it’s packed away in some attic. 

We met in the summer of '95 at Blossom Music Center. I was at The University of Akron; you majoring in Psychology at Ohio University.  That summer, the greatest of my life; and you, the reason.

You had it all- The confidence, the intellect, the sensitivity, the brown hair, the brown eyes and the perfect smile. 

Written for you...

Book of Days – Enya

Our final trip of the summer; Mohican, it was you and I in a canoe, lost in the wilderness.  The tape player we brought played the theme.  The day turned to night, the moon our only light.  It was love; it was like a scene from the ‘Notebook’.  
It was love. 

I dug through some old journals like a madman.  I knew I would find it.  The ending of ‘Dear Love.’

I remember…

The time on the river

Drifting slow –passing the trees
Cutting through the wake-

The water'
Stood still

THAT NIGHT
I kissed your lips

Beneath the moonlight
I felt your love  

Tender

 (enhanced solo)
We were innocent
Like children
We were innocent
Frozen in the moment
Like a picture
I captured,
Your eyes – your smile
Every breath
Every breath

 This was the last song on the cassette tape:

These are the words from the letter you sent,

Ted, this is real, not a figment of my imagination.

This is the kind of love we shared. 

Months later, I wrote ‘Dear Love’, this is how it began:

Dear love

I listen to the music
(A Moonlight Sonata)
As you open the door
I let the wind blow in
A cold chill
Overcome by sin
Leaving us
Nothing left to win

     (the sonata)
This Continuous beat
Like my heart
It tears me up inside

This agonizing pain
As you drove away
I could only watch
      -in silence-

What you must have thought
What you must have done
With that love you had brought.

  (enhanced solo)
I left you there
Standing alone
Your body –must have been so cold
With no explanation, and no reply
I never said goodbye. 

                  [You will always have a big piece of my heart.]

Can I segue for a moment...?

Con-science

Conscience is instinct bred in the house,
Feeling and Thinking propagate the sin
By an unnatural breeding in and in.
I say, Turn it out doors,
Into the moors.
I love a life whose plot is simple,
And does not thicken with every pimple,
A soul so sound no sickly conscience binds it,
That makes the universe no worse than 't finds it.
I love an earnest soul,
Whose mighty joy and sorrow
Are not drowned in a bowl,
And brought to life to-morrow;
That lives one tragedy,
And not seventy;
A conscience worth keeping;
Laughing not weeping;
A conscience wise and steady,
And forever ready;
Not changing with events,
Dealing in compliments;
A conscience exercised about
Large things, where one may doubt.
I love a soul not all of wood, Predestined to be good,
But true to the backbone
Unto itself alone,
And false to none;
Born to its own affairs,
Its own joys and own cares;
By whom the work which God begun
Is finished, and not undone;
Taken up where he left off,
Whether to worship or to scoff;
If not good, why then evil,
If not good god, good devil.
Goodness! you hypocrite, come out of that, Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
I have no patience towards
Such conscientious cowards.
Give me simple laboring folk,
Who love their work,
Whose virtue is song
To cheer God along. 
    ---- Henry David Thoreau

         
        Henry David Thoreau----

Great God, I Ask for no Meaner Pelf

Great God, I ask for no meaner pelf
Than that I may not disappoint myself,
That in my action I may soar as high
As I can now discern with this clear eye.

And next in value, which thy kindness lends,
That I may greatly disappoint my friends,
Howe'er they think or hope that it may be,
They may not dream how thou'st distinguished me.

That my weak hand may equal my firm faith
And my life practice what my tongue saith
That my low conduct may not show
Nor my relenting lines
That I thy purpose did not know
Or overrated thy designs.




Brink Of Eternity

In desperate hope I go and search for her
in all the corners of my room;
I find her not.

My house is small
and what once has gone from it can never be regained.

But infinite is thy mansion, my lord,
and seeking her I have to come to thy door.

I stand under the golden canopy of thine evening sky
and I lift my eager eyes to thy face.

I have come to the brink of eternity from which nothing can vanish
---no hope, no happiness, no vision of a face seen through tears.

Oh, dip my emptied life into that ocean,
plunge it into the deepest fullness.
Let me for once feel that lost sweet touch
in the allness of the universe.

Rabindranath Tagore


To the Only Girl I Built a Home with       

                          

Written for you...

I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I HAD THE RING IN MY POCKET.

I WAS TOO MUCH OF A COWARD TO GET DOWN ON ONE KNEE. 

Where The Mind Is Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
                   ---------  Rabindranath Tagore 

[ a beat]

O Me! O Life!... of the questions of these recurring;of the endless trains of the faithless-of cities fill'd with the foolish;
of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than i,
and who more faithless?)
of eyes that vainly crave the light-of the object mean-of the
struggle ever renew'd;
of the poor results of all-of the plodding and sordid crowds i see
around me;
of the empty and useless years of the rest-withthe rest me
intertwined; the question, o me! so sad, recurring-what good amid these, o me, o life?

answer.

that you are here-that life exists, and identity;
that the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

Walt Whitman



Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.  
-----   Langston Hughes

 
  ... my train of thought continues...

Now imagine being in the middle of a lake, in the middle of the night, with a 50 pound weight chained and bolted and locked around your ankle.  Now I’m not Phelps but I can swim.  It's just a matter of time... a matter of time.

To my first love,
I will always remember you. 

                      

      

      

       

Written for you...

      

 
 

After this train of thought,
WITH STRENGTH

AND CONVICTION

BEGIN TOMORROW

To love is to let go.  To let go is to love. 

-That 10 year old kid staring out the window--
-Thought it was football
-Thought it was-

 
- When a man and a woman find each other-
- it is beautiful
- I know you are out there...