Gillian Rose

A Reckoning with Life

Love's Work

Marion

However satisfying writing is - that mix of discipline and mir-acle, which leaves you in control, even when what appears on the page has emerged from regions beyond your control - it is a very poor substitute indeed for the joy and the agony of loving

In personal life, people have absolute power over each other, whereas in professional life, beyond the terms of the contract, people have authority, the power to make one another comply in ways which may be perceived as legitimate or illegitimate. In personal life, regardless of any covenant, one party may initiate a unilateral and fundamental change in the terms of relating without renegotiating them, and further, refusing even to acknowledge the change. Imagine how a beloved child or dog would respond, if the Lover turned away. There is no democracy in any love relation: only mercy. To be at someone's mercy is dialectical damage: they may be merciful and they may be merciless. 

Night time is psyche time: the accumulation of excess emo. tion, aroused but unattended during the day; it must have its say - in dream or in prayer, in love making and taking. Neglected or unrehearsed, these residues exact their revenge: they trouble my sleep or keep me awake with an acuity unknown to the day.

Morning is holy terror: awakening, a naked dawning with no consolation of the work of mourning. Grief has been expended during the night; curiosity for the day is still held at bay. There can be no preparation or protection for this moment of rootless exposure; the comforting contraries of diurnal acknowledgement are in suspense. Eros passion is fled: its twin, the passion of faith, is taunting my head.

A crisis of illness, bereavement, separation, natural disaster, could be the opportunity to make contact with deeper levels of the terrors of the soul, to loose and to bind, to bind and to loose. A soul which is not bound is as mad as one with cemented boundaries. To grow in love-ability is to accept the boundaries of oneself and others, while remaining vulnerable, woundable, around the bounds. Acknowledgement of conditionality is the only unconditionality of human love.

If I am to stay alive, I am bound to continue to get love wrong, all the time, but not to cease wooing, for that is my life affair, love's work.

kite

“You may be less powerful than the whole world, but you are always more powerful than yourself.”

Love's Work quotes

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