Love is Lovely

Carl in one of his manic, passionate posts about love and its discontents:

Equally of course I know lots of couples who have been together for years and are happy, and whose love for each other I don’t doubt. But you need love, without love your relationship is just one more thing you have to manage, one more negotiation between your fear and need, one more drain on your spirit, one more cost/benefit analysis. It will weigh on you, you'll begin to steel yourself for your partner’s return home from work, find you're hyper-alert to every nuance and tic of their mood, feel your heart sink when the phone goes and it’s them.

yes, love is lovely, when you love, things like concern, focus, attention, involvement just go naturally out of your noble inside and you just never feel any selfish, self deprecatory or unglamorous feelings, or think ignoble thoughts, they are just naturally blocked and swept away from your brain by the miraculous activity of loving.. well, only it's just not true, at least not all the time. we know it's not so easy. you know it yrself Carl, and you were, as I recall, writing once about waiting all day for 'her' to say she loves you, and when she finally did, it wasnt so meaningful. because people are moody, neurotic creatures, sometimes erratic, sometimes generous, but still bit unpredictable. especially in those times and especially in certain circles. and the most genuine, authentic love can be sometimes put into hard times by our neuroticism. we want good, it turns ut bad..but we love each other, so it doesnt matter, does it? precisely, the fact we had previous dissappointments, we are wary, we are weary, we dont want to get hurt, and with two neurotic individuals it gets even more difficult..

im just saying that love isnt ever just lovely, or that you may love someone to pieces, want only the good of this person and still get hurt. I wish all the lovers, that only the purest, unmediated products were issuing from their deep, beautiful selves, and the bad demand just never actually happened to their hearts, but actually, why not to demand, I ask you. when you feel dissatisfied, a right to demand should be a sacred one and lets demand, and first of all, from ourselves. amen.