Love Is Like War

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop. - H.L. Mencken

Firstly, *ding, ding, ding* ten points for Cassie! You know, she won the Why I Want Boris/Russian art contest too and has her own book of proletariat art from the Moscow Press (go Boris!) Cassie, you’re a WINNER!

I was so moved by responses to my last entry. They were all so sweet and real. Once, I risked my sense of self, my dignity, my self respect, for what I thought was love. I’m not so sure, in retrospect, that it was love at all that I was risking for. It was perhaps obsession and addiction, but certainly it doesn’t look like love in hindsight. I passed through many years where I risked little – but maybe that’s not entirely true at the core of it. I was thinking last night after pondering responses here that I feel like perhaps I’ve risked nothing, and thus everything.

I don’t think giving things up is the same as risking per se. I have to think about that. I certainly have not felt like I’ve given anything up for love – I haven’t given up my dreams, ambitions, goals, job, potentials – nothing. I feel, maybe, like I wish I would have given up something. I’m not sure why. Not because to me it’s some emblem, some proof – but because in retrospect there were paths I didn’t explore that I think I might have liked too – that required a kind of risk I couldn’t even understand. Once I read a poem called “Turning Thirty” and the author wrote, “Turning thirty is about giving up infinite possibilities.” I didn’t feel that way when I turned thirty. Maybe I’m feeling that way after having turned forty. And that maybe doesn’t have anything to do with love at all.

Zosia wrote that she risked her own independent career for love – being the one to nurture the family. I didn’t. I didn’t risk an independent career. I rose to the top of mine, made my mark, and at the end of the day the accomplishments, however noble, and they have been noble, feel somewhat empty. You know, after all, at the end of the day, what really matters? As I’ve matured (and it’s taken a long time for me to mature,) it seems for me to all come down to the quality of my relationships and not what I can accomplish. All I want to accomplish at my day’s end is a great deal of love – is the cultivation of meaningful relationships and joy and not a list of accomplishments. I don’t know.. this makes me ponder and it makes me wonder.

Anyways… a few updates. It’s likely the bathroom will be nearly done by the week’s end and yes, the week ends tomorrow. The rat infestation continues with a vengeance. I have an exterminator coming out today. I’ve appealed to the folks at the restaurant next store (again) to move their trash from the border of my property – for whatever reason, they don’t seem to want to do this (though they’ve agreed to put out electronic rat traps around the trash.) I’ve come to the realization that the reason they won’t move the trash away from residential borders is because they know it’s a problem and they don’t want to bring the problem any closer to the space that they work and play in. I’ve called vector control and we’ve had a nice long talk. They’re calling the health department and checking into what else might be done. I hate this.

Secret gets her stitches out (hopefully) tomorrow. Hmmm. Back to work with me.