not that this is the right time - but - i just had to - quickly though - was talking, this last couple of days, with several girlfriends, and agreeing some, and feeling much - that it should be put down.

thinking about where, in king lear, the king of france says: "love's not love, when it's mingled with regards that stand aloof from the entire point" and thinking that this is where i am, this is what i believe.

and to believe this is not to pretend that those regards aren't - important - too. and it is neither that we should refuse to think about them, to deny their heaviness, nor to say, to hell with all that, because the former is foolish and the latter is callous.

but that we must not allow those regards to become priorities, and to allow our minds to be cluttered by fear and doubt and cynicism - for then how will we be able to open our arms and ourselves, to love unreservedly? how can we live if we opened our eyes each morning and feared the impossibility, feared the end? "we are here, now, and those other times are elsewhere" and that too is not the same as "enjoy it while it lasts" - no, not at all. what it means is that we must learn to love fully while we love - or, alternately, as one of my friends said, in the language of merchant of venice - "to give and hazard all". not to hold ourselves back because we are afraid of loving too much and then being hurt. not to put vetoes on our choices because we think there is no future.

to learn to love in spite of rather than because of. to learn to love, the way neruda says - simply, and without problems or pride, because we know no other way of loving.

we go through stages - of trust and distrust. to say, first, bright-eyed, that we will never be hurt, how can we be hurt? and then with darkened eyes we say, we are hurt, how can we trust again? how can we not fear to be hurt again? and then you finally learn that it is both, and to answer that you still trust. what do you trust? you don't trust that he wouldn't leave - you trust that, if he did, the pain then will be preferable to the ignominy of having loved in parts and with reservations.