Love in our time

RAYMUND FERNANDEZ

Today, I woke up to an incurable urge to write about love. Love like an ear worm sounding like that nursery tune “Three Blind Mice.” Love like a cartoon show. Love in its least fashionable sense. For who says, “cartoon show” anymore? And yes, love in the sense of “old school.” Old school love. And what can we say of that?

It might have been the bitter cold of last night that made me feel this way, or it might have been what one of my children said: “Love is weird.” And I thought, “weird” was an old school word that nobody used anymore. Hearing it again from the mouth of a young person, I could not help asking if love is still what it was once. I can hardly tell what it is now, of course. But I still do remember what it was for me. And I might as well go back in time, picture in my head the view of our next-door neighbor sweeping her yard one cold morning; and I was thinking, how beautiful she looked. And I remember feeling this way about her body, how perfect it seemed to me. I hardly knew her, nor would I ever really know her at all. I could have, were it not for a cousin – also a neighbor – who covered good ground faster than I.

Not that it mattered to me. I always loved to look; and then, to look from afar. The distant view is my natural gaze. I would like to think now that this is also the natural gaze of the poet, the photographer, and the painter; a view from the distance either of memory or expectation. But it is possible I am only fooling myself. It is possible I am only rationalizing my characteristic romantic ineptitude. And it could be said, my romantic life is defined more by people lost than finally gained.

But perhaps not. I do remember romantic afternoons and mornings with someone, watching sunsets and sunrises from hilltops and shorelines for the islands have many of these. And once, even, I remember sitting on the bamboo bench of a beach hut one late night going into early morning while it was still dark. Quite unexpectedly, there was a lunar eclipse that turned the moon a huge blood red, and looking truly like the orb that it was. The orb dropped softly into the craters of Mt. Kanlaon. And who was I to think I did not truly love the person who sat beside me? Who was I to go through this moment without even putting an arm around the warmth of the nearest human? And her, dropping slowly into the crook of my body, finding there her own warmth. For the beauty of it made the world twice as cold and lonely; and us, twice as drunk as we should have been. Who was I to not love at the sight of this? I, singing in my head, “If you can’t be with the one you love. Love the one you’re with … ” by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.
And it might be argued how this sort of love seems rather shallow. How it pales next to love sublime, committed, and as patriotic as heroism and love of country. Love of a higher plane. And I would have no arguments to counter the logic. Love surely is all of that. Even more.

But I remember the sight of a red moon swallowed by the hills of a distant mountain, a volcano, craters like mouths feeding on the morsels of a whole universe; and I, thinking how it seemed the trajectory of this moment transcended the constraints of time. I could not tell if all these transpired quickly or ever so slowly. And the only sure thing was the warmth of the person beside me. And what else can I say but: Love, undeterred by time, unburdened by forever? Some short love I remember perhaps purely by chance this one cold rainy morning.