Love is all around

Just got back from seeing “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” It's both romantic and very very real at the same time. I googled for the poem from which the title was taken and found it in this review in the NRO, of all places (oh those crazy romantic right-wingers). My emphasis italicized:

The film's title comes from a poem by Alexander Pope: "How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot! / The world forgetting, by the world forgot. / Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! / Each pray'r accepted and each wish resign'd." The poem is about the great medieval love story of Heloise and Abelard, told in Heloise's voice, and its narrator admits that she, in truth, desires another destiny: "Far other dreams my erring soul employ, / Far other raptures, of unholy joy." The word "unholy" is used here in the sense of terrestrial and quotidian, as opposed to specifically religious. But the point of this film is that the quest for human love, the cherishing of it — in the face of all the pain it entails — is sacred and sanctified. It is a worthy desire.

I also found Ernesto quoting passages from bell hooks’ "Healing: Redemptive Love" in All About Love:

The transformative power of love is not fully embraced in our society because we often wrongly believe that torment and anguish are our "natural" condition… We cannot know love if we remain unable to surrender our attachment to power, if any feeling of vulnerability strikes terror in our hearts… As we yearn, we make ourselves ready to receive the love that is coming to us, as gift, as promise, as earthly paradise.

And on her blog, Roberta writes about her very sick kitty (best wishes, Colonel!) and, in the comments, about her family – husband and critters alike – snoring all around her:

It made me laugh. Which was also kind of nice. To be in bed surrounded by all that you love and not being able to help yourself from laughing.

This reminded me of one of my favorite scenes in the movie "Nowhere in Africa" where the guy has his wife and daughter asleep in bed next to him and he says, "Everything I love is lying on this bed."

Hope tonight finds you surrounded by love.

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