lover and beloved

from the ballad of the sad cafe by carson mccullers

"first of all, love is a joint experience between two persons  - but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. there are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. and somehow every lover knows this. he feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. he comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. so there is only one thing for the lover to do. he must house his love within himself as best as he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world - a world intense and strange, complete in himself. let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring - this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.

now, the beloved can also be of any description. the most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. a man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. the preacher may love a fallen woman. the beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else - but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. a most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. a good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

it is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. almost everyone wants to be the lover. and the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being be loved is intolerable to many. the beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. for the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. the lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain."

for-the-spirits-who-have-rounded-the-bend IIVAQSAAT

excerpt from poem by dg nanouk okpik from the book effigies

II. NATURAL WORLD ADOPTION

i learned to crack mussel shells, to collect moss on rocks,
save strewn caribou hides across malleable tundra,
how to stop my finger joints from cracking in frost,
to dye my hair garnet to fit in, to feel earthquakes
uprooting soapstone and jade, to count milliseconds
by watching a brook run, to count cracks in an ice flow,
to drink water from a horsetail reed. now my ball and
sockets rub and roll like hummocks bound and rivet
the northern tip of the rockies. i read books until my eyes
chart points in words down 4000 miles in desert sounds.
my tongue clipped to the brow antler,
the words rubbing sealskin to make thunder then lightning.
i guide the harpoon-line hanging in the singing house with
many blessed eggs for mothers, for children. i stitch you
around my eyes, down my chin, through my altered states
to remember it is you who guards me from long ice needles.
it is you threading the singe on my sealskin, patching letters
tied to ink blood. i am seeing only will-full DNA
tattooed to the snow knife for cutting ice blocks of chins,
perhaps for a house, a shelter, a lean to in a starved storm but,
had i not prayed for this moment, this dissension into fish
or birds, if what i wanted was to make it until the large stocks
of dried musk oxen are gone. then i choose sable day
and flux night.