love is everywhere

Hey, reader.  What’s shaking your leaves?  I’ve been thinking about relationship lately–I wanted to tell you that love is everywhere.

When I started riding trike, I learned how Las Vegas neighbors waving to me every morning from their porch while they smoked weed could be love.  My mom had just died, and I wasn’t sure I could stay on earth without her.  That neighbor’s wave could be enough to live for.

Also when I have a decades long bond, that can be love for sure.  They are different, but they both matter, those two loves.

There’s a kind waiter at the Thai food restaurant we like.  She’s getting paid, and it’s her work.  Maybe the bowl of noodles she puts in front of Ming got bigger because she gets more tip.  But whatever the reason, her care improves our lives.  We probably don’t have a ton of shared values and wouldn’t make good friends.  But her smile and gentleness are love, a kind of love she gives us, welcoming us to lunch, making Eugene more of a home than just a town we live in.

I always want to write her a letter thanking her for advocating for our health needs (I heard her scolding new kitchen staff once for using a type of noodle that’s not gluten free, telling them to remake our food).  I want to say, “You’re the best thing about this restaurant.”  But I’m afraid it would sound creepy because of how sexual desire is so mixed up with love, in our world.  I don’t want to have sex with her–I just want to say thank you.  I feel the thank you humming in my body.

love is everywhere

I love so fast, it’s been pathologized.  But love gives us health.  Love is everywhere, and I’m feeling it.

Parent Earth loves us, as does the sun.  Wind caresses us, and I was held with love in my mom’s womb.  I was birthed with love, and I endured many harms as a child and young person, but I was sustained by moments of profound love.

Holding hands with countless people, doing activism, trying community, in ritual, and in my family with Ming, love is the law–the only law that matters.  If I’m going to make a mistake, I want the mistake to be that I over-loved, as opposed to under.  I don’t keep love as a treat or tasty dessert.  Every crumb of the meal is love.  I’m not saving it for last–I’m doing it constantly.

Other people hesitate, but every breath could be final, and I choose to give.  Love isn’t a rare mineral–love is everywhere.  I don’t need to hoard it.

Quick willingness makes me strange and vulnerable, but I was going to be strange anyway.  Might as well be a loving kind of strange.  I was going to be misunderstood anyway.

intelligence

There’s an intelligence to love.  I notice things and connect the dots, ready to say it two months before you are.  I’ll be patiently respectful of your pace.  But if you can, please respect my pace as well.

It’s not a request or demand, though you’ve been treated that way before.  “I love you” was a vow you didn’t know you made, so someone tried to extract resources from you, and you’re scared now.  I’m sorry someone did that to you.

I’ll wait.  And if you never say it, I’ll know that you felt however you felt.  I loved you, which was valuable beyond anything.  If you don’t want it, I understand you have a difficult project, and I bless you on your way.

God is love, and I’m a pantheist, non-dual.  Love is spinning in the electrons.  Love is life itself.  I’m not pretending it’s rare.