Category Archives: love

Regarding Love and The Birth of Art: On Keats’ "To Autumn"

To Autumn John Keats I. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and …

March 27, 2007 – 1:47 am | By ashok | Posted in keats, love, poetry | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

Learning the Hard Way

When reading the phrase “acquire grace” in the first sentence of the Epistle Dedicatory to Machiavelli’s “Prince,” I wondered for a while at the nature of my own “love,” and every bad memory regarding a relationship or would-be relationship flooded my skull. With those memories came challenges to my assumption that I might have loved. …

March 17, 2007 – 6:12 pm | By ashok | Posted in love | Tagged | Comments (0)

Emily Dickinson’s Humanism? Or Is That Making This Too Complicated? On Poem 464, "The power to be true to You"

The power to be true to You… (464) Emily Dickinson The power to be true to You, Until upon my face The Judgment push his Picture – Presumptuous of Your Place – Of This — Could Man deprive Me – Himself — the Heaven excel – Whose invitation — Yours reduced Until it showed too …

February 28, 2007 – 9:48 pm | By ashok | Posted in dickinson, love, poetry | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

How is it that being alone means I’m part of the largest group of people on the planet?

I write about love in some way every day. And I really don’t know what it is, because if I did, I would treat other people better, I would work a lot harder for myself and for them, and I wouldn’t whine just because I know absolutely no women in my area. At some point, …

February 14, 2007 – 4:51 am | By ashok | Posted in love | Comments (3)

The Fall of Man: On "Children of Men"

For Paul Drozdowski. Spoilers abound, be warned. Our hero’s day job at the Energy Company proves far too nauseating for him, when he sees his fellow employees all at their workstations, each watching the exact same broadcast, and crying. There is nothing nauseating occurring in his mind when he’s bleeding to death at an old …

February 8, 2007 – 12:21 am | By ashok | Posted in love, movies | Comments (9)

What I Owe

My debt to others is huge, and my inability to even keep up with them at times drives me crazy. That’s where my loneliness has come from, I think. I wanted her in my life not to escape my friends, but to be friends with the people I have in my life. It’s really weird …

February 4, 2007 – 1:16 pm | By ashok | Posted in love | Tagged | Comments (2)

A Curious Thing

Every time I rant to myself about love or relationships, I think through my problems, and the problems of others, and while I don’t have everything exactly right, I know I have it right enough, and am open to better thoughts if they do come. But thought fails to satisfy, utterly fails to satisfy. It …

January 29, 2007 – 2:53 am | By ashok | Posted in love, politics | Comments (2)

"If I can stop one heart from breaking," Emily Dickinson

“If I can stop one heart from breaking…” Emily Dickinson If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain. Commentary: “I shall not …

December 2, 2006 – 5:32 pm | By ashok | Posted in dickinson, love, poetry | Tagged , , | Comments (4)

Seriously?

I remember a professor once upon a time telling me that life was a game, and I started tuning him out. I’m pretty sure nowadays he didn’t mean it in a trivial way, but when I see people say things like “People who take themselves seriously make me crack up,” I just wonder. Look, the …

November 28, 2006 – 4:18 pm | By ashok | Posted in love, personal | Tagged , | Comments (0)