Love is…

‘Love everything that breathes.’ G.I. Gurdjieff.
This anatomy of love derives from the middle-ages written by a monk.

*Love is suffering…
One minute he is drowned in tears and lamentations, making the air echo with his sighs, complaints, murmurings, rages and imprecations: otherwhiles to get a glimpse of his goddess you shall see him cross, pass and re-pass five or six times a day through her street that he may have but one friendly look of her eye that he loves best.

Do you know this one-sided event? But I love you. Ah-ahahahahahaaaaaaaa! Wail, moan, woe, grieve, pain-pleasure, pleasure pain.

*Love is fear…
First the lover is afraid that his love may not gain its desire and that he is wasting his efforts.

He may fear rumours of his love, or if he is poor that the woman may scorn him. If he is ugly that she may despise him, or seek some more handsome man.

He may fear that he will offend his loved one in some way. In fact the lover can fear so many things it’s impossible to count them.

This fear is a tyrant. It leads to inferiority complex, paranoia and neuroses.

*Love is lust…

When a man sees a woman fit to his taste he begins to lust after her in his heart. The more he thinks of her the more he burns with love, moving to a fuller meditation.

He differentiates her limbs, thinks about what she does prys into the secrets of her body and desires to put each part to its fullest use.

Then he proceeds to action and finds an intermediary.

He plans how he can win her favour and seeks to find a time and place to speak with her. Time drags and nothing moves fast enough to soothe his troubled mind.

So to speak. This one is for the players. Lust is their number one: be they male or female. Precaution! Lust can lead to perversion, disease and death by jealous rival.

*Love is madness.
A potential lover undergoes a kind of madness. He will despise death and fear no threats, scatter his wealth abroad and come to great poverty. The trouble starts here.

When a man comes to poverty he moves along with his face downcast, tortured by many thoughts and all joyousness leaves him.

When joy leaves, melancholy arrives and wrath claims a place in him. Slowly he begins to act in a changed manner to his beloved and appears frightful to her.

All the things that cause love to increase begin to fail and love grows less. Love is always increasing or decreasing. The word ‘love’ comes from the latin `amor` which comes from the latin word `amus` which means ‘hook’. The lover therefore is either capturing, or being captured.

This madness is to be avoided at all cost. It can swallow years and even decades of your life, and you’re in the end not one step closer to love. To be mad is to be alone.

*Love is magical…
It can cause a rough, uncouth man to be distinguished for his handsomeness;

it can endow a man of humble birth with nobility of character;

it can bless the proud with humility; and the man in love becomes accustomed to performing many services gracefully for everyone.

This one is to be cherished and nurtured. This one is the real one. Do yourself a favour and love yourself first and foremost.

Find out about your self/shadow-self and know yourself out of best interest.

Do not do this to the exclusion of loving others, but being and acting in combination with others’ love for you.

*So then it is with these oppositions of love that rules the Shakespearean creative mind and that is probably the most important thing to remember when studying Shakespeare.

The frontline of fusion holds the open secret all along its surface. Go too deeply toward either end of the scale, and all becomes dull and academic, or gossipy and libelous.

`Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnets`. (L.L.L.)