(October 21, 2016 at 5:16 pm)Alasdair Ham Wrote: And this kicks ass too
"The greater part of human activity is designed to make permanent those experiences and joys which are only lovable because they are changing."
― Alan Watt
Have you read Tom Robbins' "Still-life with Woodpecker"? Pretty much on exactly that topic. "How do you make love stay?" You don't of course. You didn't put it there to begin with and you don't have the power to make it do anything else either. Of the many responses he gives in the book, my favorite:
“When the mystery of the connection goes, love goes. It's that simple. This suggests that it isn't love that is so important to us but the mystery itself. The love connection may be merely a device to put us in contact with the mystery, and we long for love to last so that the ecstacy of being near the mystery will last. It is contrary to the nature of mystery to stand still. Yet it's always there, somewhere, a world on the other side of the mirror (or the Camel pack), a promise in the next pair of eyes that smile at us. We glimpse it when we stand still.
The romance of new love, the romance of solitude, the romance of objecthood, the romance of ancient pyramids and distant stars are means of making contact with the mystery. When it comes to perpetuating it, however, I got no advice. But I can and will remind you of two of the most important facts I know:
1. Everything is part of it.
2. It's never too late to have a happy childhood.”
― Tom Robbins,