Do you love love? Really love it, love thinking about it and doing it and remembering it and hoping for it?
If so, I have a book to recommend: Sarah Perry’s Enlightenment.
It is ALL LOVE, ALL THE TIME. And it is gloriously long.
Although i like the author, I didn’t jump on this one right away because I read in a review that one of the lovers is homosexual, and I don’t like to read the details of those relationships. Nor does the book go into that; it’s just about the love, as are all the other complex relationships the author describes. How love surprises you, bullies you, takes you up, rules your mind, how even pain can be transporting; at one point a character quotes WH Auden who at some point said that if love couldn’t be equal with each partner feeling the same, he would rather be the one who loved more. I don’t know about that, having been on both sides.
Which would you prefer, Reader?
If youve never given that any thought, maybe you won’t love this book as much as I did. I have always been in love with love. Or maybe you’re one of those people who effortlessly commands love and you won’t get what’s the big deal about it. If so: lucky you!
But if you do read it, drop me a note here to let me know what you think. I wish you pleasure of it!
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
hello dear Judy! We miss you!
there are many poems this book brought to mind. Shakespeare’s sonnet “No longer mourn for me when I am dead” (sorry, I don’t know from #s) where the lover imagines that even after death he will protect and shield his beloved, even to the ultimate sacrifice: “do not so much as my poor name rehearse/But let your love, e’en with my life, decay”…..but ever since I finished it the poem that primarily runs through my mind is Yeats’ The Pity of Love:
“ A pity beyond all telling
Is hid in the heart of love.
The folk that are buying and selling,
The clouds on their journey above,
The cold wet wind ever blowing,
The shadowy hazel grove
Where mouse-grey waters are flowing,
Threaten the head that I love.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hello, dear Hypatia 🥰 thank you so much, you are wonderful and brilliant as always 🙏
LikeLiked by 1 person
I once loved our country and the American citizens enough to die for both it and them but that love is no more. My country and my fellow citizens, it is now plain to see, were not worthy of even a fraction of my devotion.
Vis-à-vis the US citizen my love is unrequited and I am as a woman scorned although I am neither Fury nor furious but merely brokenhearted.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Weeping 😞 oh, Simon. I keep telling you that God will work it out and you keep not believing me.
I am so sorry for what you have been through in your life. I am so sorry that so many Americans don’t appreciate the unbelievable suffering you have endured and continue to endure for us.
It wasn’t all for nothing. There are so many good and decent Americans who love and appreciate you so much and who will go to the mat for America as you did.
All is not lost, Simon. I know that you don’t believe that right now, but as my sainted Mother used to say, someday you will see that I am right. 🇺🇸
LikeLiked by 1 person
If what you say is true then why after almost 15 years of trying to get someone with a proper microphone to listen to my Plan Mexico: Winning Cold War II, I have only become an unperson for my efforts?
LikeLiked by 1 person
The farmers, the soldiers and Marines, the blue collar guys like my relatives and the decent white collar guys like my brother and Robin don’t have a microphone. The people who do have a microphone are highly suspect.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In reference to more mundane love, my research indicates it is better for the gallant and chivalrous par amour to be loved more by his lady not in waiting otherwise the maiden fair will be off in eternal search for her “BBD” (bigger-better-deal).
LikeLike
The BBD is a fallacy. It may be true for some women some of the time, but it is definitely not true for all women all the time. Like many theories that don’t hold up, the BBD does have a little truth in it, mixed up with a lot of misunderstanding and ideas that are just plain not accurate.
I know that you genuinely believe in the BBD, but lots of people genuinely believe in lots of things that are just not accurate, or not totally accurate. 😜
You are so awesome, Simon. You are almost always right about everything, but you are wrong about the BBD 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
You, Judy, are the exception that proves the BBD rule. Besides the BBD theory came to be during an all night brain storm conducted by a select group of very drunk USMC infantry officer course soon to be leaders of grunts at Quantico, VA circa 1988 so it can not be wrong.
Semper Fidelis
LikeLiked by 1 person
I cannot let this point go 🙂 I am not the exception that proves the rule. There are so many women who really are in love and who are definitely not looking for a BBD. I know these women. I see them all around me.
Very drunk USMC officers are so awesome, but I know more about women and love than they do.
True love is real, Simon, and it happens all the time to all sorts of people. 💕
LikeLike
To clarify, I definitely do not know more about love than USMC infantry officers: when it comes to love, they are the top experts and I totally acknowledge that, but in some ways, I do understand some things about women that they may not understand, simple because I am a woman.
LikeLike
Sorry to keep going on like this 🙂 I wanted to write a post about this, but I can’t seem to write a post from my phone and I can’t use my laptop right now.
The BBD sounds suspiciously like evolutionary psychology to me. Evolutionary psychology is a lie from the lowest pit of hell meant to completely demoralize everyone. Evolutionary psychology is a philosophy of hopelessness and despair, but it is promoted so aggressively that most of us are desensitized to how awful it is.
People are not monkeys. Both men and women are created in the image of God. We are not just animals looking to pass on our genes. We are spiritual beings. Evolutionary psychology is a total rejection of the spiritual. It is a rejection of God, and most of the “scientists” who say that they are experts in evolutionary psychology are atheists. Many of them mean well, but they have a warped and stunted view of human nature and women.
I am in the process of writing a book about this right now. Stay tuned 🙂
LikeLike
Finally, my one bit of sage advice for those who have loved too hard and lost is it to be grateful for your heartbreak as it is not the end of life but the opportunity of a lifetime to fall head over heels in love again with one’s yet to be discovered and future belle.
LikeLike