WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE
BY TRACY SCHLAPP
The title of Raymond Carver’s short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love has been a refrain in my head most of my adult life. Two couples sit around a bottle of gin as the afternoon sun slips through the window, their conversation circles the definition of true love. Mel, the cardiologist insists at first that love — real love — is spiritual love. The conversation and drinking progresses and the four consider love in its many forms. As a young person, I found the characters worn out, too cynical. The story did not fit my ideas of what we (my friends and I) talked about when we talked about love. Only later did I recognize how this heart doctor, this heart mechanic, could articulate the ways he had come to know love through his lived experience. Thinking of the Greek definitions, Carver’s characters speak of mania, philia, storge, and finally a story told by Mel that lands on pragma.
eros » romantic, passionate love
philia » affectionate love, friendship
agape » selfless, universal love
storge » kinship-based, familiar love, even allegiance to a team
mania » obsessive love
ludus » playful love, that of a crush
pragma » mature, enduring love
philautia » self love
During the next few workshops, our writers are talking about love. We started with the Greek definitions, and then asked the editors at OSP to hone in on an idea and write for five minutes. Here are a few samples:
EROS BY JIMMY BLANCAS
“Love is Blind.” It’s the mortal bill in you I find that’ll crumble one of us by the sands of time. Not knowing when or where for this inevitable danger I do not care; cause love is blind and forever there.
AGAPE BY AUSTIN CLARK
Love it seems is like a roller coaster with an empty seat for everyone. Those who dare to embark upon a daunting and unexpected journey gladly find a respite upon its heavily cushioned seats — inevitably whisked away as a collective, ever closer toward their desires. Even as the rollercoaster descends towards the abysmal gloom its passengers know they are not alone, but united in their love and joyful optimism, for they know though the rollercoaster descends, it will undoubtedly ascend, transcend once again.
MANIA BY ABDURRASHID AL’WADUD
Love is care, commitment, trust, affection, responsibility, and respect with honest communication. If anyone of these things is missing it is dysfunctional. Thus, I don’t believe mania is love at all. It is cathexis, a feeling of being deeply drawn to someone. Stalking, extreme jealousy, and violence are symptoms of mania, not love. Love does not leave physical scars. Love is transcending, intellectually, emotionally, as well as spiritually.
LUDUS
Moving in close enough to hear those lips whisper my name.
Having been bitten by your love, releasing demons far too dark to blame.
A passion spreads quickly by the pounding heart’s last flame
As the ashes passed through, what’s truth which now flows through these veins.
PHILAUTIA BY STRESSLA LYNN JOHNSON
Self-love is the purest form of love; it encompasses the entire spectrum of my understanding of the universe and the cosmic existence. It is the complete surrender to the mental and emotional to the sense of being. It teaches while learning how to navigate the outside world. Behold the underlying truth, self-love is that first breath taken, and the last breath released.
Over the next few months, we will publish writings about love, starting with this impromptu piece On Love. Theron Hall and Austin Clark created the recording during a session in November. Theron’s training from the OSP Capital Toastmasters club, along with his innate sense of language and delivery compels us to believe that philautia, self-love, is the basis of all love. Austin’s guitar work follows the ebb and flow of Theron’s voice as it comes to a perfect conclusion. | TDS