Love in the time of Loquera

She said, "if you write so much, 'man of words,' why don't you write about love?"

After a joke about my "manhood," I said something along the lines that I was not experienced enough in the subject of love. That my mere calling it a subject should illustrate the fact. That the world doesn't allow love and if there is any ounce of love, it's altered into lust. Distorted by neglect. Crushed by socio-economic status. Love seems to be a luxury: over-indulgence and gluttony.

real love? you're either born with a talent for it or not. And, my senses seem too gross: my hands crush when they ought to caress.

"That's bullshit. bullshit defense mechanism. Pre-emptive surrender," she said.

"Then I surrender to love."

"bullshit"

"and these conceptions of yours, of love, are conformity, and delusions"

You want a love story, huh? Momma? Want to hear me voice romanticized ideals encapsulated in pretty words. You want that "priceless" type of love, baby? My honesty and truth and communication? oh! but it's too many words....and your nails, your hair, my clothes, the make-up, the whole gamut of products, split us into "I" and "me," into mere reflections of a conditioned existence  lusting for affection, lusting for connection. We're producers of filtered love and emblematic monoliths of that laissez-faire type of love. Our love is packaged, bought, and sold. You want to know real love? it's ruthless, it's tunnel-vision, it goes all the way, one-way.

"What?"

"I mean that...look, hand me that book on the dresser, here...read this. Karl Marx knew love:

'Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. -- real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms...

Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking' -Marx and Engles, The German Ideology

in other words, our conceptions of love are totally mixed up. We produce 'love' and fix up ourselves for that idea of love: a produced love, amor. By the way, where's your Gucci bag?"

"you and your foreign words. Rhetorical tricks. "

Ok, here we go, I said.....you have no idea of the rosy spells you cast over my blind vision. Of the dream you have become in my memory whenever your perfume or the faint scent of your warm body creeps around corners or lingers like vapor in a coffee shop. The lipstick on a burrito that we chose to share. Blah blah blippity zippidity doo day. Are these words something that you'd like to hear? are you questioning whether they "come from the heart"?

"you talk too much, and too bad its all nonsense"

"Whatever. Love in this time of loquera, it just seems too rare. I told you I wasn't experienced; I don't know how to love; it seems a madness, really. Perhaps a disease I wasn't fortunate enough to catch"

"now you sound like a bitter, sad, lonely man"

"that's what happens when lacking love"

"I'm sorry"

"I don't need pity. But you ought to chant some Hail Mary's at your altar and wish upon a star as if the dying light were angels reaching towards the blue marble floating in space to save you with love. I told you I don't know anything  about love. Love is a word that has been corrupted. What? here is a dictionary definition: an intense feeling of deep affection. Would you like to hear some deep affectionate words about how I looooove running my fingers through your hair yet absolutely not think about your warm, almond bronze legs? That's a dehydrated type of love, mi amor. Like I said, love seems an innate talent. I don't know what love is. I know that there exists a lot of hate and confusion, and that that separates us from one another, and hate and confusion is what corrupts understanding or feeling love. Love is another dimension of reality. A plane(t) of existence in and of itself. One that we, or rather the "I" and "me", are yet figuring out. Love is taking away all the hate and confusion in all of its varying degrees of jealousy, stress, sadness. Love is your brother punching you in the back and you taking it because you can absorb it and make it better. Love is your mother calling you and telling you that your father mistreated her and absorbing that as well. Love is absorbing all of the hate and confusion that the world throws at you and showing the music of the soul through laughter and smiles. love is...love is...."






"shh...ya callate. And, put yer lips to good use"



Then I surrender

Then I surrender

Then I surrender

I surrender

I surrender

I surrender

I

I

I

i

i

!