Fall In Love (12/27/23)

Who knows how to make love stay?Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.Answer me that and I will ease your mind about the beginning and the end of time.Answer me that and I will reveal to you the purpose of the moon.-Tim Robbins, “Still Life With Woodpecker”

Robbins’ Still Life With Woodpecker is a story about love. And chance. And choice.

Love being a sort of gravity here. Because,

It’s love that holds our choices together,

It’s love that embodies the odds of everything that might happen – the good, the bad, and the ugly, in fully spectrumed color, and

It’s love that teaches us about characters – good and bad, sure, but more nuanced too, like the outlaws and princesses, and how nothing, including identity, is truly permanent, but the meanings of life are emergent,

Life emerges fromChoosing to be alive,Living within this moment, andWaxing and waning in rhythm, with the others.And if you’re all the way alive,If you’re all the way open,Past the breaking, past the bang,You find your other.Like gravity.Like the earth finds the moon.Or was it the other way around?Whatever the story, we see it.A creation, a bond.The other ways are just the ways of the others.What matters is knowingIt happens in freefall,Bottomless, in time and space.You fall in love,I get why they call itHeavenly. Bodies whoKnow what love is,Who know what to do becauseLike planets and starsLike earths and moonsThey never needed a word for doing it.

I’m a happy man today.

Still an outlaw, with my princess. Looking up at the moon. Feeling grateful.

(Hi Val. Big day today. Hope you liked my poem. You know what love is. I do too.)