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What is this mystery called love?
Patience of the soul?
Fickle-mindedness of the heart?
Buona fortuna of the naked skin?
What is love, for that matter, but a labyrinth of sensations.
A labyrinth, I say, of questions, and more.
And what is a labyrinth?
Besides love?
A maze passing through in no particular direction.
A compass without a point.
Ancient disciples believed a labyrinth
Was the path the dead walked down
To the world of the spirits.
Ancient mariners thought a labyrinth
Was the doldrums where seaman lost their way
Shipped their oars
Gave up going to anywhere
To arrive at wondrous isles.
Ancient mystics – yea, not so ancient – taught
That our native world is a labyrinth unto itself
Conceived of unsolvable problems
Where meaning lies not in solution, but in the effect.
Where every action of our lives, even love, is a self-enclosing process.
My father’s great unsolvable problem
In forty-five years of life
Was how to love a wife and mother
He had to leave behind at death.
Day after day, day after day,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
Love is a labyrinth
You must escape
To behold
Must cease to possess to possess
Even of a father who died young.