Messing about with Neruda

So I love this Neruda sonnet (XVII):

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

 I was sitting with a patient at work who was sleeping, so I had a pen and paper nearby--this little piece of foolery came out:

Neruda told me he did not love me.

But then said he did love me but like a plant in the dark. And also that it was a secret, and we weren’t going to talk about it. 

But I think he also said I smelt good, all of which felt weird. 

But everybody shivered unconsciously and with obvious pleasure, so there are worse things, I guess, than being loved like a ficus in an ill-lit room.

(12/8/17)

Reading in 2017

Reading- and Writing-wise I slowed down in 2017 because it was a year of shifting foci.

1/1 In Chancery, John Galsworthy (1920)
1/10 American Philosophy: A Love Story, John Kaag (2016)
1/30 A Jane Austen Education, William Deresiewicz (2011)
3/29 To Let, John Galsworthy (1921)
4/1 Bartleby the Scrivner, Herman Melville (1853)
4/15 Rustication, Charles Palliser (2004)
5/18 Harry Potter and Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling [reread] (1997)
5/20 Alpha Docs: The Making of a Cardiologist, Daniel Munoz (2015)
5/21 HP and the Chamber of Secrets, Rowling [reread] (1998)
5/29 Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev (1862)
6/1 HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Rowline [reread] (1999)
8/17 HP and the Goblet of Fire, Rowling [reread] (2000)
8/28 The Children Act, Ian McEwan (2014)
9/3 Goodbye, Mr. Chips, James Hilton (1934)
10/2 The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt (2013)
10/22 The Invention of Love, Tom Stoppard (1997)
10/24 Doubt: A Parable, John Patrick Shanley (2004)
12/20 Last Bus to Woodstock, Colin Dexter (1975)


My EMT course had began in January; I was certified in June. I took a cardiology course that summer (thus the surprisingly enjoyable Munoz memoir). I also had ridealongs July-August before taking a fantastic vacation to Colorado with my pops and sister. I was employed as an Emergency Department Tech in October on night shift--still adjusting to the sleep patterns. A good year, but hoping for even better productivity and career insight for 2018. I also had a pretty good workout routine in 2017 which needs to be reestablished. Entering a serious relationship has given me new priorities as well. Is this what "adulting" means? Having more fun now than I was at 20 in some ways, even with less alcohol and social life. Things feel richer.

I'll end this update post with a quote from The Forsyte Saga, about a character whose personal philosophy had been "To be kind and keep your end up--there's nothing else in it" (Galsworthy 801). After Young Jolyon's death, his son Jon reflects on Jolyon's legacy: his life, his work as a painter, the loves he left behind:

Jon came to have a curiously increased respect for his father [Jolyon]. The quiet tenacity with which he had converted a mediocre talent into something really individual was disclosed by these researches. There was a great mass of work with a rare continuity of growth in depth and reach of vision. Nothing certainly went very deep, or reached very high--but such as the work was, it was thorough, conscientious, and complete. And, remembering his father's utter absence of 'sides or self-assertion, the chaffing humility with which he had always spoken of this own efforts, ever calling himself 'an amateur,' Jon could not help feeling he had never really known his father. To take himself seriously, yet never bore others by letting them know that he did so, seemed to have been his ruling principle. (Galsworthy, Oxford 812-813)

I suppose my only misstep here is to let others know through this blog that I do try to take myself seriously. But--thank goodness--not too many besides myself actually review these entries. Keep it close.