Change

On my mind right now....how much we humans change. Further down I have three poems posted, all by Pablo Neruda. One is about the pain of a lost love, one about feeling love, and one that could go either way.

We can feel all sorts of things: powerful feelings, subtle unnameable feelings, troublesome or soothing feelings.

I guess I'm writing to the same tune as I recently did...

We change.

That doesn't make what we experience less valid or real. But it is true. 

We can be knocked from our comfortable happiness; we can also heal after hurt. 

If I could write a letter to my middle school self, I would say that feeling new or different things doesn't make the old feelings less legitimate or important. 

I'm not just talking about feelings. Also thoughts and relationships and a million things. 

Ha!!!! (Story time: when I lived in California I was a Brownie Scout. And a Daisy Scout. I had a blast, and you can bet I rocked selling Girl Scout cookies ;))

Anyway, there was a song we sang I just remembered...

"Make new friends. But keep the old, some are silver and the others gold."

(You sing it in a round. Lots of fun ha.)

Sure we want to be able to move on to new things in life; we can take parts of the old with us and that will always be important!

Kinda different tangent, but this kinda reminds me of another poem I read last night (also by Pablo). So I guess I'm posting four of his poems ha :)

(We Are Many)

Of the many men who I am, whom we are, 

I cannot settle on a single one.

They are lost to me under the cover of clothing

They have departed for another city.

When everything seems to be set

to show me off as a man of intelligence,

the fool I keep concealed on my person

takes over my talk and occupies my mouth.

On other occasions, I am dozing in the midst

of people of some distinction,

and when I summon my courageous self,

a coward completely unknown to me

swaddles my poor skeleton

in a thousand tiny reservations...

All the books I read

lionize dazzling hero figures,

brimming with self-assurance.

I die with envy of them;

and, in films where bullets fly on the wind,

I am left in envy of the cowboys,

left admiring even the horses.

But when I call upon my DASHING BEING,

out comes the same OLD LAZY SELF,

and so I never know just WHO I AM,

nor how many I am, nor WHO WE WILL BE BEING.

I would like to be able to touch a bell 

and call up my real self, the truly me,

because if I really need my proper self,

I must not allow myself to disappear.

While I am writing, I am far away;

and when I come back, I have already left.

I should like to see if the same thing happens

to other people as it does to me,

to see if as many people are as I am,

and if they seem the same way to themselves.

When this problem has been thoroughly explored,

I am going to school myself so well in things

that, when I try to explain my problems,

I shall speak, not of self, but of geography.

(Tonight I Can Write)
"Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, 'The night is starry

and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'
The night revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer, the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer lover her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
And these the last verses that I write for her."

(If You Forget Me)
I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have fogotten you.

If you you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the hearts where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you will live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

(Sonnet XVII)
"I don't love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom
but carries the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose,
from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you directly, without complexities or pride:
I love you like this because I don't know any other way to love,
Except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams."

:)