With head oddly lifted, like a man who draws his head back from an insult, half haughtily, he watched the cold, mute, material face. It had a bluish cast.
It sent a shaft like ice through the heart of the living man.
Cold, mute, material!
Birkin remembered how once Gerald had clutched his hand, with a warm, momentaneous grip of final love. For one second — then let go again, let go for ever. If he had kept true to that clasp, death would not have mattered. Those who die, and dying still can love, still believe, do not die. They live still in the beloved. Gerald might still have been living in the spirit with Birkin, even after death. He might have lived with his friend, a further life.
.
.
.
.
`Did you need Gerald?’ she asked one evening.
`Yes,’ he said.
`Aren’t I enough for you?’ she asked.
`No,’ he said. `You are enough for me, as far as a woman is concerned. You are all women to me. But I wanted a man friend, as eternal as you and I are eternal.’
`Why aren’t I enough?’ she said. `You are enough for me. I don’t want anybody else but you. Why isn’t it the same with you?’
`Having you, I can live all my life without anybody else, any other sheer intimacy. But to make it complete, really happy, I wanted eternal union with a man too: another kind of love,’ he said.
`I don’t believe it,’ she said. `It’s an obstinacy, a theory, a perversity.’
`Well –’ he said.
`You can’t have two kinds of love. Why should you!’
It seems as if I can’t,’ he said. `Yet I wanted it.’
`You can’t have it, because it’s false, impossible,’ she said.
`I don’t believe that,’ he answered.
——-
I wish i could have this much faith in love … or feel this much conviction towards being with someone … or love someone as a lover with the fierceness described
All I can think about is there’s no such thing as love.
i feel i can only love my soul-mate and my best-frens that fiercely …. which is why i wrote this in my fridae profile.
What I find important in a relationship:
let me share this epiphany i’ve had in my early 30s which has been reconfirmed time and time again:
- there’s no such thing as love … or a passioned filled love that lasts forever and ever
- u end up being companions with all (or most of) the romance and passion gone after a while
- one either accepts that … or u move on to greener pastures each time to relive those early periods that romance movies tell us should last forever and ever
the only relationships that are important to me are friendships.
the most important people in my life are my truest and dearest frens who i know will be with me till the very end.
sorry all future BFs / fucks …. u gotta deal with bein 2nd or 3rd or 4th place in my life after my frens, my work, my cats & my folks
so i wonder after reading that passage from Lawrence …. even at age 36 and being jaded as hell … can
one love your lover so much that even when one passes …. They live still in the beloved. … that they … might still have been living in the spirit with .. you .. , even after death. He might have lived with his friend, a further life.
