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Love After Love: Romancing Myself

At Church, this morning, was read the following poem, which resonated with current life activity:

Love After Love
Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

On Labor Day I took myself out on a date: we went to Peet’s, then had some pizza, and then popcorn and soda while watching the new Woody Allen movie at the local theater. “I was born in the Hebrew faith, but when I got older I converted to Narcissism,” said Woody.

Yesterday I again had pizza and a movie. “Quinceañera” blew me away! The title refers to a Spanish coming-of-age ceremony for a girl who becomes a woman on her fifteenth birthday (quince años) . . . the movie starts with youthful self-indulgence and then eases its way into a really powerful story, about . . . well, among other things, the strength that people find when rejected by their family. One thing the plot does really well is to introduce a character, and give you a chance to pass your initial judgement, then it elaborates on the character’s story, and you get to revisit your initial assumptions. Delicious!

Today, after church, I dropped in at Samovar Tea Lounge, which is one of Karen’s favorite haunts. I had a really great time, reading my magazine over an English Tea Service. That is a good way to kill an hour or more! Then I walked through the sunny streets of the Castro, up, up and up into the fog on Portola, entered the fog, and wound my way back home in the inner sunset.

I will likely see myself for sushi this evening. This is another regular “date” I have where I take my laundry down to The Lost Sock and while the hour away sucking down raw fish at Shimo.