banks full of roses

Oliver Jeffers

" I am a forest and
                a night of dark trees: but     who is not afraid of my darkness, 

                                 will find banks full of roses under my cypresses. "

Friedrich Nietzsche 

feeling feelings

( source.)

The power of real love is simply incredible. It truly transcends it's boundaries, such as distance... and sometimes, it is with this same distance that it becomes a stronger, more powerful emotion. The love between Virginia Wolf and Vita Sackville-West was one that probably faced many of these boundaries (they were both women, Vita was married to a man). This excerpt, from a letter Vita made for Virginia on her way to Persia for four months with her husband, is probably one of the most simple, but undoubtedly beautiful letters I have ever come across. Her heartache for her lover is so evident, so strong, that she could only express it in the most direct way possible. 

" I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your un-dumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn't even feel it. And yet I believe you'll be sensible of a little gap. But you'd clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan't make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this—But oh my dear, I can't be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don't love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don't really resent it." 

(from Letters of Note.)

To love a person with this same intensity...