Eternal Springtime

By Gala

Hot Damn. It's happening again. I HAD to go to the Rodin museum in Phillie a few months back, a tiny gem of a place off Logan Circle. The best collection of his stuff outside of Paris, most casted during his lifetime, and with his supervision and permission. So what has a sculptor of Bronze got to do with Spring, and love, and stuff?

Confession. For most of my life, I thought my favorite famous piece was called the Kiss...and you probably know it, even if you didn't know the artist. Two lovers, entwined--arguably the most beautiful nude of all time. So I'm looking at it...and my heart is going like THIS--and a see the little card...Eternal Springtime. The Kiss is beautiful......but Eternal Springtime? Melt....oh Baby...Viagara in scuplted form.

Most of us do not admit to the mental calisthenics we do on a regular basis. My first thought was, "No Way---I love the Kiss" I stubbornly did not want to love another scupture as much as the other...But as I wandered the small museum, my eyes kept going back to it. Eternal Springtime.

And then it hit me. I was reacting to the name as if it meant love was only for those in the spring time of their lives--as are many who post to this site. Yes,...Rodin's lovers are splendid----young, strong, robust--sexy. But Rodin was not saying that love had an age limit. He was musing on the ability it had to turn back the clock for the heart that had known winter...maybe a LOT of winters...only to open to the sun in spring.

George Bernard Shaw mused that Youth is wasted on the young...and sometimes it feels as though love is too. There's this ass busting rush to fine THE ONE...and the crushing distress when THE ONE becomes just another one. The games--the posturing--the strange meandering we all do, while searching for love as if it were a prize in a cereal box.

I looked at the statue, and it hit me that we aren't looking for someone to complete us. We really are supposed to be complete. What we are looking for really, is not someone to love us--but someone to whom love means the SAME damned thing. Not just sweet nothings. Not declarations of ardor...but the person who speaks the same language emotionally, who expects the same things of love.

Only we miss that. The power of attraction makes us fall for people who appeal to one set of synapses--while ignoring the fact that we only speak emotional English--while they speak only Urdu. It's not just a matter of communicating--but a matter or understanding. In the first flush of love, it's easy to forgive and forget...every day is Spring. But pass a dozen seasons with one person, and you come to expect that they will in fact, figure you out.

You forget that we do live in our skin alone--no matter how close we become to another soul. They seem to know so much about us--how could they miss X? And BANG. Emotional winter. It comes--and it's cold, and doesn't feel like that sweet day of warm breezes we first knew. The heart pines and longs...oh, for that spring feel again.

You get so caught up, you forget that spring is perennial -- it WILL come again...no matter how impossible that concept may seem to the wintered heart...THAT was what Rodin was saying, with heart, soul, and bronze. The crocus will poke through the snow, the air will warm, and the hearts will learn to dance. But first, we have to find the soul that speaks the same tongue as our heart...even if they have an accent---or it's not their first language...That's when we have a real shot at Eternal Springtime...and the warm and the growth, and all the things that will fuel us through the next change of seasons.

It doesn't matter, sixteen or sixty...Spring comes, and with it, a host of lovely possibilities. So if you're looking for me, I'm going to be out under the dogwood---mooning over the daffodils---or just waiting for that first warm thermal to give wings to this old heart of mine.

To you and yours, I wish Eternal Springtime...

So Says Gala


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