could you spare me some time?

excerpts from "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne

Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

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in my Lit14 class during my freshman year, I was assigned to report about this particular poem. I remember being dumbfounded upon first reading this poem since I actually didnt comprehend it that easily. Our professor, Maam Socorro Perez told me and my partner that we got "the hardest poem" (my other classmates were going to give a reading about i.e. Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee?" and the poem with the first line "Drink to me only with thine eyes".. I always forget the title but I never ever forgot the melody. haha. remember the old cartoon with the jazz-dancing owl? ;p). I really had to research about the type of poems that were common in that time period, the styles of writing, common themes prevalent etc.

but i really appreciated the poem afterwards. Knowing more about its context (i.e. prevalence of the use of alchemy and other scientific processes to juxtapose with interactions of people) specifically when he showed how objects are used to describe a current relationship (look at stanzas 4-6.. use of the compass to talk about the simulataneous distance and closeness of the couple) made the poem all the more rich and interesting. it took a lot of studying in order to find out what it wanted to let the reader know.


i guess the same goes with people.


it takes a lot of digging up in order to truly know someone.


a good deal of empty coffee cups, unfinished dinners,
zero-load balances, late night chats over ym, filled up message archives,
spontaneous "kain tayo sa labas!" texts, strolls under the moonlight,
unprecedented alone-times in the midst of a group
and so much more.



in other words


it takes time.




just wondering though ... could you spare me some of yours?


===================
Let me commune, then, commune with your silence,
clear as a light, and pure as a ring.
You are like night, calmed, constellated.
Your silence is star-like, as distant, as true.
- Pablo Neruda