My Thinker’s Gamble (don’t know what…)
by H.B.
My Lover’s Gamble (… that is)
Do you love someone or do you love some-thing about someone?
Is it true love or is it an illusion?
Had to be a philosopher that thought up “true love”.
Had to be.
Tracing it back to some thing is not a mere homicidal gesture
against love,
but is its challenge and its tease: “let’s see
how you can get out of that one!” the thinker tells
himself;
“let’s see if you can take “what” you give; make it into
a “what”,
and see what happen(s)”. It’s a gamble, no
question. We thinkers, on these terms, live truly the edge (because
we suspect our limited engagement to be finite,
but then also become addicted to its emerging truths:
They are beauty and happiness and depth —
love’s treacherous companions).
Was it a philosopher or a priest who invented ‘true love’?
This is a good question for which I cannot supply a good answer – mainly because the former ‘good’ is not exactly the same as the latter. Same ambivalence goes for “true” I think:
I’d risk saying that, in a Nietzschean reading, the priest would say “true” in the former sense and the philosopher in the latter(?)