I’m still in Baltimore. I’m here on a visit with my son. And he hugs me and we hold each other and it’s extraordinary.
I was thinking that it’s not about how much I love him. I’m not full of a feeling of love as we might normally describe that. It’s not the heart-wells-up thing. I get that a lot; when I think of him, when I talk to him, when I look at pictures. But holding each other is physical and present and not a feeling of love. A feeling of absorption, rather.
I began to thing how that is like a Greek nymph. They’re always turning into things. To save their virginity or avoid rape, or to be fully absorbed in their love. Echo, loving Narcissus for eternity, or Narcissus loving himself.
But to embrace someone you love so much, to be absorbed in their nature, is nymph-like in the sense of identifying with a physical thing or expression. Nymphs are and become trees, streams, rivers, and other natural objects. Their being is not separate from the being of the object they are.
Absorption. A quality of love I can experience. The hug that is endless, not because you are full of feeling, not because your heart loves, but because you are that hug, your being is inseparable from that embrace.
I feel like I know how Daphne turned into a laurel tree. Just being the thing. Just being.
“Caressing the trunk with his hand, he could feel the heart still fluttering under the new bark. Seizing the branches, as though they were limbs in his arms embrace he pressed his lips to the wood.” (i. 453) Interesting observation, especially since I’ve been re-reading Metamorphoses. This is exactly what Ovid was going for on a number of different levels.