A few words about love . . .

Because life is much about a struggle with the absence of love, one has to hold back from a temptation to rant about prolific negatives such as the epidemic of violent “virtual reality” games and gamers. Or, perhaps this is a perfect subject to rant about in this virtual medium? Probably so, the whole genre is worsening the problem in a big way.

Violent video exist and grow as an industry because an exceedingly large pool of capital set for creation of these products wants to increase desire for high-tech lethal violence. The common Big Lie is that “demand comes first” and suppliers merely meet the hunger.

The New American Century, a video documentary, depicts graphic, explicit results of video gamer violence transferred to real life. The most heavily armed soldiers in the world are seen (at 1:28 minutes) joyously killing civilians in Iraq, sometimes laughing during and after their kills.

• “Dude, we fucked these people all to shit down there . . .” 
• “The end is near, and all these people. They will learn to stop worshipping Allah, and start worshipping a 2,000-pound Jay-dam that is about to fuck their whole world up. 
• "That is fucking sweet!”

A generation of gamers turned soldiers whose ability to know or understand love is non-existent. One has to believe that the skin of their moral conscience never grew along with their bodies. There is a high probability that they’ve come from single-parent families. They delight in killing with extreme violence and brutality. They cannot know what love really is.

Some might say I’m not “romantic.” Okay, I admit, a few have said so. But that was based on perceptions that happen to be only half true. This is to say, the half-truth is that I rarely move into a time and place to create “romance” or romantic settings with all the appropriate props. Hallmark cards make me cringe, just as empty, simple verse with sweet ideas about “love” that children, and many adults, exchange also do.  Love and romance as I know it cannot be purchased.

Some poets understand the depth of love in the real world, and why people flee from it. Read Rumi. Or, from the present time, if you can find them listen to the New Zealand poet-songstress Sonny Southon, from Falling Through a Cloud, “Too Much Love”

                Do you feel guilty if you feel too good?

                Look for danger to make you feel bad?

                Do you expect the world not to give too much?

Run from danger that hides in love?

I rate no one on Earth, who can do without some love,

Too much love will never be too much,

Too much love will never be enough.

Or, listen to Tori Amos from her American Doll Posse collection, “Father’s Son.” This is a song that makes my spine tremble and turns my eyes into a fountain.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrkmPwJ5PhI

Although I may not agree completely with all the lyrics, the essence remains a powerful testimony of our present age.

 "Father's Son" (incomplete)

So it ends so it begins
I'm my father's son
Plant another seed of hate
In a trusting virgin gun

So the desert blooms
Strawberry cactus
Can you blame nature
If she's had enough of us

So it ends
So it begins
I'm my father's son
So it ends
So it begins

I'm my father's son
Plant another seed of hate
In another father's son

It’s all about love. It’s not enough just to say, “I’m opposed to war.” One has to feel it from the depths of one’s being, the depths of one’s soul.

Another song by Tori goes deeper yet into the dark ocean of love: go ahead, jump in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrrCvJU1uyA

 Your Cloud:

Where the river cross crosses the lake,
Where the words Jump off my pen and into your pages,
Do you think, just like that, you can divide this-
You as yours, me as mine, to before we were us.

If the rain has to separate from itself,
does it say, "Pick out your cloud?”
Pick out your cloud.


If there is a horizontal line,
(Stay right here.)
That runs from the map off your body,
(I'm gonna stay with you.)
Straight through the land shooting up,
(Stay right here.)
Right through my heart.
Will this horizontal line,
(I'm gonna stay with you.)
When asked, know how to find,
(I'm gonna stay right here.)
Where you end, where I begin...
"Pick out your cloud."

How light can play and form a ring...
(I found, I found, I found a thrill.)
Of rain that can change bows into arrows.
(I found, I found, I found a thrill.)
Who we were, isn't lost, before we were us.
Indigo in his own blue always knew this.
If the rain has to separate,
from itself, does it say, "Pick out your cloud?”
Pick out your cloud.

If the rain has to separate,
from itself, does it say, "Pick out your cloud...?” 

I say it is deeper, because it is takes me into the deep recesses of a child’s heart, one separated from a parent early in life. A bond forms; a bond is broken. It is the couple that joins as one to create a child, but can’t find that “horizontal line” connecting each other. This is life, as it is. One asks, must this be the course we take; the other feels it necessary, no desirable to separate. From this emerges the child who ages but doesn’t grow spiritually enough to prevent putting on that soldier’s persona and gear. Life and its bonds are temporary and shallow, so it will seem. To know love is to feel pain.

To know love is to feel pain, so here’s a new video game to play . . . 

We need so much more than that from each other, and so do our children.