What is Love?

“Why is the measure of love loss?

–It hasn’t rained for 3 months. The trees are prospecting underground, sending reserves of roots into the dry ground, roots like razors to open any artery water-fat. The grapes have withered on the vine. What should be plump and firm, resisting the touch to give itself in the mouth is spongy and blistered. Not this year the pleasure of rolling blue grapes between finger and thumb juicing my palm with music. Even the wasps avoid the thin brown dribble. Even the wasps this year. It was not always so.” (p 9)

This quote really struck me when reading because it starts with such a huge question and then uses the example of grapes  on the vine, a noun that does not exactly scream out love to the reader. However, after looking at this quotation more in detail there are several aspects that I became aware of. There are a strong usage of binary words throughout, such as firm, withered, blistered, and dry. Another selection of words used throughout are spongy, plump, juicy, and dribble. These are the exact opposite of the previous group of words, perhaps to show how something that was not perceived as good or was even viewed as ugly can turn into the something beautiful and to the human soul that is delicious. Time can truly change everything, especially in matters of the heart. This passage exposes the reader to the idea of time effecting our bodies and identities; the body can wither and the identity can evolve. The author is asking us to question what are our conceptions of love and not view it as we always do, it should be seen for its possibilities not for its endings. There is a lot of nature imagery here such as roots, wasps, grapes, trees, water, vine and underground. Nature represents pure and untouched, just as the body. This ties into the use of body imagery such as mouth, finger, thumb, and palm.  I think this because of the opening line primarily, it sets the reader up to view the upcoming passage as loss but begs not to at the same time, you should look outside the box in terms of love. The author wants you to see that the ground, trees etc are at a loss because they are having a dry spell but actually it is the possibility of rain we should be focusing on instead. The phrase ‘even the wasps avoid’ is used to represent that even a creature that no one likes will not come close, representing that sometimes even those who you view below you can reject you.

I especially loved the message behind the quotation. It represents that there can be love and it can change into something else overtime but why view that as a loss? The passage says ‘it was not always so’ meaning that once there was love so there can be love again. The language shows that there stages we go through as humans, at one moment we can be rolling in the pleasures and in the next there might only be a ‘thin brown dribble’ left that we cling to because we are afraid of being alone. The rain will come again but the ground has to be patient, which makes the waiting even more enjoyable once it does arrive.