Considering Love Made Seen

January 6, 2022

photos at sunrise

for May Ziadeh

My smile is because you delight me and more; I smile to delight you more. May anyone around me enjoy my smile too, feel the warmth you’d set within me, it could spread.

I have been talking too much, my sacred treasures sometimes beyond the language of words feel lost in the spoken words and where they’re not met or meant to go, explanations of my plans or techniques that others don’t care to hear or need to know.

Silence: I met you there. I feel that you feel my loss and bring me back gently, not with strength but with your continuous look of understanding and love, I find my way, smiling ’cause we interlock, I never felt there was a lock with us.

—Jade

…

the following by May Ziadeh

…O My Lighthouse,  
You shine 
In my starry dream!

.

Not a single wing can be seen, but countless voices chirp within the branches, and it seems as though the whole forest is singing…

.

…Ah! countryside, countryside! On each of your rocks, under each of your trees, in the most secret and mysterious corners of your valleys, I leave traces of my soul: sighs, dreams, smiles, songs, romances, hopes, admiration, meditation...I sometimes seem to have distributed all the faculties of my heart, to have given you everything of me… 

But the more I love you, the bigger and stronger I feel, the more I pour out my feelings and my ecstasies on you, the more I feel my heart swelling with love and enthusiasm—I love you and will love you forever…

—May Ziadeh

Excerpts from Fleurs De Rêve (1911) translated from original French by me (2022).