September 2: Loved Ones, Maggie Nelson, "It is Light"

239.  But now you are talking as if love were a consolation.  Simone Weil warned otherwise.  "Love is not consolation," she wrote.  "It is light."
                    ---from Bluets by Maggie Nelson

It is raining.  Going to raining all day.  That's okay.  I was going to try to mow my lawn today, but now I will work on a poem, read some, go to church, play the pipe organ for Mass, and then have pizza for dinner.  A sort of lazy day spent with people whom I love.

You know, loved ones can be a great joy.  They can also be the source of great irritation.  Only people who you truly love can get under your skin to the point of distraction.  Sure, coworkers can piss you off.  People at the grocery store who cut the line in front of you can make you glare or swear.  But you can leave work, and, once you buy your groceries and are heading out the door, you forget about the asshole in front of you.

Loved ones, however, with all their insecurities and quirks and mental illnesses and faults, are with you all the time.  Yes, I am being intentionally obscure.  All I want to say is that love IS light, and that light can be a source of great comfort and great distress.

Don't worry.  Saint Marty is surrounded by great, comforting light at the moment.