Big Frank has received an e-copy of Don Paterson's book of aphorisms, "Best Thought, Worst Thought: On Art, Sex, Work and Death" from his buddy Magne (check out his blog for pop quotes and aphorisms by Paterson). Paterson is a poet and musician who teaches at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. This book full of aphorisms that will make you pause, reflect, sometimes reject, others laugh, but almost always pay attention. Big Frank has included a few below on the trajectory of love:.
Sometimes I wonder if there is an invisible amanuensis on hand at the beginning of our love affairs, scribbling down the improvisations of the first few hours. Too often it seems that they provide the entire script of the melodrama to come, from which we soon find ourselves incapable of straying a word.
The most erotic things that can be done to you are those that are driven by the purest selfishness on the part of your lover. Charity, on the other hand, is the great anaphrodisiac.
I would never claim to have her measure. However she gave me mine. My gratitude is. . . complex.
I was terrified when I suddenly realized her entire conversation took place in inverted commas. She didn't dare mean a thing.
Like a fool, I let her know she was on my mind all the time. Specifically I was telling her that I haunted her; then wondered why the news appalled her so.
She insisted on absolute honesty, so I told her everything. I never saw her again, but at least I had spared the next guy the same ordeal.
Always an error to make someone profess what they will not volunteer—especially in love, where the spontaneity of its declaration is all the language ever holds of it.
I asked her what she thought had given our relationship its longevity, and so initiated—I quickly realized—the first discussion of our relationship we had ever had. We were finished in a month.
I was so practiced in disappointment, I absorbed the blow of her leaving me almost effortlessly. Allowing yourself to be constructed by the lover means you have been a different man from the start; I merely left his body behind like a husk, and let him take the punch. (I watched him double up, as from above.) the loveless wraith of me was then free to wander, looking for my new instructions
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