& (or the chains that bind)

I would bring my life complete before you
...
When I summon intellect it is to the melody
of this longing. Thy hand,
Beloved, restores
the chords of this longing.
Here, in the thirst that defines Beauty,
I have found kin.

---Robert Duncan.

'The quality of our attachments is the quality of our understanding.'

In an age that privileges the foot-loose, the radically undetermined, the ability to read and write the script of one's own life, what place is there in our thoughts and lives or loves for austerity, or restraints, or "bindings"? Why should I be bound to a particular place, or person, or job? Why resist the flux of time? If all is sovereign becoming...

The market and the dissipation of the solid structures in our lives. More generally: liquid modernity. You sometimes think that it is only memory and love that holds back, holds your hand across the bridge.

Mystery of mysteries: that eternal longing manifests itself in a particular place, a certain face. This, not that. And far less anything abstract or general. The view that from the narrowest angle something profound might open up, that each detail was like a gem in the dust, a ring in the desert.

What binds one human being to another? Is it not the other way: what binds makes us human? (of course, there are inhuman bonds as well: the bond of blood and country is utterly false unless it is between human & human, without exclusion or malice).

&

love: I wanted you to be.

& points forwards; points back. Is now.Joining what never was, what might never be.

& is, if you are attentive enough, both open and free, as well as closed and small. Is both 1 & 2. And not a number at all!