All about Love
By Irina Escoffery
Since Batsceba asked me to write a short text to accompany my little project I’ve been thinking about what LOVE means to me. I truly don’t know. Well, of course I know, everybody knows what love means. But… the first time I fell in love, I was in the first grade at elementary school. I kept looking at this boy secretly and thinking to myself that I will love him forever. Doesn’t matter how young I was, it was a very intense feeling. After that, I remember falling in love many more times and every time I thought it would last forever. At that time I didn’t realize that FOREVER doesn’t exist. And love is a very short moment like a lightning strike that can hit you hard. Hard enough to destroy you or change your life.
Later on I did discover that there is an everlasting love. The love for children; for we will never stop loving them. A mother’s love is a very powerful feeling. Now I can look around and see that love is everywhere. Humans, birds, animals; life perpetuates because we love. We love and so we exist.
To tell you the truth it is so much easier for me to present the idea of LOVE in my photos than to describe it in words. So, here you are…
O Tell Me The Truth About Love
Some say love’s a little boy,
And some say it’s a bird,
Some say it makes the world go round,
Some say that’s absurd,
And when I asked the man next door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn’t do.
Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does its odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.
Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It’s quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I’ve found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway guides.
Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.
I looked inside the summer-house;
It wasn’t even there;
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton’s bracing air.
I don’t know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn’t in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.
Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all its time at the races,
or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.
When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I’m picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
