My explanation of the March 2021 ThreadZoomMash, along with my own piece and review of the event can be found by clicking here or below:
With thanks to Kay Scorah for permission to publish her love letter as a guest piece here on Ogblog:
February 2021 Before we go any further, there’s something I need to tell you. I’ve never been in love. Yeah, of course, I’ve been in lust. And I’ve been in-fatuated, in-appropriate, in-secure, in-toxicated. All those other “ins” made me think I was in love. But I wasn’t. I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to work this out, but lately love has taught me that I have never been in love. You see, the love I feel is overwhelming, and year by year it gets more so. The narcissi, the daffodils, the crocuses are just opening up in Vicky Park. I looked at them the other day and I began to cry. I love them. Then there’s those 3 little kids that race their scooters down my street every day after school. There they are now as I write, yelling, screaming and laughing.. my heart is ready to burst with love for their voices. The café owner up at Dartmouth Park yesterday, she just couldn’t stop talking about the trip she took to South America when she was 21. The sparkle in her eyes when she remembered the fear and the beauty of it all; I can’t get it out of my mind’s eye. I love it. The opening bars of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”; I have a physical love reaction to them. Can’t help but move. And that’s before I even get started on the love I feel for my son. Looking at a picture of him when he was small or seeing him walk towards me across the park, even writing about him now... So, the idea of being in love with someone, that I’m supposed to love them more than anyone or anything. Well, that’s too much for me. It’s frightening. If I were to fall in love with someone, would that mean that my love for them would be bigger than all the love I already have? If so, then we’d both be overwhelmed. We wouldn’t be able to handle it. On the other hand, if falling in love with one person meant that I had to take my love away from the flowers, the children, the music, my son - I would be so sad, and so dependent on them to give me everything that the rest of the world had provided until then, it just wouldn’t be fair. They could only disappoint me. My love is such that if I fell in love, in the way I think it’s supposed to be, neither of us could possibly survive the intensity. So, when your smiling but serious face pops up on the zoom screen, and your soothing voice washes in through my headphones, I love you like a crocus, like a kid on a scooter, like Tamla Motown. And that’s huge.
