“The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside of our control.“
In her book, All About Love: New Visions (1999), bell hooks says love is risky because we “risk loss, hurt and pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside of our control.” But yet, bell hooks argues the risk must be taken anyway.
So, as I watch you risk your money on the floor of a Vegas casino, I contemplate the ways I roll the dice with my heart. I entrust you with it even when I’m scared to. I invite vulnerability to our dinner table even though they sometimes dominate the conversation. I try to tell you all the things I wrap in shame and keep tucked in the back of the dresser. I fall off the cliff, head first and with no parachute, hoping you’ll catch me when I land. And because I do all of these things, I am the better for it.
Because if I can trust you, be vulnerable with you, share my secrets with you, fall for you, well maybe, I can trust, be vulnerable with, and fall for me, too. So, while love may be a risk, it seems the more you play, the better your odds.
If love listens
Why can't you hear me?
If love is patient
Why do I feel like you're quitting?
If love is all this
What are we doing?
If love is kind
Why's it so hard to find?
If love knows no envy
Then why don't you trust me?
If love's not self-seeking
Why put me last behind your needs?
And your dreams?
And your desire to be free?
If love is all of these things
You must hate me
If love is kind (can't stand me)
It's so hard to find? (Why do you hate me?)
If love listens then I'll do it
If love is kind, damnit, so am I
For you, I'd do
'Cause I, 'cause I
Couldn't hate you if I tried
So I, so I
Will do whatever love requires
Patience
I'll be kind
Won't get jealous
And I'll swallow my pride
For you, I do what love requires
If love can be all these things, so can I
You don't have to have the best hand
To win my love, it's not up to chance
And you don't have to lie and cheat
Or count any cards to win me
You don't have to lie
Or really even try
To steal my heart
The love I made was yours from the start
How lucky?
Ain't that so lucky?
Credits: Sloan Hampton Taylor - writer, performer, and co-vocal producer; Plantcham - producer, composer; KThieme - producer, composer; Arcane - producer, composer; Adam Mobarek - mixing and mastering engineer, co-vocal producer.
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Cucurrucucú paloma
If you are not here, who will claim the love I reserved for you? Who will wipe the tears that flow for you? Who will hear the heart that beats for you? With you gone, who will remember with me? Who will remind me I’m not alone?
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The Fire!! This Time (Foreword)
“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison…
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the sun’s sacrifices for the moon
you are my tomorrow . . . wherever you go, I’ll follow
SLOAN HAMPTON 
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