My dear friend,
I am writing to you from Kittery Maine, where I am house-sitting for the weekend. Upon my arrival, the fog lingered over the water until everything melted into a hazy blue—a color that no longer spoke of day but whispered of night. I have been sitting on the couch on and off for the last few days as the dogs snuggle nearby and words slowly make themselves known on the page.
I have been wintering this season—lingering close to home and reading books. I love the feeling of being curled up inside someone’s mind or imagination. In February, I read bell hooks's All About Love: New Visions, an overdue yet perfectly timed read. The seed of bell hooks has been planted in my life often. Upon her death in 2021, I distinctly remember sitting in a classroom as someone wept. In retrospect, I feel gratitude for the wise tears of my classmate—for honoring her passing so tangibly into my memory.
In the days when I taught English for Upward Bound, I assigned a This I Believe Essay. It required students to consider one core belief that would remain unchanged for the remainder of their lives. This assignment nearly sent my high school students into an early quarter-life crisis. As a result, I wrote my own essay about my core belief in….you guessed it….love. I struggled to write the essay as much as my students and even more to share it. A rough draft has been lingering in my drive since 2014.
In the essay, I write about my grandmother and the times she would tell me “teu coração, teu mestre.” Teu coração—means your heart. Mestre is a word for a teacher who has mastered a craft. Roughly translated, Your heart, your teacher. This phrase would come after arguments when she would grow tired of telling me what to do. She would say it in a do-as-you-please tone as she walked away. The lesson that remained over time was about the connective thread between what you love, direction, and action. In the words of bell hooks, “love is as love does.”
I could now easily condense my essay into “see bell hooks, All About Love.” In it, she cracks open into the words things I had felt strongly but could not articulate. In doing so, she created a bridge for me to move from a felt sense to a grounded knowing. Her words felt especially poignant in the aftermath of an election where a love ethic1 did not prevail in the white house. I have found myself tugging at the rope of conscience and consciousness to define the ethics that I want to prevail in my being, home, and community.
bell hooks writes that “Definitions are vital starting points for the imagination. What we cannot imagine cannot come into being.” I often write to redefine. Creating personal definitions and revisiting and revising them is, for me, an alchemical true north. This means that I do have an essay to revise. The ripple of bell hooks, the rhythm and cadence of her words, and the gentle way she led me to examine love prompts me once again to expand definitions. In revising my starting point, I get grounded in an action-based love that conquers fear, liberates, and overcomes.
Without wax,
Silvana
bell hooks writes, “To live our lives based on the principles of a love ethic (showing care, respect, knowledge, integrity and the will to cooperate) we have to be courageous. Learning how to face our fears is one way to embrace love.”