I was love bathed: A conversation with Nyasha

Two days ago I cited a wonderful quote from Yvonne Vera’s wonderful book The Stone Virgins. One of the many responses to the quote birthed an engagement that naturally makes up this blog post. Coincidentally, the conversation took place between me and a twin of Kuda whom I engaged with in one of my blogs. I edited a few things to the original chats I heard with Nyasha. The quote from Vera read ‘The best love is brief and intense.’

And below is the conversation with Nyasha after her response to what the veteran writer’s conclusion.

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The book from which the caption was taken

Nyasha: I agree, I have felt what she must’ve
Brain: Is that so? How then can we survive after the best briefly but intensely visited us?
That’s always the question, right? How do we learn to go on? After learning all that? How do we unlearn it?

Brain: Uuuuuuum. This is even deeper! I can’t claim to have an answer. Maybe we only live to live as love’s orphans

Nyasha: Perhaps you are right…
Love seeming so sweet and tender can be brutal, yet still at times you feel quite lucky to actually have loved and be loved even for a short while, because it will leave you love bathed,

Brain: I love this. I really loved it!
Love is sometimes brutal. And her brutality usually comes in our realisation how tender and sweet she can be I think.
Do you believe in the many loves Kuda told me some other day

Nyasha: I have felt this, I know what I speak of,
I have felt love’s brutality, suffered at the hands of love, whilst I myself haboured love in my heart, when I look back at it, I would say mine has not been an ordinary journey because I have felt what men feel in love more than what women feel or go through…it is a difficult thing to love, love with every nerve, fibre of your being and not be loved thus yourself, if I say I felt love’s brutality in realizing how tender and sweet she is, I’d be lying, because I’ve never experienced her tenderness towards me, I’ve been the tender one all through and through whilst loved jabbed at me all the while.
I believe there are many types of love, five to be specific but they all work in sync,

Brain: The way you say it shows you still have love with you. Hope you will find yourself under the radiating towards you some day

Nyasha: I say this because love left an impression on me…like I said, I was love bathed. I don’t know if love will radiate towards me, I just love who I was when I was in love.

Brain: How did you get bathed? Is it explainable?

Nyasha: Yes it is, and it doesn’t mean cortis. My love was pure, most people have it all confused because they’ve felt love on a physical level…it’s not sex I talk of here.
You have to truly appreciate nature to understand this, the feeling is like that of walking under a neat sun just after a light summer rain, the streaks of sunlight falling on your skin enveloping you in it’s warmth and radiant glare.

Brain: Now you know what? I think I hope to see your poetry some other day! The last part is more than poetic

Nyasha: Mr Garusa, I am a writer, I told you this before. I write because I desire to write, I write because I reject silence, I write because I can kill, heal, hurt, free, transform, wear my heart on a sleeve on paper and never get in trouble for feeling that way, my poetry is filled with my actual experiences and for that reason you won’t see them.

Brain: That’s why I had insinuated my love for the reserved not to be seen. I know very well kuti wakati poetry haipiwe vanhu

Nyasha: I write with as much gusto as I exude when I love, I love as passionately as I write, it is like a burning fire…wild and rampant, not easily tamed…even my work is such.
I will compile it one day and have it published, it is truly a woman sculptured in pages,

Brain: Hopefully I will be still on this side of the living to witness!

Nyasha: Well then…what can I say, that poetry…ohhh that poetry speaks to the many parts of my life, where I’ve encountered love in a different way and yet felt the same & have the same out come…

Brain: It didn’t change thee?

Nyasha: would think it would have, but it’s like a little child, children seldom get embarrassed to ask for what they want even before a huge crowd it’s because they know the tears will burst out…

Brain: As I was going through our chats it felt like I’m talking to someone who might have been dealt the worst by love but can still love. So I was thinking what is your other secret besides the one hidden in the imagery of a child

Nyasha: I guess it’s because I am not damaged, I actually believe in the beauty of love. I believe in it, I am not broken, I don’t fall easily in and out of love but I give myself to it without reserve if I decide to, plus I think I’m a very patient woman when it comes to love. I don’t rush to engage with all the physical in me, so I still have a lot left from which to collect. I still have that optimism, and am always expectant of a good outcome in every shot. To quit believing one has to be broken, and people are often broken when they allow physical withdrawals where no emotional deposits have been made.

Brain: I hope this will be the last one for the blog but not the last I may want to learn from you. If you were to meet a broken person in need of advice and healing what would you tell her or him?

Nyasha: I will tell them nothing, there r a few things a person has to learn for themselves and I believe love is one of them.It’s the individual’s lecture, apart from the individual’s lecture, I won’t tell them anything because I’m not oblivious to my kind of love and my basic principles and how that conflicts with the many dimensions people have used to describe love or what they’ve done out of love or for love.