Okay, I promised that when I came up with something for the Art Garden, I'd share it with all of you... I just finished this draft, so here it is (note: Irene is Irene O'Garden, the founder and 'editor' of the event)

AN APOLOGY by Ann Magill

I'm sorry. For the first time in twelve and a half years, Irene has put forth a topic that has me completely stumped, and I have nothing at all to say on the topic of "Falling in Love". Fortunately, she was gracious enough to allow me this time to apologize to you all, and to explain myself.

Now, I've heard it said that love is like falling: a sudden, unexpected loss of equilibrium and control. You meet someone new, and, as if falling into a river, or sliding down a slippery slope, you are at the mercy of a force greater than yourself. For a split second, all your internal organs experience zero gravity, and the next thing you know, your perspective has radically changed. The ground that was under your feet a moment ago isn't - it's beside you or behind you. And the big, important things that were the center of your attention have suddenly been replaced (depending on your downward trajectory) by cracks in the sidewalk, the dust bunnies under the bed, or that funny little cloud that looks like a fish riding a bicycle. …Or, at least, that's the theory. But art doesn't come from theory. It comes from experience.

That's not to say that I am completely naive. I know a lot about falling. I have been professionally trained in the art of doing it well - before I ever got my first pair of crutches and crossed that great divide into vertical existence, my therapists made sure I knew the correct ways of rolling with gravity and catching myself on the way down, because the truth is, a vertical existence is a very a precarious one. Now, just to reassure you: I can go for days, weeks, even months without actually hitting the ground. But I don't ever go a single day without thinking about it. Every morning when I get out of bed, I must be aware of exactly how much weight is being supported by one foot before I move the other, and of the relative angles between my legs, my torso, and the floor. Otherwise, it could be a very long time before I get to that first cup of coffee. And getting out of the shower is always an adventure. The good news is, that so far, whatever goes down must (eventually) get up.

I know a lot about love, too. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for love. First, came the love that Angela Pomeroy Frary had for Lincoln Clark Magill. This love was so strong that it transformed them into something called "parents". Then came the professional love from doctors and nurses when I arrived nine weeks ahead of schedule. And love has just been there ever since, existing between me, and those parents, and friends, and teachers, and cats, and dogs, and horses, and goats, and chickens, and trees, and… (well, you get the idea). Last, but definitely not least, is the love I have for language. Irene recognized that love, and invited me to express it at the twelfth [?] Art Garden, back in 1989.

Each expression of love has been brilliantly unique, with greater diversity and complexity than a blizzard of snowflakes. Just as the changing seasons affects a tree's growth, each loving relationship I've experienced has affected mine. And if some metaphysical biologist could somehow take a core sample of my soul, she'd be able to see and count its growth rings, going back in time, and would be able to reconstruct the changing climate of my emotional life.

But here's the rub: after all my experiences with falling, and all of my experiences with love, I can say with confidence that, most of the time, the two have nothing at all in common, regardless of theories to the contrary.

Falling happens when I stop paying attention. Loving someone is paying attention. Love is that heightened attention that sharpens my senses, and enables me glimpse the secret corners of another being - to hear the rhythm of the heartbeat within the chest wall, and somehow, seems make my heartbeat audible to another.

Falling is an event, something that happens to me - all other things in my life, I participate in. But after that initial lapse of attention, all I can do after the fall begins is to react, and sometimes, I don't even get the chance to do that. Love, on the other hand, is a part of me, like my hair, or my voice. … Or maybe it's a part of the other whom I love. It's hard to tell. All I know is that the loved one exists, I exist, and the love exists. I can't separate the three (maybe it's a bit like an umbilical chord and placenta. Is that part of the mother, or the child?). And while falling makes me passive, love drives me to action. It gives me the desire to act, to create, to express, and to share. And, more than the desire, it gives me the strength to do all these things.

Finally, falling, despite all appearances, is basically static. It only goes in one direction, and is over as quickly as it began. But love is organic, it grows and lives and changes. Sometimes it starts so small, I hardly notice it until later, but whenever I look back to try and pinpoint when it "suddenly" appeared, I can't, and I have to acknowledge that it was always there, but in a different form. When an acorn grows into a tree, did the tree suddenly appear? Did the acorn disappear? And it certainly flows in more than one direction -- it flows in more directions than can be plotted on a graph. It even flows into the past and the future, and if there is a "sideways" in time, I'm sure it flows there, too.

So, I hope you understand why I have nothing to say on the topic of "Falling in Love".

Thank you for your patience.