I'm Major Jackson, and this is the slowdown.

I recently watched a movie about a widow and a younger man.

It reminded me how classic the trope of Forbidden Love is.

A couple from the wrong side of the tracks meet up in high school,

or a couple of differing ages, or cultural backgrounds become the basis of those heart-wrenching

narratives for which we need cathartic treatment. Maybe it's because who we love is still

taboo in some communities. We have yet to fully move beyond starkly rigid notions of love. Who we choose as the object

of our affections and desire is a fundamental choice. It is an act of ultimate freedom, one that is as

natural as breathing. Thankfully, at the end of the day,

it is difficult to police another person's heart. Today's classic poem knows that loving hearts

create possibilities for us to exist as full and whole human beings. We need as many examples

as possible of sweet passion and friendship. It might be the key to our survival.

The canonization by John Dunn.

For God's sake, hold your tongue and let me love.

Or chide my palsy or my gout, my five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout.

With wealth, your state, your mind with arts improve. Take you a course,

get you a place, observe his honor or his grace, or the king's real or his stamped face,

contemplate what you will approve, so you will let me love. Alas, alas, who's injured by my love?

What merchant ships have my sighs drowned? Who says my tears have overflowed his ground? When did my

codes of forward spring remove? When did the heats

which my veins fill? Add one more to the plaguy bill? Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still

litigious men, which quarrels move, though she and I do love. Call us what you will.

...