For a couple of years "So are you to my thoughts as food to life," the first line of a Shakespearean sonnet, has been the title for the last in a series of books I am writing, and thus also the overview title. I thought that, once I had time, I would decipher the rest of the sonnet to the extent that it might bear meaning to the books. Given time, however, I don't think the rest of the sonnet works for my purposes.
The first two lines are great:
"So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground."
We are all meant to flower and fruit in our own unique ways. We are deeply interconnected in this and dependent on the resources we provide each other. Like trees, we stand under the sun with our arms uplifted, full of gratitude for the light and rain which give us life as we dig our toes deep into the earth of our communal culture.
I am grateful for those I love, those given to me to touch, to talk to, and those so far away I must write to them! They are as necessary to life as food. Our fruits do not belong to us alone, but to our interconnected love. Sometimes our lives have been stressed, developing stranger flowers, more complex fruit, as certain vineyards do which have to dig into the water and mineral tables deep in the soil.
The last lines of the Shakespearean sonnet describe the lover alternately enjoying his love alone, or with others, feasting and then being surfeited. Helen Vendler suspects it is one of the sonnets in which Shakespeare was more interested in the language he was using and its conceits, than in what he was saying.
But rather than choose another title, I have decided to use this one anyway, as I've lived with it so long. It does point to something of what I mean to say.
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