valentine's anyway

I know, I know, it's days too late, but Happy Valentine's Day anyway. Is it ever really too late to feel the love? (Actually, yes I think it can be, but that's a short story waiting to be written another day.) At my house we celebrated with sugar cookies with pink icing for nieces' classes and beautiful, delicious, Lindt chocolate covered strawberries for the grown-ups. Yuuuuuuuummmmmmmmy. True, it's not quite as good as actually being in love on the pink and red-est day of the year but it certainly takes the edge off :) I am a long way from being alone, and I am thankful for that all the days of the year.

Many years ago I wrote an article on How to Write a Love Letter for work, and it still cracks me up that it remains one of the most popular articles on the site. How do you spell irony? If you do a Google search on the topic you'll get over 9 million results and you'll see my article there at #7 on the first page. So it looks like I'm getting a little Google love too.

Love is strange thing, it cannot be earned and is never deserved. It can be both lost and found, can cause both pain and joy. Love can be everything and yet sometimes love is not enough. You can loose yourself in love, be rescued by it, drown in it and find a better version of yourself inside it. They say love conquers all, but they also say that love comes softly. Love can be a declaration and also only whisper. Love grows with knowledge but can thrive in ignorance. It is strong and fragile, fleeting and longsuffering, a beginning and a destination. Shakespeare wrote "journeys end in lovers meeting" but so often the journey has only just begun. No wonder the poets have so much to say on the topic.

If you're not maxed out on love poetry from this past week, these are two of my personal favorites:

An excerpt from Pablo Neruda's Sonnet XVII (and yes, it was in Patch Adams, it's still great poetry)

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

And Leonard Cohen's "Dance Me to the End of Love"

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
And dance me to the end of love
Yeah, dance me to the end of love

Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
And dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love... both of us above
And dance me to the end of love
Yeah, dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
And dance me to the end of love

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand... touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love