Nests In Your Palm

Nests In Your Palm

What makes the wings return in the spring,
I know all about.

And what makes them leave again
before the snow weighs down their 
need for flight? 
That feeling too I am familiar with.

Look at your own migration
from spirit to form and back,
so many times.

What is there to learn before you can 
retire and cease such an arduous journey?

Discovering that heaven nests in your palm. 


    "Little by little, wean yourself. This is the gist of what I have to say. From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood, move to an infant drinking milk, to a child on solid food, to a searcher after wisdom, to a hunter of more invisible game. Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo. You might say, "The world outside is vast and intricate. There are wheatfields and mountain passes, and orchards in bloom. At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding." You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up in the dark with eyes closed. Listen to the answer. There is no "other world." I only know what I've experienced." - Rumi

      What does "weaning yourself" mean? Is it to discover that heaven nests in your palm? Or to find whatever personal revelation is needed to drive you onward into the galaxy? When I shared this quote with my dad years ago, he said: "Rumi asks the question, 'What do you know?' I will ask another, 'What do you remenber?'"

      It's a great question, on this ardurous journey (life), with the need for flight (transformation), what will we remember? Probably the times when our spirit feels most alive, and closest to that heaven within us.

Hungry Eyes (1987), Eric Carmen 

My Teacher Once Told Me A Story

My Teacher Once Told Me A Story

My teacher once told me a story 
of a great Saint,
who wanted to travel the world 
and talk about some spiritual matters
to all those who would listen. 

And when he reached a certain point
in his journey, he said to some of his companions: 

"My only concern is that we get a few to listen
to my words which will plant seeds for generations.
So I want you to employ twelve of the most beautiful dancers
who can travel with us as we tour the land." 

So the dancers were employed 
and from that moment on, traveled city to city with the Saint.
The dancers would begin the show, and a great crowd would gather,
then the saint would speak for just a few minutes,
then let the performers resume their art. 

My own teacher then stopped the story,
looked at me in a very sweet way and said, 

"Hafiz, don't forget the dancers in your poems.
Don't forget the music." 


          Someone who didn't forget the mellifluous sounds of life was Alice Herz Sommer, who survived the Holocaust by playing in a "Jew Orchestra" for the Nazis. She played over a 100 concert inside the concentration camp and she likens that experience, both for the performers and their imprisoned audience as being close to the divine. Alice is unequivocal in stating that music preserved her sanity and her life: "Put good things in your head, fill it up, because no one can take that away from you. People think we played for entertainment, but we played for moral support, for inspiration, for beauty, because the moment the first note of music starts it goes straight to your soul."

          The documentary, The Lady In Number 6, about her life and the lives of other Holocaust musicians is currently up for an Oscar.

          You can view the preview for The Lady In Number 6 here:

In The Midnight Of Thy Tresses

In The Midnight Of Thy Tresses 

Who can conceive of judging a whole life,
or of granting all in it a pardon,

unless at midnight, 
you let us enter your tresses,
know your scent 
become as intimate with your light
as anyone ever has. 

All images are shadows you once cast
as your search for righteousness 
made others seem wrong

The shadows will gladly surrender 
their identity 
and reveal the potential within 

the way a piece of paper would 
if it ever made love to a great flame. 

        It is often difficult to make a decision without judgement. As soon as we eyeball someone, we're judging them. We're juding the way they dress, their weight, the way they talk, their past, their present, or anything that comes to the surface. And yet, it is with these same superficial "facts" we come to condemn them. It doesn't matter that the smell of chocolate chip cookies can bring her happiness at 9 AM, or that he wakes up early to make her coffee. It doesn't matter that he goes home each night to being a loving father, or that she works the nightshift to pay for a child of a man who is never there. It doesn't matter that she loves the color blue, and not just any blue, but the blue part of the rainbow when the sun is shining once more, or that he hums showtunes in the shower. Business exectuive, bum, burn-out, has-it-made, we categorize and in this way "contaminate" everyone before we really "meet" them (especially these days with social media).
        But do we really know anyone? I suspect only a precious few. Even then, it's our own version of them that survives and manifests itself every time we think of them, talk to them, or talk about them. And in this way, we select, eliminate, alter, exaggerate, minimize, glorify, and vilify them - and in the end, it creates its own reality.
       It's best to remember we all contain multitudes and that knowing a small facet of someone hardly constitutes as knowing them at all.

       “Who, what am I? My answer: I am everyone, everything whose being-in-the-world affected me and was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’ve gone which would not have happened if I had not come. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you’ll have to swallow the world.” ― Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children

Crossroads (1999), Jim Brickman

"Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good -- be good for something." - Henry David Thoreau

Thousands Enter Your Court

Thousands Enter Your Court 

Most live in a constant state of comparison.

Thousands enter your court each day,

where you judge. 

How many things though get 

your personal attention 

to the extent you might speak to them

or place your hand against their body? 

Names and forms are drowning before me

dissolving in the Ocean of Light 

what should I do,

when a door is now open? 

       Very few people get your complete attention and personal affection. Time is the most precious gift you give someone. Virtually everything, within reason, is unlimited. The materialistic things certainly are, and more money can be come by if one works harder or longer, and Love knows no time to begin with. When people say time is precious, the distinct realization is that we associate gem-quality with finiteness. 

       A few year ago I started loving the witty one-liners by Jarod Kintz and was equally excited when he tweeted me back. In his book I Should Have Renamed This he writes: “If you only had 48 hours left to live, would you spend it like you normally spend your weekends? If not, why spend 2/7th of your life wasting your free time? After all, free time isn’t free. Free time is the most expensive time you have, because nobody pays for it but you. But that also makes it the most valuable time you have, as you alone stand to reap the profits from spending it wisely.” 

       That's so true and I've begun to think of love like that as well. Love means you want to spend all your free time with that person...that it isn't a chore, but a comfort. That you find yourself more awakened and alive in their presence than you are in their absence. The time that is yours is willingly given to them because with their love, your life is enriched. If you live to be 80 years old, you’ll have lived about 700,000 hours. That’s it. Isn't that shocking?! Mind-blowing almost. I'm sure my guess would have been millions of hours for the average human lifespan. But it isn't, we're only granted so much time - and usually not enough at that. 

         Kahlil Gibran said: "Do not seek your friend in your hours to spare, seek him in your hours to live." 

A Thousand Years, The Piano Guys

For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed. - Gibran 

The Root of The Rose

The Root of The Rose 

In this cup I am drinking from, 
I can see the face behind every face

In a well, I see where creation 
was once drawn with a stick

A galaxy can appear in the reflection 
of a small pool. 

Within an arm's reach is all I desire,
so I am never in want. 

The root of the rose I have become,
from loving the way I did. 

         
     "Love is not the last room: there are others after it, it is the whole length of the corridor that has no end." Those are the words of Yehuda Amichai, whom Israel often considers to be their most accomplished poet. His remaining papers are held in The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University, remembered with the words: "Amichai had a rare ability for transforming the personal, even private, love situation, with all its joys and agonies, into everybody's experience."
     Hafiz has penned quite the ethereal experience resulting from "loving the way I did", but in some sense it is a realistic truth. True love allows you to envision how your life would be, you're gifted glimpses of the miraculous and the incredible in front of you, the stars do seem brighter, the chocolate much richer. And within an arm's reach is all you desire.

What was whispered to the rose


To break it open


Last night


Was whispered to my heart.
 – Rumi

           What are those words? More than "you're beautiful", though that may be fine to say to a rose. It's a fine place to start in love as well, but then it evolves, to you're need, you're inspiring, you enrich my life, you make it more fulfilling, more livable, more fun.
           When I went off to college my dad started signing a lot of his emails, "Love til' the flame turns blue" because it takes eons and eons, millions and millions of years, for a star to change from red to blue (and many times, it never happens). It's a poetic way to say I'll love you forever. It probably stemmed from the David Gray album we enjoyed together on a long drive and my love for astronomy.  I'll always remember this line and cannot wait to use it with my own children one day. Love should show you galaxies and the galactic quality of your own soul.
 

Flame Turns Blue, David Gray 

Beautiful Hands

Beautiful Hands 

This is the kind of friend you are: 

Without making me realize 
my soul's anguish 

you slip into my house at night
and, while I am sleeping 

you silently carry off 
all my suffering 
in your beautiful hands. 

        I think it is easy to associate a lover with the comfort you feel in a loving touch, the safety you feel in a warm embrace, the reassurance you feel in a long hug. Sometimes, we forget to honor that friends touch and embrace us too, though it may not be physical. A true friend will carry off your anguish, even if all that means is they sat close and listened. 
        I found a touching account of love in friendship. It is the dedication in East of Eden from John Steinbeck to his friend Pascal “Pat” Covici. At one point, Pat asked Steinbeck to make him a box; Steinbeck joked that the only specification was that Pat shouldn’t be able to fit inside it. 

To Pat - You came upon me carving some kind of little figure out of wood and you said, ‘Why don’t you make something for me?’ 
I asked you what you wanted, and you said, ‘A box.’ ‘What for?’ ‘To put things in.’ ‘What kind of things?’ ‘Whatever you have,’ you said.
 Well, here’s your box. Nearly everything I have is in it. Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad. Evil thoughts and good thoughts – the pleasure of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation.
 And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you.
 And still the box is not full.

        Here's a nice Chinese Proverb: "To attract good fortune, spend a new coin on an old friend, share an old pleasure with a new friend, and lift up the heart of a true friend by writing his name on the wings of a dragon." I like the concluding line "on the wings of a dragon", and what an honor that would be.

Selected Lyrics from For Good, Wicked 

I've heard it said,

That people come into our lives

For a reason

Bringing something we must learn.

And we are lead to those

Who help us most to grow if we let them.

And we help them in return.

Well, I don't know if I believe that's true

But I know I'm who I am today

Because I knew you.

It well may be

That we will never meet again

In this lifetime.

So, let me say before we part:

So much of me

Is made of what I learned from you.

You'll be with me

Like a handprint on my heart.

And now whatever way our stories end

I know you'll have rewritten mine

By being my friend.

         
           A true friend will rewrite your story, just by being there to share in the joys, sadness, and randomness that life encompasses.

For Good, Wicked

Original Broadway Cast 

More Awake In Dreams

More Awake In Dreams

Many are more awake, 
with greater abilities in dreams,
than in the daylight,

I walked through a world last night 
of such exquisite intricacies 
in my sleep, some might say.

But no, it was not really like that. 
It was surely as real 
as any place you ever visited. 

Whatever the hand can shape 
 - and make last - 
the mind can do a millionfold. 

         A few years ago, my dad taught me the word koan, which I had forgotten until now. A koan is a story, dialog, question, or statement in the history and lore of Buddhism, generally containing aspects that are inaccessible to rational understanding, yet that may be accessible to intuition. One famous koan is, "Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?" (an oral tradition attributed to Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769). The term koan refers to any experience that accompanies awakening, spiritual insight, or kensho (to "see the essence" or to comprehend).
         “It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.” - Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist 

I Dreamed A Dream, Les Miserables 

Jun Sung Ahn, Violin

I Am Really Just A Tambourine

I Am Really Just A Tambourine

Good poetry makes the universe 
admit a secret: 

I am really just a tambourine,
grab hold, play me against you. 

      I've enjoyed this poem for quite some time, Self Portrait by David Whyte. You can read it below, but first, I think David Whyte captured the power of poetry in this statement: "The discipline of poetry is in overhearing yourself say truths from which it is impossible to retreat. Poetry is a break for freedom. In a sense all poems are good; all poems are an emblem of courage and the attempt to say the unsayable; but only a few are able to speak to something universal yet personal and distinct at the same time; to create a door through which others can walk into what previously seemed unobtainable realms, in the passage of a few short lines."

Self Portrait 

David Whyte 

It doesn’t interest me if there is one God

or many gods.

I want to know if you belong or feel

abandoned.

If you know despair or can see it in others.

I want to know

if you are prepared to live in the world

with its harsh need

to change you. If you can look back

with firm eyes

saying this is where I stand. I want to know

if you know

how to melt into that fierce heat of living

falling toward

the center of your longing. I want to know

if you are willing

to live, day by day, with the consequence of love

and the bitter

unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even

the gods speak of God.

There Is Ship, (1964) Peter, Paul, and Mary 

God Is Applauding

God Is Applauding

God is applauding our every act,
but He hides that reality from most,
until we can understand more about
real love. 

 

          I discovered the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay for the first time last night after reading that Mary Oliver visited Steepletop, the home of the late poet Edna St. Vincent Millay at age 17, befriended her sister, Norma, and eventually lived there for seven years, helping to organize Millay's papers. Oliver went on herself to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, greatly inspired by Millay's work. Of coincidence (or perhaps serendipity), Steepletop is also where she met her life partner of over forty years, photographer Molly Malone Cook.
         After Cook's death, Oliver released a memoir entitled Our World, in which she writes: "Watching the intensity and openness with which she dealt with friends, and strangers too, taught me what real attention is about. Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness -- an empathy -- was necessary if the attention was to matter. M. had this in abundance, and gave away freely. She taught me to see. In all our time together we were rarely separated. We were talkers - about our work, our pasts, our friends, our ideas ordinary and far-fetched. We would often wake before there was light in the sky and make coffee and let our minds rattle our tongues. We would end in exhaustion and elation. Not many nights or early mornings later, we would do the same. It was a forty-year conversation."
            There are many ways to understand more about real love, and a good way would be...real love is a conversation you don't want to end. Or perhaps, more powerfully, a conversation without an end.

Love Is Not All

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; 

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink 

And rise and sink and rise and sink again; 

Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, 

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 

Yet many a man is making friends with death 

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 

It well may be that in a difficult hour, 

Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, 

Or nagged by want past resolution's power, 

I might be driven to sell your love for peace, 

Or trade the memory of this night for food. 

It well may be. I do not think I would. 

Somewhere Only We Know (2004), Keane 

Time An Enemy

Time An Enemy

Time an enemy not easy to slay.
It can tear the wing apart,
sever it with such an unclean cut
one can bleed for days.

An hour is a clever hallucination,
a year more so,
a lifetime...the grand hoax.

The way sound and light travel,
the way all come from a source that has never moved,

at the height of the action of longing
or in the perfect resistence to all the forces of mortals...
everything can stop.

That is where you want to be,
where the clock's tyranny has lost its influence. 

         If you can travel to where the clock's tyranny has lost its influence, you've conquered death. Humans are the only beings that conduct our lives centered around the passage of time, and with that practice, comes a fear of time running out.
         I think we all answer to Time, but find solace only when we measure its passing in a different way: in acts of love instead of money earned, in kisses given rather than more worldly milestones. Except, we still chart our "moments" (even our ones most pure of heart) by it.
         Hemingway may have been closer to answer though: “There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow. How old must you be before you know that? There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion. This is how you live a life in two days. And if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any timespan."
        Here's a short story about Hemingway that I've always liked. Challenged by his friends one night to write a story in less than 10 words, he replied 'I'll do it in 6.' He then came up with 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.' This story evokes more emotion than some full length novels, and Hemingway is rumored to have called it his best work.
         Indeed, every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived that distinguish one man from another.

100 Years (2003), Five for Fighting 

“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.” ― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms 

Inherent in Suffering

Inherent in Suffering

Inherent in most suffering,
especially that of the mind or heart,

is feeling, is believing that you can miss
something in life.

But that is not true.
For on your wedding day with the Sun,

one of His presents to you will be -
if you want it -
every experience that has ever been known
or can be known.

Yes, a divine treasure awaits each soul.

                There are two poems I'd like to share along with this post. The first is Musee des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden, based off of the painting "Fall of Icarus" (by Breughel, seen below).

About suffering they were never wrong, 

The Old Masters; how well, they understood 

Its human position; how it takes place 

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; 

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting 

For the miraculous birth, there always must be 

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating 

On a pond at the edge of the wood: 

They never forgot 

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course 

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot 

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse 

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. 

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away 

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may 

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, 

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone 

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green 

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen 

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, 

had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

                 The poem juxtaposes suffering with joy, ordinary with extraordinary, the idea that life goes on (the miraculous) while Icarus's death happens (tragedy). And the very humanizing message is that this is exactly what happens, life continues in the presence of individual suffering. I'm not purposefully attempting a dismal post, because I believe that hope festers inside all human souls, but I think it's important to keep the tomorrow-is-not-a-guarantee aspect of life in mind as well. Certainly no one should live with this as their focal point, but at the same time, it becomes necessary to recognize your time is limited in order to really enjoy the multifaceted experience of life. Below is a poem by Effie Waller Smith, whose parents were slaves, entitled "Preparation".

"I have no time for those things now," we say;

"But in the future just a little way,

No longer by this ceaseless toil oppressed,

I shall have leisure then for thought and rest.

When I the debts upon my land have paid,

Or on foundations firm my business laid,

I shall take time for discourse long and sweet

With those beloved who round my hearthstone meet;

I shall take time on mornings still and cool

To seek the freshness dim of wood and pool,

Where, calmed and hallowed by great Nature's peace,

My life from its hot cares shall find release;

I shall take time to think on destiny,

Of what I was and am and yet shall be,

Till in the hush my soul may nearer prove

To that great Soul in whom we live and move.

All this I shall do sometime but not now--

The press of business cares will not allow."

And thus our life glides on year after year;

The promised leisure never comes more near.

Perhaps the aim on which we placed our mind

Is high, and its attainment slow to find;

Or if we reach the mark that we have set,

We still would seek another, farther yet.

Thus all our youth, our strength, our time go past

Till death upon the threshold stands at last,

And back unto our Maker we must give

The life we spent preparing well to live.

Fall of Icarus (1560s), Breughel 

If A Mouth Thunders

If A Mouth Thunders 

The way my hands can get along with each other,
I now get along with one and all.

Standing in a fierce lightening storm,
I look around and see I am the highest object on the hill 

Though having become one with the sky,
why would I ever strike myself?
What do I fear from anything? 

If any mouth thunders, 
that sound becomes sweet. 

All rain and hail is very welcomed upon me. 



             This writing reminds me of Walt Whitman's writings because of Hafiz's reference to nature and natural forces. Whitman often discussed this and the interconnectivity of all things. Here's a quote from his poem Thoughts: "I see the road continued, and the journey ever continued; …and of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth, scholarships, and the like; to me, all that those persons have arrived at, sinks away from them, except as it results to their Souls. And often, to me, those men and women pass unwittingly the true realities of life, and go toward false realities…of what I write from myself as if that were not the resumé of Histories - as if here…in words…were not the amount of all nations, and of all the lives of heroes." 

The Riddle (2006), Five for Fighting 

When No One Can Say The Right Words

When No One Can Say The Right Words 

When the body begins to die,
and no one can say the right words,

it is then that a poem may find the courage to
come forth and try to be with you.

So intimate is the experience of death,
in some ways even more so than birth.

All the work you have done for self and family
and maybe even the world,
whatever labor it was, it should be known -
it was really astounding.

And what you did just standing in an hour
against all time,

herculean your efforts, your every movement;
that is true.

You can rest now, dear. Rest.

The miraculous will not end.
Even sweeter, you will smile.

And if you wish, a cheek you cherished,
you will soon touch again.


        This poem is just so beautiful, whatever you were before you came into this world, will be offered (and was offered) before you leave it, and will continue to hang around for all of existence. It is so very true that no one can find the words to say when someone is dying or has died. The human conundrum is we can all "know" the pain, but we can't necessarily know each others' pain. It could be because we didn't know the person who passed, or it could be because even if we knew them quite well - is there ever a way to properly quantify love?
         I saved this poem especially for February 16th because that is the day my dog, Rufus, died in 2012. We read [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] and We Are Seven in his memory and decided to plant an apple tree.
        Shortly after I came across this blog post on Momastery about death (brought about by the death of their pet fish) and what it means to love, even though the ultimate conclusion of this life is loss of it: "When he [her son] asked me, "Why, mom? Why does God send us here, where things hurt so much? Why does He make us love things that He knows we’re just going to lose?" I told him that we don’t love people and animals because we will have them forever, we love them because loving them changes us, makes us better, healthier, kinder, real-er . . . stronger in the right ways and weaker in the right ways. Even if animals and people leave, even if they die - they leave us better. So we keep loving, even though we might lose, because loving teaches us, changes us. And that’s what we’re here to do."
        And then, because he was a Bichon Frise, we took comfort in some of Mary Oliver's poems about Percy. First read this poem, then I will tell you a story.

The First Time Percy Came Back

The first time Percy came back

he was not sailing on a cloud.

He was loping along the sand as though

he had come a great way.

"Percy," I cried out, and reached to him—

those white curls—

but he was unreachable. 

As music is present yet you can't touch it.

"Yes, it's all different," he said.

"You're going to be very surprised."

But I wasn't thinking of that.

 I only wanted to hold him. 

"Listen," he said,"I miss that too.

And now you'll be telling stories

of my coming back

and they won't be false, and they won't be true,

but they'll be real."

And then, as he used to, he said, "Let's go!"

And we walked down the beach together.

       After he died, I used to worry about Rufus from time to time. I worried if his death was painless. I worried if he knew the expression of love. I worried if he found himself in heaven. I worried if I would see him again. Until, about a year later, I had a dream. In it, Rufus had just died and I wondered and questioned where his soul was. The next few scenes of my dream consisted of Rufus lying on hospital beds of people who were dying. I saw the grieving faces of family members, I saw doctors giving hard news, I saw the brokenness and despair that surrounds death. These scenes were very vivid. And then, the moment they died, Rufus guided them to Heaven, I just saw him running beside them as they walked into this light. His eyes were bright, his demeanor cheerful, and the people seemed content to be chaperoned up the stairway and through the gates by an adorable ball of fluff. 

        I haven't worried about him since. I still miss him, but I don't worry. As Mary Oliver said, "And now you'll be telling stories of my coming back and they won't be false, and they won't be true, but they'll be real." Sometimes, "realness" is simply what speaks to your soul.

Rufus 

10/16/1999 - 2/16/2012

I Follow Barefoot

I Follow Barefoot

I long for you so much
I follow your frozen tracks

that are high in the mountains 
that I know are years old. 

I long for you so much 
that I have even begun to travel 
where I have never been before. 

Although the paths are different 
there is no one in this world
who is not looking for God.
     
                  
          I think this is true for love too. The longing can lead to a journey in which you travel to places that alone you'd never find. Moreover, "there is no one in this world who is not looking" for a soulmate. If we wonder along what path we will meet our soulmate, the answer is when we are on our soul path. This someone will share our deepest longings, or at least understand them, they will share our sense of direction, they will complement us, and provide us with an impetus to become our potential. With our soulmate, we find a friend, that once met, the story we belonged to joins another's and becomes one: ours.
         George Eliot said: "What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life? … to strengthen each other…to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories."
         Henry David Thoreau said: "Love must be as much a light as it is a flame."
         In Touched By An Angel by Maya Angelou, she writes:

"In the flush of love's light 

we dare be brave, 

And suddenly we see 

that love costs all we are 

and will ever be. 

Yet, it is only love 

which sets us free."

          Be grateful for all the love you find, be it platonic or romantic, lifelong or merely temporary. Love, in its multitude of forms, is ultimately what gives your life value.

You'll Be In My Heart, Phil Collins

Let Me Near You Tonight

Let Me Near You Tonight 

Just one True moment of Love
will last for days. 

I need to know I am yours, Beloved.

         Can words alone define a relationship? If so, no matter how many words there are, there will never be enough. It is often the million shared spaces in between words that make two people fall in love. Conversely, while words may fail at times, without them, love would falter. Without the ability to say “I love you”, love is an almost, love is in a state of arriving, or love is something not quite. And who wants that? No one. A great book to describe this is David Levithan’s The Lover’s Dictionary, which tells a romance through dictionary entries: “Like all love stories, this one has its romantic moments, but it doesn't take long to realize that the two lovers also have some major problems. The Lover's Dictionary, is not so much a love story as it is a story about love, in all its messy complicated reality,” Levithan says.

Here are two of my favorite entries:

ethereal, adj., You leaned your head into mine, and I leaned my head into yours. Dancing cheek to cheek. Revolving slowly, eyes closed, heartbeat measure, nature’s hum. It lasted the length of an old song, and then we stopped, kissed, and my heart stayed there, just like that.

indelible, adj., That first night, you took your finger and pointed to the top of my head, then traced a line between my eyes, down my nose, over my lips, down my neck, to the center of my chest. It was so surprising, I knew I would never mimic it. That one gesture would be yours forever.

        One blog I have really enjoyed is One April Morning, and I especially enjoyed author, Laura  Valeries' poem from her entry entitled The One. I have included it below:

I am often asked,

but 

how do you know

he's The One?

as if The One

is a

given

as if there is

A One

Person

For

Everybody

as if there is

any way

of knowing

I reply,

I don't!

but 

even so

I love him

and

he loves me

and

we're

happiest

when we're

together

that's all

that really

matters

not whether

there may be

someone else

out there

who could

conceivably be

a more talented

cook

(impossible)

or give me

better

Christmas presents

(highly doubtful)

or

have more patience

for my

complete

disinterest

in

housework

(yes,

maybe)

or be

different

in any infinite

number of

ways

because

if you think

like that

nobody

could

ever

choose

anyone

and because

what is love

but

the act of choosing?

the true magic

isn't fate

or destiny

or certainty

but

the lack of it

jumping

off the cliff

hand-in-hand

knowing

that you are

leaving

countless

possibilities

in your wake

but not

caring

because

this person

by your side

is just

so

damn

lovely

the true magic

is

the

mutual

yes

I think you're

wonderful

let's be

friends

and lovers

and share

our lives

and treat each other

with kindness

and tenderness

and love

he is

The One

for me

not because

he is

The Only One

I could have chosen

but because

I want him

more than I want

the possibility

of anyone

else

and he wants me

too

we're

happiest

when we're

together

ten years

later

that's all

that really

matters

            There is no way of knowing who The One is for you, probably because the truth, however unromantic it may be to hear, is that there are many The Ones. The great part is, there is another Truth, which she nailed: “I love him and he loves me and we're happiest when we're together…ten years later, that's all that really matters."

            If you can sit with someone without a fancy meal, or a wonderful destination, or an awesome plan, or a captivating movie, or any fanfare...if you can just sit with them because they light an inner spark and because their company is your joy, it is love. The original definition of "courage" was from the Latin root cor (heart) which means: to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. I think that is what love is as well...if you can tell your story and someone appreciates all the chapters that came before them and cannot wait to add to the future chapters, it is love. If you find your thoughts drift to them in silent moments, if you find something in yourself that seems more alive, more awaken, if you just want to be near them tonight, it is love. 

 Happy Valentine's Day! <3

Today Was A Fairytale (2010), Taylor Swift