Love Stories

With Valentine's Day around the corner... it seems apropos to speak to love...

Without further ado...

Love Stories

Good grief. Where on earth do I begin? For love stories are the stories of my life. In and out of my consciousness like a grand tapestry, there is love and loss and coupling and uncoupling... as far as the eye can see, far deeper than the deepest ocean, far further than the farthest shore.

There is love small and tender. Like the sweetest kiss between two children whose hearts have found each other across insurmountable odds. Bright and warm, such love leaves indelible prints on small hearts, fragile and growing. 

There is love effervescent and joyful. Like a smile that sparkles like sunlight filtering through a landscape too dreary and grey by far, as two hearts alight upon sight of each other, across a too far distance, after a too long absence. Such joy is irrepressible. The lightness of being that courses through one's heart, when there, before you, a love enduring and luminous and rapturous and caring. 

There is love sumptuous and smoldering. Like fireworks on a muggy afternoon. Languid tinderboxes, torrid and ablaze. Combustible, magnetic, irresistible. Summer storms of electricity and passion and thunderous crashing, of titans in the sticky, clingy, miasma of insatiable hunger and thirst. Affairs that cherish the lushest oases, love abides here, too.

There is love... indescribable. Like soft caresses on a heart, a soul, a body, burned by life. Sublime such touches are, to a soul lost on clouds of dissociation. Despite the tenuity of such consciousness, such love is the grandest of all. For who but angels float upon bright airy balloons to nurture a heart, a soul, a body, adrift in unreality; who but warriors and champions of genuity and sincerity clear fogs that ensnare a heart, a soul, a body, suffering numb wracking despair. Wondrous in generosity and purity, this love is the most beloved of all.

There too...

... are the loves of children and families, and creatures big and small, and peoples far and wide, and the magic and wonder of life itself.

While we are wont to celebrate romances good and bad, throughout the year, there are more loves than romantic loves...

These love stories are the stories of life. The stories that weave us together... like baskets of hope and harmony, like bracelets of friendship and camaraderie, like tapestries of dignity and valor. These loves are loves worth celebrating, loves worth honoring, loves worth commemorating, and loves worth appreciating to the very brim.

Whether or not romantic loves are loves worth exalting on this day, on Valentine's Day, on any day... loves are everywhere... and these love stories... neither require nor demand... chocolates nor flowers nor tokens nor vicissitudes nor dinners nor dates nor movies nor trinkets... for these stories are our stories...

awake... alive... free...