The Best of Love

A chocolate heart and raspberries for (almost) Valentine’s Day breakfast. To make the heart, I used the best brownie recipe ever: ½ cup melted butter, 1 cup sugar, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, ½ cup all-purpose flour, ¼ teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon baking powder. Preheat over to 350F. Mix everything and spread into a buttered pan (or heart mold pan). Bake for 25-30 minutes.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. To be honest, it’s never been a day I’ve celebrated much. But I thought perhaps that’s one thing to change.

Love comes in all shapes and sizes. I think that’s what Valentine’s is about. Love for your spouse, your partner, your son, your daughter, your mother, father, sister, brother, colleague…  It need not be romantic. May we also include those we still don’t know, and those we aren’t so willing to let into our lives. Valentine’s is the day to open our hearts to them.

“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold,” said Zelda Fitzgerald. That is true, yet poetry more than anything, certainly more than prose, is the language closest to love. Here are some of my favorite poems or parts of poems.

Have a lovely, loving weekend.

“O you who’ve gone on pilgrimage –

where are you, where, oh where?

Here, here is the Beloved!

Oh come now, come, oh come!

Your friend, he is your neighbor,

He is next to your wall –

You, erring in the desert –

What air of love is this?”
Rumi (1207-1273)

“Hear my soul speak:

The very instant that I saw you, did

My heart fly to your service.”

From The Tempest by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

“In the land that is not

my beloved walks with a brilliant crown.

Who is my beloved? The night is dark

and the stars quiver in response.

Who is my beloved? What is his name?
The heavens arch higher and higher,

and an earthly child drowns in endless fogs

and knows no answer.

But an earthly child is nothing but certainty.

And it stretches its arms higher than all the heavens.

And an answer comes: I am the one you love and

Will always love.”

from The Land that Is Not by Edith Södergran (1892-1923)

“I hide myself within my flower,

That wearing on your breast,

You, unsuspecting, wear me too –

And angels know the rest.

I hide myself within my flower,

That, fading from your vase,

You, unsuspecting, feel for me

Almost a loneliness.”

I hide myself within my flower by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

“O my love is like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June:
My love is like the melody

That is sweetly played in tune.

As fair are you, my bonnie lass,

So deep in love am I:

And I will love thee still, my dear,

Till all the seas go dry.

Till all the seas go dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt with the sun:
O I will love you still, my dear,

While the sands of life shall run.

And fare you well, my only love,

And fare you well a while!

And I will come again, my love,

Athough it were ten thousand mile!”

A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns (1759-1796).