Valentines.

As much as I sometimes wish for the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind - to wipe away a five year big dipper ride... along with the bad there were seeds of something beautiful. Sometimes that's what keeps one championing the struggle. I still believe in love. I saw it in it's purest form between my mother and my father. 

So, dear readers, happy Valentine's day and here's to brilliant sparkly love and dancing to songs on the radio with someone who loves every atom of you.

From the online LIFE picture archives.

Days of splendid indolence.

The place that we went to was a wild place, far away. On the first night there, we danced barefoot on the lawn in the balmy air and then we lay down on the soft green grass, under the milky way. He told me about the stars and how I made him feel when we were together. We kissed slowly and deeply in the glittering darkness. (Imagine desire, like steam, spiraling on the skin.) On a solitary walk early one morning, two brown buck rushed across my path. I felt my heart beating in my mouth as they galloped away through the low bushes, glistening, dust clouds slowly settling. Blue headed salamanders sunbathed on the high rocks and birds swooped in mid-flight to gulp drops of water falling over the edge of the ravine. I could see their tiny throats undulating from below. I floated on my back in the cool dark water, watching little sun flecks, small round rainbows drifting in the air above me. There was a low rushing sound in my ears and I felt utter, unalloyed calm.

Whenever I wandered away on my own, he found me and he touched me in some warm way, bringing me back to the undiluted moment. I would miss this in the solitary days that were to follow. At dawn one morning we found ourselves in the middle of a field of brushwood, near slowly running water. It was impossible to keep my eyes open - I'd open them briefly and see him flaring above me, surrounded by a disc of pulsing, blinding light, fiery particles hovering in the sky around us. There was a moonstone yellow glow on the horizon and the air was filled with the fragrance of the small leaved bushes that we were crushing with our movement, and the coppery smell of the water.

The time that we spent away had a strong dreamlike feel to it, of which there were few spells of pure lucidity. On the night before we left, I looked around the room and I felt the air shift. Seed pods rattled against the roof. We stayed awake that night, the murmuring of our voices continuing for hours. He told me the next day that it had felt like love in chapters. He said that one of the best things about going away with me had been holding my hand in the car on the way back.