Love is what they all want. And lack of love is what makes them the way they are.
—Desire
Valentine's Day is the most sacred of all holidays.
All other holidays are but reflections.
Thus, really, we don't need them.
Valentine's Day is the pure expression of Eros.
Which is what keeps life a-pumping on this planet. Eros. And on various and sundry other planets. And all other orbs, gasbags, and clouds. Throughout this and all other dimensions and universes. Forever and ever. Alpha and omega. Amen.
Here in the West, the Christians, when they took over, tried to suppress Eros. On Valentine's, and every other day.
'Cause, sadly, that's just the way they are. Thantaos people. Pleasure: they just don't like it. Gives 'em an itch.
Fortunately, they utterly failed. In smothering Eros. For here she be. Alive. And all around us.
Now normally. In bloviating here on dKOs. I might devote 10,000 mind-crushing words or so to the history of the suppression of such a day. As Valentine's Day. Because I am, alas, on at least one level, a snore-inducing pedant. A bibulous babbler.
But, you know, here–I mean, c'mon—it's Valentine's Day. So I'm not the least bit interested. In anything that is not fun and frolic. For I am, simply, blissfully, a-flame.
And thus interested only in transmitting some of the Sacred Texts.
Which can be found below. Below the curiously spiraled erotic pregnant cloud that has been introduced in dKos 4.0. As a way to separate. Rather, than is right and meet, to unite.
We will begin first with the French.
With Paul Eluard, with "Je T'aime":
i love you for all the women I have not known
i love you for all the time I have not lived
for the scent of the vast sea and warm bread
for the snow that melts for the first flowers
for the pure animals untouched by man
i love you to love
i love you for all the women I do not love
who reflects me except you
i am so small
without you I see nothing but a vast desert
between yesterday and today
there are all those deaths I crossed in the street
i have not been able to pierce my mirror wall
i have learned life word by word
as one forgets
i love you for all the wisdom that is not mine
for health
i love you against everything that is mere illusion
for the immortal heart that I do not possess
you believe you are doubt, but you are reason
you are the great sun that makes me drunk
when I am sure of myself
Shift next to the Spanish. More earthy and sensual. Presented here through Golden Flower's personal translation of a poem, by Pablo Neruda:
two happy lovers make one bread,
a single moon drop in the grass.
Walking, they cast two shadows that flow together;
waking, they leave one sun empty in their bed.
of all the possible truths, they chose the day;
they held it, not with ropes but with an aroma.
they did not shred the peace; they did not shatter words;
their happiness is a transparent tower.
the air and wine accompany the lovers.
the night delights them with its joyous petals.
they have a right to all the carnations.
two happy lovers, without an ending, with no death,
they are born, they die, many times while they live:
they have the eternal life of the Natural.
*
i crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
i hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
i hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
i want to eat your skin like a whole almond.
i want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your face,
i want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
Next we sink to the level of white people. To something I posted.
Love is not just a narcissistic feedback look where people bask in the reflection of believing each other spectacular. We know this because people arrive who tell us we are spectacular, and we say thank you very much, and then turn away, because we cannot and will not return the spectacular feedback.
So, there's something more there. To love.
To something I posted, stolen,, hoping to skew in just right:
So you're telling me that successful relationships are made in heaven? Not founded on the daily practicality of two people being prepared to tolerate the imperfections of one another?
It's not successful relationships. It's love. And it comes from a strange and wonderful place that we don't know about.
So you also reject the idea that love is merely an emotional adaptation to a physical necessity?
Completely.
Are you serious?
Fate intervenes in people's lives. In ours, for instance. Fate brought us together. It kept us together. We were destined for one another. Fate had a pretty strange way of making its point. But that's part of the beauty of it. It's inexplicable, unpredictable, and absolutely beyond control or understanding.
But you nearly got killed.
But I didn't. And here we are.
Do you have any substantial evidence to back all this?
None at all.
And you realize that it's absurd and irrational?
I know that.
Then why do you believe it?
Because it's a law of physics.
We're at the end of words, here.
But not at the end of meaning.
The first portal is this:
The second portal is this:
Now you're clear.
Can you feel it?
Good luck to you.
See you on the other side.