Valentine's Day

*Please send me your last pair of shoes, worn out with dancing as you mentioned in your letter, so that I might have something to press against my heart.* - Goethe

So here it is, Valentine's Day.  With all my heart, with all my love. With all the tender thoughts tucked away down in my worn through shoes, I wish you all a lovely day of love.

Song and Music Video of the Day: The First Day of My Life by Bright Eyes

Poetry of the Day - "Night Drive" by Seamus Heaney. Heaney wrote this for his wife. It's so quiet and gentle and beautiful. It reminds me of the time when my friend Landis and I made waffles together at his house and after we were done eating and cleaning up, I stayed in the kitchen to wash all the extra dishes that had accumulated so his mom wouldn't have to when she got home from work.  I didn't mind doing it.  It was a labor of love. Years later, Landis said he stood there in the kitchen doorway watching me wash those dishes and thought "She's the kind of girl who will like doing those things for the rest of her life." And he was right. It's my ordinariness. He loved my ordinariness.

Seamus Heaney

Night Drive 


The smells of ordinariness 
Were new on the night drive through France: 
Rain and hay and woods on the air 
Made warm draughts in the open car. 


Signposts whitened relentlessly. 
Montreuil, Abbeville, Beauvais
Were promised, promised, came and went, 
Each place granting its name’s fulfilment. 


A combine groaning its way late
Bled seeds across its work-light. 
A forest fire smoldered out. 
One by one small cafés shut. 


I thought of you continuously
A thousand miles south where Italy 
Laid its loin to France on the darkened sphere. 
Your ordinariness was renewed there.

Epic Poetry of the Day:

The Odyssey, Book 23 - When Penelope and Odysseus are reuinted.  There are several passages in this book of the poem that make me cry. In my own personal religious beliefs, I take marriage very seriously and believe it is a sacred promise that you make not only to each other but also to God.  I know Penelope and Odysseus are fictional characters but I still find the story of their marriage- in particular Penelope's great faithfulness to it-so moving.  Penelope was loyal to her marriage bed for twenty years, never knowing if her husband would ever come home from war.  When Odysseus finally does come home, she is afraid that it isn't really him or that maybe the gods are trying to trick her.  She is hesitant to embrace him and welcome him.  But when he starts talking about a secret design in the structure of their bed, which he built and only he and Penelope know about, she doubts no longer.  "And as when the land appears welcome to men who are swimming, after Poseidon has smashed their strong-built ship on the open water...and only a few escape the gray water landward by swimming...so welcome was her husband to her as she looked upon him."  All that time, twenty years, Penelope was swimming, scared and exhausted and alone until Odysseus came and she saw her shore once again.

Just Because of the Day (dedicated to Jes, Ang, & Cait): A Friend Like You by Joshua Radin

"Many times I've gone without a home, a meal, a pair of shoes...If you had three, you'd give me two. There's no other friend like you" - Joshua Radin

Memory of the Day: Valentine's Day 2007 Surprise Snow Day


Turn on your lovelight <3