Love in Action

This is a tad unusual for this blog, but I couldn't resist sharing this story with you. A reader e-mailed me about Caleb Potter of Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Caleb was horribly injured in a skateboarding accident this summer and has been recovering in Boston ever since. His family and loved ones have maintained a blog to track his progress and deal with the pain they're experiencing. I encourage you all to visit calebpotter.blogspot.com.

"I have been checking the blog to see Caleb's progress, and am amazed at the love I see surrounding him in what has to be the hardest thing he will ever face. The entire blog is a giant love letter to Caleb, and it goes to show that sometimes actions speak louder than the written word, and sometimes people who cannot write what we would consider love letters, can still DO them."
-A Written by Candlelight reader's e-mail

I encourage you all to take a moment and read about Caleb's struggle. You could even write him a love letter, if you'd like. With circumstances like these, sometimes love truly is the best medicine.

Away on a Cloud

My dearest one,

The night has long since descended, and you have fallen asleep; I am sure of it. I cannot see the rise and fall of your chest, nor can I hear the faint whisper of a snore you sometimes make. I can't watch the way your eyelids jerk, making me think that you're in the midst of a terrible dream. I can't feel the gradual slowing of your heartbeat, your body easing into rest effortlessly. And yet I know they're all happening, and it's the knowing that hurts so much. The knowing that, in a different life, I could pack up and join you on a moment's notice; that, in a different world, we would never be apart.

All I can do is hold on tight to this blue blanket, these brown sheets, this soft pillow. All I can do is try to make this empty bed a little less daunting by bunching it all up in my arms. All I can do is to just keep swimming, yearning for the day when our different worlds are different no longer.

There is a time, some say, just before sleep takes over, when you unlock hidden creativities and gain access to ideas kept behind bars by your subconscious. Images emerge that your mind has formulated without your knowledge, and you are captive to your own desires. As I start to enter this place, I see you, high up in the sky, sailing away on a cloud. In a way this image is comforting, knowing that you're exploring the sky safely on a pillowy cushion. But in a way, it is unsettling.

I hope against hope that the winds change soon. That you will come floating back to me. That we can share the clouds, you and I, my love.

Yours, achingly.

A New Sort of Music

My dearest panda bear,

My love for you plays songs inside my head. The instrument is not a piano or a violin, but one yet to be conceived in the real world. It exists only to play your music for me.

Occasionally, it hits certain chords that only exist in the seventeenth dimension of sound. As the vibrations travel out of my brain and down my spinal cord, I am paralyzed; in awe of both the sound and you, my dearest.

Each and every time we touch, this song changes pace, matches the motion of our bodies together. Your hand around mine, fingers intertwined, conducts a new sort of music. Quite different from the sound of our kisses. Each new endeavor brings new music, new combinations of notes and chords.

As you know, there are occasional discordant sounds, occasional bits of noise. But what is a symphony without a few missed notes? a few fingers striking the wrong keys? a few voice flinches? It is only enough cacophony for me appreciate the harmony.

Truly, no other song in the world is as beautiful as the one that your soul sings to mine. Thank you.

All my love,
Your panda bear

Fiber Optics

You have to wonder if I'm in love with you, and I'm already making the plans I'll follow though to surprise myself and meet. I'm buying purple flowers and hoping their children will line our driveway. I'm thinking of the distances plotting our separation and of the radical Pollack skies we'll both review and of how those stars will better any connection the digits would ever dare to dream to try. I'm considering the things I can send great ways and mean a lot, a coloring book, a song, the scraps of life we weave into us and make mean so much more than any passersby'd ever stop to notice or ever could see even if they'd scopes. There are threads of joy and of love and of wholeness which are so appropriately imbued with the connectedness of string, and those lines run back and forth, weave in and out, resonance and cement and glances which turn from one-word exclamations to eternity and the infinitely many kisses of the seemingly infinite number of stars and the blossoms to one day pass through gardens flanking the home we'll make whether we find ourselves seaside or forestbound or in the concrete and steel of cities grander than the ones we know today or can conceive for tomorrow. You are my stars, you are my flowers, you are my everything organic and everything geometric and everything tangible and everything imaginable and everything else. That I'm in love with you, is it really any wonder at all?

PT

Love is a Verb

Dear...

A well known music group once sang, “Love is a verb.” The more my life goes on, the more I realize how true that is. I once thought that I would find one person who would sweep me off my feet, and carry me off into the sunset. But as time goes on and more pieces of my heart shatter because of broken relationships, I have realized that love takes a lot of work. The feeling of “falling in love” will eventually end, and after that, one must do the work to maintain the momentum.

It’s a lot like driving. The car begins to roll down the hill, so I let up on the gas a little. I don’t have to do much to keep it going; gravity will do that. Pretty soon, I am sitting next to the love of my life and we’re laughing with the wind blowing through our hair. But at the bottom of the hill, the road begins to curve back up again. We are leaving the valley, going back up into the mountains. I have to add fuel to the engine to get the car to move. I must add the love to the relationship on my own, there is no more falling in love. I must make the choice to love you and do the work to show you that love.

I know that there are times you have felt I hold back, when I can’t share with you everything because the memories from my past are so bittersweet. I know that you don’t understand sometimes when I come to you in tears over nothing, but I know that you choose to love me when you let me put my head on your shoulder and cry anyway. I know, and I know you know, that I have “fallen in love” with so many people over the years.

But I want you to know that this relationship is different. I am not falling in love with you. I am choosing to love you, voluntarily, and of my own free will. I have come to realize how important you are in my life, how healing your hands can be sometimes, how lonely I feel when I know how far away you are, and even how dark the room is at night when I cannot feel you there with me. The time we do spend together becomes more exciting when we have been apart, and even more exciting knowing that I have chosen this.

I realize that this will not solve all our problems and differences, nor will it erase my past and future fears. But knowing that we can make an active choice in our relationship will give me (and, I hope, you) the confidence to walk forward into our futures. Perhaps we can do it hand-in-hand, together.

Choosing to love you,
M

All the Falling Seems Worth It

Dear Friend,

I have never been much of a writer but in times like these when my voice cannot tell you the song in my heart, I must rely on the dexterity of my hand to relay this feeling to you, a person who deserves to know. Please forgive my clumsiness in verse; I just want to tell you everything you already know.

Love can be related to surfing, as almost anything can. You go out on your board looking for a thrill but you end up being thrust violently back to the shore with more pain than anything else. Rarely do people have the courage to try again unless they have a good teacher by their side. Someone to guide you, help you, and give you the courage you need to try again, someone who never loses faith in your ability to succeed. When you do finally get it, after falling so many times, when you finally get on top of the wave you’ve been looking for, all the falling seems worth it because you’re beyond just surfing -- you’re flying. Your breath is taken away and you know you will never be happier than you are at that moment. That is how you make me feel. That is why I love you.

Thanks for teaching me how to surf,
Me

A Letter to Lovers

Love is splendid risk, a gamble in which we throw our souls bare to another, allowing them to wander amongst the fragile bits of ourselves. The question is not whether they will hurt us, but rather will they try to avoid hurting. Can we create together sufficient joy that the inadvertent wounds are washed away?

Lovers prove the wondrous resilience of the human spirit. Pour every ounce of love and energy into a pairing; watch it slide, plummet, and shatter. You are truly alone with your self and the wreckage, but it is then that you gain clarity and define yourself as you walk away from the past.

Is it possible that we are not fully adults until we have survived a horrific loss that could have left us broken? Devastated lovers may decide that true love is not real. I name them as cowards. Take your own time to heal before returning your heart to the ring, but do not forsake the dream. Those who do gain nothing and lose hope.

The ideal partner is the one you happen to notice next to you as you create your own fulfilled, independent life. Yes, I know, they're usually married. Just keep going until you forget that you're looking, and then look!
...and keep your heart open, always.

JDM 6/30/07
Ithaca, New York

Finally Ready

Dear friend,

In today’s world, kids are “falling in love” earlier and quicker than ever before. I was one of those kids who thought I’d found “the one” because I didn’t want to spend a single minute without him. Not surprisingly, I got my heart broken and spent the next couple of years trying to figure out what it all meant. I told everybody and thought I had concluded that true love didn’t exist and that I could find happiness in casual flings, and for a while, this is what I did.

Deep down I knew that what I had wasn’t what I wanted and what I said I didn’t really believe. But those feelings were confirmed when I met you. I was doing the casual thing with someone else at the time, but you caught my eye and eventually my heart.

You know that a relationship isn’t all about the physical or spending every waking moment with each other. You know that things aren’t always easy and aren’t supposed to be, and you’re willing to face and work through those challenges. You’re smart and opinionated and will argue with me until we’re both blue in the face, but you always end it with a laugh. And those are just a few of the things that make my heart skip a beat when I think about you.

You’ve recently had your heart broken by the one you loved, and now you’re going through your own time of questioning and wondering what love is and if it’s real. And it’s going to take time for you to come to any conclusions or make any decisions, much less to let someone else into your heart.

I still don’t know what love is, but I know that it’s real, and I know that I’m finally ready to try to find it. And if you ever feel the same way, I hope you’ll think of me, because I want to try to figure it all out with you.

With an open mind and an open heart,
Jessica

Across the Sea

Dearest one,

Across the street and over the guardrail and beyond the cliffs and through the waves and out, out, into the wide gape of the ocean, I watched you leave me. Fighting the breeze, my kiss lingered, swirling around my head before descending into the sea-spray to chase you. I’ll never know if it reached your lips; I turned around before it really had a chance, abandoning it the same way I felt you had me.

Across the miles of open sea, but now in a different form, I send you another. Because, as much as I want to, I can’t tell my lips to control their yearning for yours. I can’t tell my hands to cease remembering the smoothness of your skin. I can’t make my ears leave the sound of your voice outside.

I hope you’ve found safe harbor, as you will always be mine.

With love from land,
L
San Francisco, California

To Mexico

My one true love,

Today I suggested we flee to Mexico together, robbing a bank or convenience store on our path to freedom and happiness. You didn't seem too appalled by this notion, instead revealing your ignorance of proper bank-robbing technique, a shortcoming that I unfortunately share. What struck me most was your willing tone, half-joking-half-serious, that made me feel as if you were packing you bag and finding your keys, as if you were ready for the whole splendid adventure to begin. I think that's one reason why I love you so much: you buy into my visions, my ridiculous whims. I tell myself it's because you don't want me to feel silly, but secretly I believe I know why you do it. You know you belong there. You know you're supposed to be driving the getaway car southwest, watching the sun drag the darkness over our heads like a wool blanket. You know you're supposed to fall asleep in the passenger seat, holding my hand as I keep us going. You know you're supposed to hold me tight as we sit on the beach and wait for the stars to come out, kissing as we spot them, one by one. You know you belong with me. Even when I didn't know it, you did. So I'll keep thinking silly thoughts and you'll keep being perfect and we'll keep being in love, until I have nothing left that is solely my own.

Forever yours,
David

Welcome

It struck me recently that in today's age of "txting" and e-mail, the love letter has sadly fallen by the wayside. No more do you find the tortured lover hunched over a littered desk, placing feelings on paper before they consume him entirely; no more does she feel the smooth parchment and split the red sealing wax to be washed over with poetry and raw emotion.

In an effort to bring back some semblance of chivalry, even in electronic form, I propose a campaign. Take a minute and write a love letter. It can be to a real lover, to one you hope to meet in the future, or to one you've lost along the way. All I ask is that it be a genuine expression of what's in your heart.

So let's start something lovely: send your letters to submit.writtenbycandlelight@gmail.com and I'll post the best ones periodically. Be as personal or as anonymous as you like and let's see if we can make a change. Let's see if we can show the world how to love again.

Thanks, and get to writing!
David