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