Love is....

Writing about love last night made me think about a book I was shown once. It was a book of wedding photographs taken in a American registry office following the legalisation of same sex marriage. I believe, from what I remember, that people queued to get married as soon as possible.

People in their twilight years who had lived together all their lives were there. People dressed up. Men. Women. Young and old and everything inbetween. The one thing these photos show is that love really has nothing to do with looks or age or anything else. Oh and another thing, all of these people were happy. Some of them had never expected to be able to marry. It is a book of what love looks like. It looks like people.

Love comes in so many forms. We only have one word for it in English but I remember from my Latin lessons in school that they had more, it might have been three, because I can remember three. Eros, or passionate love, Phileo which if spelt right, is friendly love and agape, which is sort of a love for everything a more spiritual sort of a love. Except when I look it up these are actually Greek, not Roman, and there is another one, Storge which is the love a parent has for a child.

I think all of us would recognise these different types of love, so why don't we have more words for them? Why do we lump them all together? What sort of love do I have? Eros, sometimes but it is not the dominant form. Phileo, definitely. Not sure if this describes how I feel, but hey...

So why did the Greeks have such a desire to define different types of love and we don't? Well they had a love of philosophy and thinking but I guess I don't know enough about their society to know more than that... Why don't we distinguish so much? I think as a society we can be a little confused about love.

It seems to me that I spent a large part of my teens and twenties thinking that mere eros was something other.... Is it any wonder though with the lack of distinction we make and the portrayal of love in the media? Love in families also seems warped at times. Parents spoil children and children grow up thinking they are the centre of the universe and the rules bend around them.

I am not saying children should live without love or praise or anything positive but I also think they shouldn't be just given everything. I think a bit of work and effort helps them to value what they have. I think children should be allowed to climb trees and scrape their knees. So what if they fall and break an arm? The chances of it happening are slim and we have the technology to deal with it efficeintly.

But family love seems to be all about smothering in so many instances these days. About children ruling the roost and not about balance at all.... I am thinking of my niece and nephew here a bit and I know it is a common thing...

I like love though. I think everyone does.

Love

I am not sure what to write tonight, except that I feel sad.

I miss F, who has been at work since early this morning and won't return till tomorrow morning. These strange shifts he does, sometimes I miss him more than others and right now I miss him a lot.

We always watched Strictly Come Dancing together and loved it but this year, so many times our viewing comments have had to be communicated by text as he sits at work (if he is lucky) and watches and I sit at home with Little Dog. The texting is fun and amusing but not as nice as having him here.

I have spoken with him three times by phone (and no that is not be being a clingy woman that was him calling me *laugh*). And we always talk at bedtime. But right now I want a hug.

Life feels tough right now. It was never going to be easy going back to work, not after being ill like that. It was always going to leave me drained and low, and it has. Things just feel so tricky right now though....

I have no idea where I am on a few things. One day i think one thing and the next it is all different. I think i currently have a difficult Boss / Friend thing going on. I think they have some feelings towards me right now concerning my having been off for so long. I think also that they feel they have to be a certain way but they keep over stepping the mark. They did so again on Friday and I wasn't overly surprised to receive a text about how fantastic I am with lots of good wishes.....

Tuesday I received a half hour phone call.

To be honest it is a bit unsettling. I like to know what the rules are and play by them but right now I don't feel as even I know. It seems they keep changing and different rules apply to different people. This is hard when the friend is also your Boss.

I am so glad I have F. We have a solid sort of a relationship. I am not saying the rules never change but we meet as equals so any rule changing can be talked about. Things do not flip all over the place. He is my rock and I love him. He is the only one I need. All my other friends are luxuries and all of them added together could never replace him in my life.

I am not sure if I have said much about how we got together or anything like that but I am a firm believer in love at first sight these days. I didn't used to me. To be honest it is a slightly scary thing, or it was for me, who had allowed myself a number of relationships with less than pleasant men. You have to trust and see where it takes you and hope.

Can everyone fall in love at first sight? No idea. I think you have to be open to it. Someone has to have faith and follow it up. I have to say, it wasn't me that did that, it was F, and I was busy running off in the other direction...

Just watched a program called Misfits. A bunch of teens do community service for deeds against the law but get hit by a storm which gives them and others strange abilities. One of them meets a volunteer and has a wild night with her. Only it turns out she is actually an old lady, made young by the storm, but part way through she becomes old again. Being a callow youth he turns away and the lady, now old, dies alone. He gave her one last experience of not being alone before her final end and the experience taught him not to be so tough on his Mum and her new partner. How many people out there missed their match? They walked away at the last minute or neither plucked up the courage to go and talk to each other?

I used to be bemused by those 80 somethings talking about having met one night at a dance and having known from that time. Does that really happen? Yes. But love has no schedule and we don't have to see it when it does come. It is a beautiful thing to never be alone even when no one is with you.

The Crow

It is strange somehow how many little things take you back to another time, another place.

My niece wants to become a goth and I have offered to look out a few bits for her. One thing I know I have is a special poster, that I loved (and still do) so much.

I have been thinking of this film recently, remembering how I loved it but have only seen it once.... I am sure there was another reason I was thinking of it but I can't remember now, obviously I wasn't supposed to share it....

Then today, I found an ex of mine who is a film buff with an incredible brain and pretty much perfect recall and often puts quotes as his status update on facebook, put these few words 'it can't rain all the time'. Most of his quotes pass over my head but that one didn't.

And it takes me back in time. I had a beautiful boyfriend, my first love. Almost exactly the same height as me, he was lithe and trim and moved with cat like grace. The moves of someone who must have done some martial arts, a fighter, not to be underestimated. He was a biker type in his jeans and leather jacket and black silk shirt. Arms full of arty tattoos - apart from the spider...

I was a voluptuous goth girl, with long black hair, all fledgling woman with a body built for badness. In my maroon skirt with black tie dyed bits that was more than a full circle if you laid it out, my black cross over top, boots and leather jacket.

That night we had been to see the crow and it was fantastic. The only thing was i didn't want to leave. I had seen a group of people arrive just as it started who I didn't want to see. i hadn't really done anything wrong but it wouldn't matter how much I thought and felt that, it would not convince them.

Two of the girls were best friends and i was friends with one of them. The two girls had done something or another, stayed out with some boys they barely knew or something and a nasty piece of gossip was being put around it. The one I was friends with told me what had happened so I knew it wasn't true and thought nothing more of it.

A while later she comes in really upset having just heard the gossip. I admitted I had known and that was it. I had fallen foul of some rule of friendship no one had ever thought to tell me. Apparently I should have gone and told them the second i had heard it, not merely discounted it as false and put it to bed in my own mind. I don't think it helped that I wouldn't say who told me. It was actually the other girlss ex who she was good friends with.... *laugh* he offered to go put the record straight but I said no, there was no point, it wouldn't mend things.

That was that.

So back to the Crow. My first love got fed up of waiting and persuaded me to leave. It was one of the best things he could have done. The group were stood outside chatting and without saying a word or sparing them a glance, we walked on by. We looked so good, so in control, so capable. They couldn't touch us and they knew it. Together we were more than we were apart and they knew. They stopped talking and all eyes followed us. I felt a million dollars.

I must watch the crow again.

to say we looked good together was an understatement. At least that is the way I remember it.

The Crow is a dark film in the way it appears, the story, the music and of course the legend... Brandon Lee was killed during filming. Very appropriate in so many ways for right now. The two main characters are murdered the night before their wedding and the man comes back to avenge their deaths and to say good bye to the girl they took care of. Brandon died from a faulty blank in a gun used in the film which shattered his spine. He was soon to have been married shortly after. His father also died during filming and believed he had been given this knowledge in a premonition and that there was a curse.

Despite all this, the film is uplifting. The evil that caused their untimely death is beaten back and those that remain get to live as they deserve.

So in one fell swoop we have spoken of my first two loves and my most serious relationships before the lovely F. They both sit with fond rememberance in my heart. I guess that is another theme of right now, rememberance of the dead, both on samhain and on the 11th November for rememberance day when we remember those lost in war.

I think I need to watch this film again...

Men

I know I rarely talk about men on here but that is because I have F and other men don't impinge on my world in a man-like way if you know what I mean. Now the stuff I am writing here isn't stuff I have told F, not because I don't want him to know but because in making a point of telling him, it gives extra power. If he reads it on here, which he could, then he will know it is no secret and there is nothing in any of it... Tomorrow most of these things won't be important and the ones that are he will know.

One of my colleagues yesterday, decided to get me to look something up on the computer for them - nothing unusual. Except he decided to rest his arm on my desk alongside my arm, touching mine. Bit odd really. Not bothered by it. Just bemused. he knows I am not the unfaithful sort and to be fair I don't think he would respect me if I was....

An old friend I knew at the time I first met F and have gotten back in contact via Facebook... *sigh* He had a girlfriend back home when I knew him and one night he made a fairly determined play for me. Turns out, although I turned him down, that not all my friends did. Unfaithfulness seems to work for some people.... Also seems I was the one he wanted most and wanted first, maybe because I said no, even though I was single, because as well as not being the unfaithful sort, I am not one to want to cause others to be unfaithful either.

Thirdly, via facebook, I got back in contact with my most significant Ex. He helped me through some tough times but we eventually grew apart and parted amicably enough and even remained in contact for a while. I will tell F about this but given F is in contact with his first love via facebook, I don't see an issue. I mostly just want to know my ex is happy and his family are happy.

Now this one I shall tell F, definitely... Not today for today will be too busy and I want this to be special. I had a dream last night. There was a Goddess maze built of earth banks and rock, all overgrown. In the middle of the maze was a rock walled depression filled with ferns and a small spring-fed pool. F and I were there having a small private handfasting ceremony with only one or two others present. In the dream, I knew we were going to have another big official wedding. I also knew this maze was in the area around Land's End known as Penwith and that I had built it.

How perfect is that?

Love!

I'm in love! With a new man in my life.

His name is Edward and he is gorgeous!

I remember the day oh so well, when I told F I was no longer in love with him. I realised very quickly I had to continue to say what i had to say before the look in his eyes could grow. I explained that I was no longer in that heady emotional state of being in love, which you can so easily fall out of too. My feelings for him had altered into that other love, the one that just is and will always be. He relaxed as he realised that I hadn't meant to say something so offputting to begin with and it was only my normal clumsiness with words.... He understood what I meant.

The new love in my life lives in a book. Well four books really. So far. Oh and a film to. The Twilight books have impinged on me over the last few days in various ways so when I saw them lined up on a shelf with discout stickers attached, I knew I was meant to buy them.

Reading them it is clear that the idea of love being put forward in this book is taht of soul mates. What makes Edward so special is that he is the soul mate many women might consider designing if they could do so while in their teenage years and have him be super-human. He could never be real and even if he could be real, he could never be my soul mate, for I have already found him. i shall however dally with him a little as i read the books and then he shall be gone, as I move on...

One of the pieces of synchronicity that brought these books to me was hearing some poor young chap on the radio have his message read out. The gist of what it said was that his girlfriend had just dumped him saying why can't you be more like Edward. She must have been very young, to believe for an instant that anyone could be as perfect as Edward or that she was perfect enough to have someone like Edward be her soul mate.

Brida by Paulo Coelho, which I have just finished reading, also has much to say on soulmates. According to the book, sometimes when soulmates meet for the first time, there is a flash of light in the eyes that allows them to recognise each other. Apparently you do not need magical training to recognise this, when you meet. It is curious how many people who have one of those sorts of relationships comment on the eyes and that first shared look when they met. Others of course may take longer to recognise what they mean to each other.

F has no pretentions really. He is a bloke and he just is. He doesn't think like I do at all. He doesn't really believe in magic but he has no problem with my description of how I think magic works and accepts this easily but has no interest in it himself. For all my desire to learn i am often reminded how much wiser he is sometimes, just because he is.

I was meeting a female friend, out with her man and his work colleagues. I had never met the colleagues before. As I walked in i saw a man at the bar and our eyes met and there was something. It spooked me and I spent the rest of the evening running away from him, mostly, even though we turned out to be in the same group. Later on in time, I asked him why he had been so persistent. Mostly he replies that he was drunk and had no idea what he was doing. Sometimes he gives a different answer. Sometimes he tells me there was a light in my eyes, a light of life. How he could see this in a dark club when I was running away from him, I have no idea, except of course I do. I know exactly.

I also know I am one lucky lady. The grass will never be greener for me. He knows this too. This means he can happily let me be a little in love with Edward, because I am forever his.

Love Potion No. 9

Although spirits seemed much better at work today and nothing bad has happened, I don't have anything exciting from today to write about. F cooked a lovely meal for me this evening and then I had a lovely bath and read some more of my current book The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbottson.

I very much wanted to write some nice happy positive things tonight, so I shall write about the best bit of my life, F. F is a lovely chap. The sort old ladies love because he is slightly cheeky and makes them laugh. He works in sales and to be honest, Cornwall is probably the only place he could get away with this. In Cornwall a slimy person using the hard sell and being a little shady wouldn't sell anything for very long, they value customer service and word of mouth more down here. Up country he would probably be in some other person orientated career, such as the ambulance service.

Although I am not shy, I can be reserved and I do not often make people laugh... I make F laugh all the time. He makes me laugh to and we have a good time together, inbetween my grumpiness and his ranting that is, we are human after all. He is my best friend and although sometimes we frustrate each other no end, I wouldn't change him for the world. I can imagine still enjoying his company as an 80 year old rocking our chairs companionably on a porch enjoying the view.

Many years ago, I decided to move to Cornwall and started a chain of events that would bring F into my life. I found a house and a course. I found lodgers and made some fantastic friends. I worked hard and played hard but was still somewhat lonely at times. I got big dog after a year and he is my loyal and devoted shadow still.

After two and a half years down here I was ill and took time from my studies. Once I was better I started work but had lost contact a little with friends. One night one called to say she was going out with her chap and some of his nice single work mates. I said I would come out but that I was sick of men and not interested in the slightest.

When I walked into the club there was a man at the bar and our eyes met and there was... something... He turned out to be one of the single friends and he spent the rest of the night chasing me round the club trying to speak to me as I ran off in the opposite direction. We did eventually talk but not that night, although he did text me after I got home that night. He called me a couple of nights later and I spent three hours on the phone talking and laughing with this man who I didn't know and things could have been a little awkward with. We dated a little but ended up living together pretty quickly...

We later discovered that we knew about eight people in common and every so often we find another connection. If we hadn't met that night, we may not have met again for some time, who knows...

There is one little thing though. My parents had a vegetable garden when I was a kid but soon stopped growing veg. Various seeds germinated and the patch became a good example of ecological succession.... When I was a bout ten one of the plants fighting for it's place was identified as an oak tree. I have watched this tree grow over the years and it is now twice or three times my height. It has always felt like a special tree to me and I always go and say hello to it when I visit my folks.

So it was only natural that when I decided to work a spell before I moved to Cornwall that I should give it to this tree to guard. It was my first piece of magic and my only until more recent times. I wrote some lines asking that I should be able to create a happy home and find the right person for me to be with, some one to make me happy and be my partner in life. I wrote it out nicely on coloured paper and I made a braid which I tied it with. It was buried in the roots of the tree for the tree to protect and guard as it grows.

I suspect that such magic probaly works slowly behind the scenes bringing about chains of chance happenings. I suspect it could take some time to be realised. How could you ever prove it worked? Or disprove it?

About the time the spell was buried to grow woth the tree, a man in a far off place became single and began a long and tumultous period of his life as he, and others around him adjusted. It would be two and a half years before he felt ready to date someone else. *smile*