Lovely Things Day 6: Love

Landscape by e.e. cummings, Watercolor, No Date

Predictable or not, it is only fitting that I end this week of all things lovely in quintessentially Brenda style, ergo, very necessarily on a note of gastronomic metaphor.

Translation: please prepare for a post of total and utter (but decently matured, unpasteurized, and rather delicious) cheese.

If you know me well, you'll know this is to be expected (highly typical), mostly because I get a fiendishly evil kick out of making the subject of this finale (and the object of my affection) blush whenever possible (as he is generally far more composed and proper than I'll ever be).

So without further ado, Happy Valentine's Day.

Lovely thing # 6 is *final flourishy bugle ditty* LOVE.

I told you I'm short.

* * *

No emotional gesture on my part is complete without the prerequisite quoting of one of my favorite poets (ask anyone who has ever received a sappy greeting card from me).

This particular poem is, in my opinion, among the most vivid examples of written love ever composed. It kind of encompasses everything I consider beautiful. It is also the only poem I've ever willingly committed entirely to memory on my own, and therefore also deserves some lauding for that fact.

I once made myself a book mark with this printed on it and glued to red cardstock. I used it for almost 5 years before I lost it. I still open old books hoping I'll find it there, but alas, to no avail. I've copied this poem on countless loose papers, in countless of my journals, and look it up on the internet randomly more often than I'll admit to. When I learn to bind books one day, I plan to hand copy every e.e. cummings poem ever written into a leather-bound volume. Until then I refuse to actually purchase a book of his poetry.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.
And if you don't like it, I probably don't like you much either to be honest. :)

* * *

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

- e.e. cummings

* * *

Today's lovely thing is brought to you by Sade's rockin' "All About Our Love" from "Lover's rock," the song and album Matt and I unabashedly and repeatedly grooved to one crazy summer on Croatia's Dalmatian Coast.

Romantic memories aside: Be honest with yourself, what is a Valentine's Day tribute without a little Sade?