el dia del amor y la amistad...

***this wasn't meant to be my valentine to the internet ... but the one I am drafting isn't quite ready for the world...it might never be, so this will have to do, feliz de del amor****

a few of my favorite quote about love:

The truth is that there is only one
terminal dignity ... love.
And the story of a love
is not important...
What is important is that
one is capable of love.
It is perhaps the only glimpse
we are permitted of eternity.
--Helen Hayes

and then there is this one...

To fall in love is easy,
even to remain in it is not difficult;
our human loneliness is cause enough.
But it is a hard quest worth making
to find a comrade through whose steady presence
one becomes steadily the person
one desires to be.
--Anna Strong

I have shared this one before, but I love Shasta emerging from the smaller, browner mountains ... The flowers above are from Yreka's Old Town.
And in the anti-valentine or salty category:

As the unofficial host of several (let's say 9 or so) anti-valentine/divorce anniversary parties (I seriously forgot to mark the anniversary this year, does that mean something?), I have to add this one:


And as a nod to the love that might be possible out there somewhere, a little Pablo Neruda:

I don't love you as if you were the salt rose topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,

Secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and
carries hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.
I love you without knowing how or when or from where
I love you simply, without problems or pride
I love you this way because
I don't know any other way of loving...
but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand
upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep
it is your eyes that close.