To Love and Be Loved

The golden one has left us, gone to her island,
gone to her temple there, gone to her shrine
with its incensed altar. She has left us behind
and closed the door. If we could see her now
how beautiful she would be: imagine her there,
the Graces bathing her - those lovely handmaids -
and oiling her with fragrant sweetness, covering
every curve of her bountiful body with sacredness
and the green scent of olives, and dressing her
in filmy silken robes, and roping her neck
with golden chains, dropping gold from her ears,
ringing her fingers with gold. She is laughing.
How our darling loves to laugh! And now
look! She is leaving her temple again, coming
back to bring us more joyous trouble, laughing
and laughing, cutting a path right through the stars.

--Homeric hymn to Aphrodite

It need not be an intimate partnership, for friendship and family bonds are also forms of love that sustain and enliven us. But to live without intimacy is to live in a desert of the heart.

This may well be one of those days where the actual quotation exceeds the length of the entry itself. It's not that I have nothing to say on the subject - though much of what I would say has already been said, that's the trouble with, and the nature of things like this where there are the same or similar prompts for the meditations over successive days - just because one thought, one feeling dominates me today:

I miss Mir and love her very deeply.

Maybe it's because of what day it is, and because we've been lucky enough to be able to spend the last two valentine's days together - which we aren't this year - but today, I find myself every other moment just thinking about her - the way her hair feels when she lets me check it's 'short' enough at the back after a trip to the hair stylist... her unique combination of scent... the way she looks when she smiles... her cuteness when she's playing with the babies on the couch... the look of peace on her face when she sleeps - all of these things, and more, just running through my head and my heart moment to moment; warming, giving me strength; filling me with love.

I love her so very much.

(added later: Discovered that the gift I sent her from Amazon did not get delivered today. I'm upset about that. I wanted her to have it on the right day and tried very hard to coordinate that. Going to have to do something to make up for it... feel like I failed.

Mir, wonderfully, has sent me all the new Stargate: Atlantis books on Kindle. <3 I love her very much, did I say that already?)