"love is a fire
burns down all that it sees
burns down everything
everything you think
burns down
everything you say"
[Marilyn Manson, "Just a Car Crash Away"]

When I sat down, having decided to write, it was with a subject in mind completely unrelated to Valentine's Day. Then it occurred to me that writing about airline security (or rather, lack thereof) didn't seem like the right thing to do today. People coming to find me writing, and on Valentine's of all days, can only assume it's going to be about love. I imagine they'll expect something touchy-feel-y and sickly sweet.

But love is not always touchy-feel-y and sickly sweet. In fact, to me, the truest kind of love is not often that. It's a warm comfortable blanket, not a roaring fire and a glass of wine. It's smiling to yourself, quietly musing at how pleased she might be over a very non-traditional gift, but one which is very much something she wants and needs. It's kissing her goodnight and saying "I love you" when you slip into bed next to her while she's already sleeping, knowing she won't hear you, but saying it anyway, because you will.

Love is what you make of it, and there are as many different perspectives as there are people. One wouldn't think of Marilyn Manson as romantic, for instance, but when I hear the "Eat Me, Drink Me" album, I can help but hear the sounds of heartbreak and of new love found between the lines. Granted, it's in Marilyn Manson's peculiar view of love and sex and relationships, but it reminds me of how the Dali Lama often reminds people that deep down, at the root of it all, we all have certain things in common, such as the gamut of human emotions including love and the desire to be loved. Lyrically he expresses himself by singing about car crashes, death, cannibalism, murder, rape, bleeding, and self-mutilation. But the emotion he conveys with those lines are very human ones, and leaves one with the same desire to shake his hand and pat his shoulder and assure him that this new relationship will be better than the last one, if only he can learn to let go of his feelings for his ex.

My relationship with Liza-Ann is obviously of a sort much more "normal" than those likely experienced by Marilyn Manson. The duration of my relationship with Liza-Ann is soon approaching my longest relationship ever (though she won't be able to say the same for a long, long time). It's already my second-longest and this time next year it will have passed into first place. I'm not sure why this seems like a significant statistic to me, other than to say that duration is one of the few things I remember about past relationship. In fact, the truth is that when I reflect back on my past, or on past relationships, I don't remember much at all any more. I've changed as a person a lot over the past few years, and one of the biggest parts of that is to have stopped living in the past and started living in the present. Sure, there will always be a few tiny wonders, little bits of lost baggage I haven't quite managed to shake and maybe never will, but the fact is that I think more of the future now than of the past and than ever before in my life, embracing new possibilities instead of old regrets. I have Liza-Ann to thank for that, I think. I cannot envision a life without LA and Olivia now, nor do I want. To reflect on a past she wasn't in seems so alien to me, it's as if it's hard to wrap my brain around the mere concept.

Well, I'd best get back to work.

Embrace wherever and in whatever form you find it, or rather, wherever it finds you. And it will.