YOU LOVE HIS KISSES MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE'S SNEEZES

my parents:

I am a lovechild. In 1973, my dad, a frenetic New Yorker, closed his eyes & arbitrarily picked a place on the map. There, in Jogyakarta, he found my mother at a parade, an Indonesian princess. My parents were odd soulmates, bound together by the alchemy of their love. He passed away on the 32nd anniversary of their wedding date.

How love impacts our psychology, neurology & health (aka PNI of love) has long fascinated me. I live on love. From what my parents left me. From Mark. From my family. From my friends. From my dog, Samba. From all the inanimate objects that somehow give off love. Here's an ode to love, dedicated to those who taught me what love is.

My favorite love quotes/poems:



somewhere i have never travelled by e.e. cummings:

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, misteriously) 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 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

Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda:

I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
So I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

A scene from Two Days in Paris:

pic source: lelove