I LOVE YOU!!!!

Tomorrow is the photo shoot out – animals edition. It is also the day my wife and I go to Hilton Head for a week. There is supposed to be wireless internet there but I suspect my postings will be sparse. I have discovered the scheduling tool on Blogspot…so there will be at least a couple of already scheduled surprises. But live commentary will probably be non-existent.

I will really miss that because I have come to love you all. Even the men. Now don’t get all homophobic on me, please. Not in that way.

That way. There are just so many ways to love. In fact, I think that there are as many different ways to love as there are people. Sure there are some common groupings of love – brotherly love, paternal love, loving human kindness, sexual love, etc. But each person I get to know is unique. And there have been very few – if any -- people that did not have something loveable about them.

Kahlil Gibran wrote (I think I saw this on Sylvia’s blog – I love her for always looking at the sky and quoting Gibran): “Love does not possess.” I liked that quote. I have always been surprised at how much possessiveness seems to attach to some kinds of love – romantic love, marital love. Although maybe that has more to do with the need for stability in a family in order for love to deepen and built, for children to be safe. And yet it still seems that stability should result from love instead of being demanded as a requirement of love. Such an idealist!

If I take my time, my resources, my attention away from someone I love in order to spend them on someone else, I can certainly see that as a problem. But love, itself, is more like energy, I think. Like exercise, the more you do, the larger it grows.

And love changes over time. I love my wife more now than I did 23 years ago. Let me amend that. I know she would like to think it is “more” but it is probably just “differently.” Deeper, broader, stronger, but less intense.

Love is like an ocean with a million currents. Altruistic love, courageous love, manipulative love (hmm...maybe not), courtly love, hopeless love, self love. Love, like gratitude, is exercise. Use it or lose it.

These days, I’m also rediscovering paternal love with my son. And grand-paternal love with Conner and paternal-in-law love with Melody. So many different kinds of love.

And before I head out on vacation, I want to acknowledge blogger love. I didn’t know much about that when I started this a few months ago. But it is real, and strong, and not just the “Bagman Flirts with Girls” fun either – although I admit that does get my heart rate up. I’ve been surprised how powerfully I feel about Barry. And then there’s…

No. I don’t think I’ll start listing each and every one of you and what it is about your blogs, your words, your pictures, your passions, your selves, that I love. If I tried to do that, I’d either leave out people that I’d remember later and feel badly, or turn this blog into something that read like the New York City phone book.

Anyhow, this morning I just felt like tellingl you all how much I love you.

BAGMAN: “For God's sake! STOP! Way to mushy! You sound like a complete sap.”

BUTLER: “Oddly enough, I think this is one of the first times I have to agree with Bagman. You do sound rather dingy.”

Fine then! You’ll both have to ride in the back seat all the way to Hilton Head after I schedule tomorrow’s animal shootout for posting.

BAGMAN: “Then I’m going to schedule one too! And it will be a whole lot more interesting than this syrupy crap!”

Just a poem for today

Just a poem today…a tad busy in the physical (but no less real) world.

Immersion

Surprising how many sharks troll in your love,

though not unexpected; deep and strong as it is,

I did not plan for only angel fish

when I dove so decidedly in,

bringing extra tanks in case you would not let me breathe,

a knife in case I tangled in your nets,

and lights for darkness in your depths,

(I've done this before, you know, and drowned).

My friend and diving partner quit these seas

when his second marriage sank

with the speed of guilty feet encased in cement,

and tries to convince me to sky dive instead,

the birds always young and fresh like gravity-free chocolate,

tan and firm with a constant upward wind in the face,

but after the short adrenalin minutes

all that remains is to fold the chute.

At least the appetites of sharks are honest

and their bites direct.

So I keep on kicking downward through my years

to swim in your ferocious schools,

to care for your coral,

and maybe,

when oxygen starts running low,

to sing with your whales.