“Do you know what your problem is? You can’t live with the idea that someone might leave. So instead of being happy for me, like any normal person, you’re pissed of because ooh, oh no, Hassan doesn’t like me anymore. You’re so goddamn scared of the idea that someone might dump you that your whole fucking life is built around not getting left behind. Well, it doesn’t work, kafir. It just — it’s not just dumb, it’s ineffective. Because then you’re not being a good friend or a good boyfriend or whatever, because you’re only thinking they-might-not-like-me-they-might-not-like-me, and guess what? When you act like that, no one likes you.” (>>)

“A healthy person coupled with an unhealthy person will still result in an unhealthy relationship.” (>>)

“Another argument Betsy and I got in was strange, for sure. She’d told me she loved me and rather than saying, ‘Thanks’ or ‘I love you too.’ I made some kind of self-deprecating joke. She looked at me perturbed and ate another bite of her ice cream. I was offended that she didn’t laugh, so I repeated the joke just to frustrate her.

‘It’s not funny,’ she said.
‘It is funny,’ I said.
‘No, Don,’ she said straightly. ‘When I say I love you and you don’t believe me, you’re being a jerk. Basically what you’re saying is that I only love conditionally. You think you’re being self-deprecating and funny, but you’re really saying that I’m not a good enough person to love you if you have a few flaws. It gets old.’ ” (>>)

“It’s true our lives can pass small and unnoticed by the masses, and we are no less dignified for having lived quietly. In fact, I’ve come to believe there’s something noble about doing little with your life save offering love to a person who is offering it back.” (>>)

“I don’t mean to overstate what it yet unknown, but part of me believes that when the story of earth is told, all that will be remembered is the truth we exchanged. The vulnerable moments. The terrifying risk of love and the care we took to cultivate it. And all the rest, the distracting noises of insecurity and the flattery and the flashbulbs will flicker out like a turned-off television.” (>>)

“Call it passion. Call it love. Call it sickness. The basic traits of your/their personality and your/their slightest behaviors ravage each others’ dopamine receptors in a neurological orgy of starry-eyed dreaminess.” (>>)

“If you’re dating someone, what kind of man is he? Does he demonstrate that he’s the kind of man who would die for you? What is his posture toward the world? Does he serve, or is he waiting to be served? Does he believe that he’s owed something, that he’s been shortchanged, that he’s gotten the short end of the stick, that life owes him something? Or is he out to see what he can give? Does he see himself as being here to make the world a better place?

“These are the big questions that you need to ask yourself.

“Take him to a family reunion. Do some sort of service project with him. See how he interacts with people he doesn’t like.

“Does he have liquid agape running through his veins?

“A friend of mine was engaged to a man, and some of her friends were not excited about them getting married. As the wedding day approached, one of her friends decided to say something to her. He said, ‘When a woman is loved well, she opens up like a flower.’

“She broke off the engagement soon afterward. In one brilliant sentence, her friend taught her what agape is and what it isn’t.

“What does he expect of you? Does he expect you to sleep with him when he hasn’t committed to you forever? Does he want all of you without his having to give all of him?

“Can you tell him anything? Is he safe? Can he be trusted?

“Can you open up to him, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, knowing that he will protect, not exploit, that vulnerability?

“Are you opening like a flower?” (>>)

“My experience with the mentally ill on the streets is that there is a place in them that is sacred, and they can touch it in the presence of one whom they can trust, a person committed to walking with them through the minefields.

“I went out for fresh air one recent evening and walked past a young man who was engaged in a conversation with a mannequin in the display window of a large department store. It was as though he and the mannequin were having coffee together: the disturbed guy making his points, his fingers jabbing holes in the air, and the enigmatic, gazing mannequin, its slight come-hither smile egging him on.

“People are talking to themselves all over the Burnside area – indeed, in every city I have ever been in. How does one wind up talking to oneself or to an inanimate object? What is the breaking point, how much illness must exist, how much pain and suffering must be endured before the intimate and precious part of ourselves becomes unmoored and floats away, making us incapable of normal human intercourse?

“The anatomy of loneliness is a very visible one in the city. It’s true, there are many mentally ill people whose inner processes drive them to a disconnection with the world around them, and one can only hope that medication and proper mental health facilities will assist them in their search for human connection. On the other hand, many individuals, I think, are driven to talking to themselves and to the mannequins of their lives because there is no one around to listen to them or care about them. They aren’t mentally ill; they’re just lonely. Some folks connect more with the cockroaches, mice, cats, dogs, birds, and plants in their single resident occupancy rooms than they do with other human beings. This is not so much by choice as it is a result of the poison of human disregard.” (>>)

” ‘The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.’ ” (>>)

“Go through premarital counseling before you are engaged, because, really, engagement is largely about wedding planning, and it’s tough to see the flaws in a relationship clearly when you’re wearing a diamond and you have a deposit on an event space.” (>>)

“Ultimately, loving people conditionally is an attempt to control them. We are wrongly thinking that if we can make people ‘pay’ for their faults, or their opinions that don’t match ours, they will have a negative association with their faults or their supposedly wrong opinions. But that’s not the way it works.” (>>)

“Whenever my husband and I have a fight, I just moon him and he starts giggling and then the fight is over. I don’t know if this would work for every couple, though.” (>>)

“love is not reserved for wedding vows. love is lived and learned throughout our lives regardless of marital status. love is different than we think. there are no experts on love. we love and we fail and then we love again, continuously, faithfully, as best we know how. we love and we are hurt and we wonder if it is even worth it to carry on, if it is even possible. and then we love again, continuously, faithfully, as best we know how.” (>>)

“…and seek nothing from her.” (>>)

” ‘You know something?’ she asked. ‘I’ve spent so much time thinking you were secretly a good person, and you’re not.’ ” (>>)

“You know, I used to have this tendency to project onto girls my fantasies of what I thought they should be like, and it just, didn’t necessarily have anything to do with what they were actually like. It’d just take me forever to figure that out; usually 4 to 5 months.”
“But Sophia was different?”
“Yeah. Well, you know…
…
No, actually, that was pretty much the same deal.” (>>)

“My eye is still used to searching for her in a crowd. My breath is still used to catching when I see her and the light is angled just right. My body is still used to hers moving next to mine. So the distance — anything short of contact — is a constant rejection. We were together for six months, and in each of those months my desire found new ways to be fueled by her. It’s over can’t kill that. All of the songs I wrote in my head were for her, and now I can’t stop them from playing. This null soundtrack. I’m tired, she’d said, and I told her that I was tired, too, and that I wanted to take some time for us, too. And then she’d said, No, I’m tired of you, and I slipped into the surreal-but-true universe where we were over and I wasn’t over it. She was no longer any kind of here that I could get to.” (>>)

“So here we are again. I go out with a nice woman. I try to figure out if maybe I can love someone again. And I’m hauled in front of an inquisition. Everyone else is just running around doing whatever the hell they want. Lying, screwing people over, making mistakes – big ones like affairs and shit – but they’re fine though. They’re just people going around and doing whatever, their thing. No one expects that much from them. But my little ‘Hello, how do you do? I’m Foy? Nice to meet you. Ha ha, you eat Fruit Loops and have a great smile. How about we have dinner’ suddenly becomes this evil, dishonest, you know, THING that’s suddenly this whole pathology of inauthentic behaviors and denial and suppression of internal voices and shit.” (>>)

“You’re like a bull in an emotional china store. You’re charging right in, stumbling around, and not realizing how much damage you can do.” (>>)

“And love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken ‘hallelujah.’ ” (>>) [MP3]

“It’s hard enough trying to drink another winter all alone.” (>>) [MP3]

“sometimes that whole time/space continuum is a real bitch…”

“Foy felt a rush of adrenaline and his heart pounded. He had forgotten how wonderful a thing it is to make a woman laugh, to be lost in conversation with her and to see a smile come onto her face. It was almost like male banter, but with a lighter touch. Cautious and polite but pushing the edge just a bit, just enough but not too much.” (>>)

“People go on about places like Starbucks being unpersonal and all that, but what if that’s what you want? I’d be lost, if JJ and people like that got their way, and there was nothing unpersonal in the world. I like to know that there are big places without windows where no one gives a shit. You need confidence to go into small places with regular customers, small bookshops and small music shops and small restaurants and cafés. I’m happiest in the Virgin Megastore and Borders and Starbucks and Pizza Express, where no one gives a shit, and no one knows who you are. My mum and dad are always going on about how soulless those places are, and I’m like, Der. That’s the point.” (>>)

“the ring that you twist,
the song that you hum” (>>) [MP3]

“They say time will kill the pain
I say pain is gonna kill my time
Lord won’t you save me
Or leave me alone
Cause when it’s good, it’s so, so good
But when it’s gone, it’s gone (>>) [MP3]

“And all I see, it could never make me happy
and all my sandcastles spend their time collapsing” (>>) [MP3]

“For awhile I sat there staring at her photograph
for awhile I cried and tried not to make a scene
There was a time when we were young I used to make her laugh
but life is long
My love has gone away from me (>>) [MP3]

“Well I think if I have to live outside the garden of paradise
it might as well be spent looking in your eyes” (>>)

“This girl […] comes into his life and just kicks him into gear, wakes him up. He kinda falls in love with her, but he’s not sure, ’cause he’s in love with his girlfriend, but this girl kinda wakes him up in a way. And because he’s kind of a bloke he mistakes that affection or that attention for some kind of sexual advance, which it just isn’t. She is into him and she is interested in him, but it’s mates; it’s, ‘Get your life together.’ ‘Come on, go get your girlfriend. Sing this song to her, you’ll get her back.’ ” (>>)

So I’ll see you when you’re 40, lost and all alone
being comforted by strangers you’ll never have to know.
Not sad because you lost me but sad because you thought
it was cool to be sad.” (>>) [MP3]

“but suddenly I wanted to win” (>>)

So say you’re feeling kind of sad and anxious, missing some girl or whatever, but you’re not totally depressed. You could go either way. It’s two in the fucking morning and you have to wake up in four hours, but you can’t sleep. Obviously you’re going to put on a record–or open up a playlist, you damn whippersnappers… but what do you choose?

You could listen to a sad song, something old and smooth and emotionally self-destructive, something by Otis Redding or Patsy Cline. That would be true to your feelings and comforting in a familiar but unhealthy way, like that bad relationship you kept going back to until your soul resembled Leonardo DiCaprio in the subway bathroom scene from Basketball Diaries.

Or, you could put on something new and fast and irrelevant, something with clever production and loud guitars. Something to numb your heart and distract your mind, like when Americans see pictures of genocide on the news and flip over to Desperate Housewives or ESPN. Motion City Soundtrack or maybe some Hot Hot Heat.

Because these choices are important. “Which came first, the music or the misery,” you know? Wallowing in beautifully harmonized self-pity starts to get a little pathetic by the time you reach your mid-twenties. But is it healthy to manipulate your feelings in order to be, well… healthy?

Maybe there’s a reason all those shallow preppy kids are so happy driving around in the BMW convertibles their parents buy them, listening to Britney Spears or N*Sync or whatever the hell the music industry is shitting out these days. But do you really want to live like that? I mean, those people acquire our contempt for good reason.

So, what do you do? Hunch down in the closet with Otis and a bottle of red, waiting for the voices to tire themselves out, or play Solitaire on your laptop with Britney until she bores the hell out of you and you can go back to sleep?

Or maybe you just make up a mix of both, sort it randomly and write something slightly neurotic for your blog.

“And it is true what you said
that I live like a hermit in my own head
But when the sun shines again
I’ll pull the curtains and blinds to let the light in” (>>) [MP3]

“I want to be loved by someone, even if it’s a false love. I want someone to make me feel good, to believe in me. And that night I wanted this woman. I wanted her physically and emotionally. I wanted her to help me deny who I really was. I wanted her to take away the sadness. I wanted her to be my savior…

“[But] I don’t know if I will get emotionally entangled with [her] only to be shoved down into the dirt, more bruised than I was before…

“So […] I invite companionship and seek community, need community–But all I really have is God. People are too much like… people; they’re too much like me. I need someone who loves in ways I never could. I need God.

“But, like Jesus, I wrestle with God. ‘Take this cup from me. There must be another way.’ And then I learn that there isn’t another way. I learn that God is unreasonable. In fact, he always has been. Forgiveness is unreasonable. Jesus dying on a cross is unreasonable…” (>>)

“We’ve gone too far, we’ve done too much. We have to quit it.”
“Just one more kiss, just one more touch. Please, ten more minutes.” (>>) [MP3]

“Your heart won’t heal right if you keep tearing out the sutures” (>>)

“Stand in the light. Stand in the light. Stand in the light.” (>>) [MP3]

magic.

“Lip gloss = shiny, rose-tinted love.” (>>)

“Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?” (>>)

“When you play my song
play it slowly
play it like I’m sad and lonely” (>>) [MP3]

“but you came so close and i assumed
you were looking for the piece of yourself that’s lost…” (>>) [MP3]

“I can’t hold you, but I’m still kissing you
I don’t want to, but I’m still missing you” (>>) [MP3]

“Part of being [I can’t bring myself to quote this term, even if it was used sarcastically, so let’s just replace it with ‘friends’] is giving the other person the encouragement and the freedom to pursue their dreams…” (>>)

“I want so much to open your eyes,
’cause I need you to look into mine” (>>) [MP3]

“I was strong but awkward, born with an armor of imagination.” (>>) [MP3]

“Excuse me, did I do something wrong? I get invited, then ignored all night long.”
“I’ve been trying, I’m not lying. No one’s perfect, I’ve got baggage.”
“Life’s too short, babe, time is flying. I’m looking for baggage that goes with mine.”
“I should tell you…” (>>) [MP3]

“She said, ‘Easy, Tiger.’ ” (>>)

“Our youth is fleeting
Old age is just around the bend
And I can’t wait to go grey
I’ll sit in wonder
Of every love that could’ve been
If I’d only thought of something
Charming to say” (>>) [MP3]

“I caught myself thinking
I caught myself thinking once again
I have to try to keep my mind out of this
Try not to pretend” (>>) [MP3]

“We say so much about the healing power of the body of Christ, but it seems like most of my friends in the body were too busy attending church choir or leading their small groups to check up on me.” (>>)

“Not learning those lessons may be attributable to some ADD, mule-headed stubbornness or simply feeling a lot of self-pity so I didn’t want to take responsibility for anything. Acting as if there were no lessons to be learned was always a convenient way to act as if everything happening today was my wife’s fault, when in fact I was responsible for knowing where we were on the map, what was happening and how I should act/react.

“This time around I wanted things to be different. I was praying that God would show me and teach me how to deal with what we were facing, and what I needed to be and do for our marriage to heal and grow.

“And so the idea came.

“Write a book about my wife. A book about my wife and what I have learned about her and us, about being a good husband, and about what will make our marriage better.

[…]

“So far, there are an even 50 lessons. Some short, some detailed. There will be a lot more. They cover things I’ve known for 29 years and things I learned yesterday. There are lessons from books and truths God showed me in the aftermath of some gruesome messes. There are reminders of what it means to be kind, of how long my wife can stand to hear my voice without a break, of what I know will assure her that I love her and warnings of things to never bring up. There is an inventory of some of my fears that have shaped too many interactions. There are reassurances of things I know are true no matter what happens. There is a prayer for humility and unconditional love. There are reminders of what I know about my wife’s family and what she learned about marriage there. There are reminders of what I never learned about marriage in my home. There are reminders of what works and what never has worked. There are list of what annoys and what hurts and what angers. There are lists of what I should never mention and what I should say several times a day. There are small suggestions and principles so vital the whole marriage depends on them.” (>>)

“I want to be known and loved anyway.” (>>)

“I never want you to think that your mom is the villain in all of this.”
“Isn’t she?”
“No, it’s not that simple…”
“Yeah it is. The hero is the one that stays… and the villain is the one that splits.” (>>)

“…I’m not cheerful or domestic. I’m drab, crabby and friendless. I fill my days fighting a constant battle to keep my dignity. Loneliness is my curse–our species’ curse–it’s the gun that shoots the bullets that makes us dance on a saloon floor and humiliate ourselves in front of strangers.” (>>)

“I remember being single for so very long — I remember making mental lists of compromises I was willing to make in order to get me to 76.5 years without snapping. If I only go to see two movies a week, one by myself, one with a friend, that’ll make two nights of the week pass without quaking. Don’t phone my friends in relationships too often or I’ll look too desperate. Don’t become godmother to too many of my friends’ children or else I’ll become a maiden-aunt punch line. Don’t drink more than three drinks a night ever because I like drinking, and it could easily plaster over all of my cracks.” (>>)

“After a few minutes of this, Gary, Kent’s best friend, tinkled his glass and the group sat down. On easels up front were color photocopy enlargements of Kent’s life: Kent white-water rafting; Kent at a cigar party; Kent playing Frisbee golf; Kent and Barb lunching in a Cabo San Lucas patio bistro; Kent at his stag party, pretending to drink a yard-long glass of beer. Each of these photos emphasized the absence of similar photos in my own life.” (>>)

“Stop talking about love. Every asshole in the world says he loves somebody, means nothing. […] What you feel only matters to you; it’s what you do to the people you say you love, that’s what matters. That’s the only thing that counts.” (>>)

“I am an affectionate man but I have much trouble showing it.

“When I was younger I used to worry so much about being alone–of being unlovable or incapable or love. As the years went on, my worries changed. I worried that I had become incapable of having a relationship, of offering intimacy. I felt as though the world lived inside a warm house at night and I was outside, and I couldn’t be seen–because I was out there in the night. But now I am inside that house and it feels just the same.

“Being alone here now, all of my old fears are erupting–the fears I thought I had buried forever by getting married: fear of loneliness; fear that being in and out of love too many times itself makes you harder to love; fear that I would never experience real love; fear that someone would fall in love with me, get extremely close, learn everything about me and then pull the plug; fear that love is only important up until a certain point after which everything is negotiable.” (>>)

“She took a mouthful of rain
With a gutter full of pills
She wrote, ‘I handled the pain
But it’s the hope that kills’
So take care of yourself
And don’t worry about me
‘Cause everybody always
Everybody always leaves” (>>) [MP3]

“I’m fucking starved for love
I deeply need to feel connection with the infinite
I want the nourishment
I need to drink it just like water, and it will sustain me” (>>) [MP3]

“The whole song is a study of reality through the lens of opposites: inside vs. outside, fact vs. fiction, heart vs. brain. When looking at something, which view shows the soul or the truth of the matter, and which is just a shadow or filter of the truth.” (>>)

“It has been the same in all my relationships. There was always, within me, this demand for affection, this needy, clingy monkey on my back. I wouldn’t be satisfied unless the girl wanted to get married right away, unless she was panicky about it, and even then I would imagine a non-existent scenario in which she finds another man or breaks up with me because of the way I look. I would find myself getting depressed about conversations that never even took place.” (>>)

“So, Ian, you have any big plans for Valentine’s Day?”

“Oh, yes, big plans. Big, big plans. Very b… no.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll probably just do the same thing I do every year.”

“What’s that?”

“You know, put on some Hank Williams, drink myself into a coma…”

“Oh.”

“But, actually, I figured this year I might try something different.”

“Oh yeah? That’s great! What are you going to do this year?”

“Well, I figure if I start drinking the day before, then I can just sleep through the whole contrived farce altogether.”

“Oh. That’s, uh, very… creative.”

“Thanks, I like to consider myself a free-thinker.”

“I was in love once. I think love is a bit of heaven. When I was in love I thought about that girl so much I felt like I was going to die and it was beautiful, and she loved me, too, or at least she said she did, and we were not about ourselves, we were about each other, and that is what I mean when I say being in love is a bit of heaven. When I was in love I hardly thought of myself; I thought of her and how beautiful she looked and whether or not she was cold and how I could make her laugh. It was wonderful because I forgot my problems. I owner her problems instead, and her problems seemed romantic and beautiful. When I was in love there was somebody in the world who was more important than me, and that, given all that happened at the fall of man, is a miracle, like something God forgot to curse.” (>>)

the most beautiful place:
under the moon, with no cover

“The circus, and I am talking about life now, really sucks. It feels like we all have these little acts, these stupid things we do that we all hang our hats on. The Fall has made monkeys of us, for crying out loud. Some of us are athletes and others of us are physicists, and some of us are good-looking and some of us are rich, and we are all running around, in a way, trying to get a bunch of people to clap for us, trying to get a bunch of people to say we are normal, we are healthy, we are good.” (>>)

“It was as if, though he was still the same person, some great inner strength had been mysteriously removed, and now he was a little boy who wanted to run home, but home was gone.” (>>)

“You feel like you’re saying a lot, you feel like you’re taking a stand, but what you’re doing is you’re taking your small group of friends and you’re impressing them. And to everybody else you’re a monkey clanging cymbols. But you really don’t care about everybody else, what you care about is impressing your small group of friends.” (>>) [MP3]

“In marriage, two people seek their own joy in the joy of another. They practice covenant-love, Gospel-love for the sake of a new kind of joy which is not ‘romantic,’ but is an expression of the Trinity.” (>>)

The great thing about buying alcohol on Valentine’s Day is that, upon seeing the contents on your shopping cart — Pop Tarts, Rolos and the latest issue of the National Inquirer wherein they divulge that baseball great Babe Ruth was, in fact, a communist lesbian from Planet X — seeing the contents sprawled out on the conveyor belt like the confessions of some trashy ‘tell all’ celebrity biography, testifying to your utterly pathetic state of being — not unlike the e-mail your high school girlfriend sent to all of her friends detailing your failings as a lover — the great thing is that Cute Checkout Girl doesn’t even bother to ask for your I.D., but just gives you an odd look of pity mixed with something you can’t quite place (contempt?) and scans the bottle, leaving you to wonder what the hell you’re going to do after the Rolos are gone and do you think she’d go out with me if I just cleaned up a bit?

“Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they […] who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily?” (>>)

“I believed then, and still do believe, that love is a choice. I think perhaps it’s not all that simple, but when you boil it down, that’s what it is. It can be prompted by ‘in love’ feelings, the sort of butterflies and rainbows kind of mush, but it never stays that way. And sometimes, you can blink, turn around to look at it again, and it’s all fallen to pieces, and love was nothing like it was when you first thought you saw it (whether it was ever love back there in the beginning is arguable) – or even, what it was just a second ago, before you closed your eyes. What used to make your heart jump just doesn’t work anymore, and you can’t remember quite why it did in the first place. It’s at these points we choose flight or fight.” (>>)

“Sometimes, when I am working the drive-thru, I daydream about a girl pulling up, getting a double tall soy no whip pumpkin spice latte, having a copy of ‘What Saint Paul Really Said?’ or ‘The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe’ or maybe something awesome like ‘Haroun and the Sea of Stories’ sitting in the empty seat next to her and she is pretty to me, but not in that perfect sort of way (but not in that ugly sort of way either) and she is short and meek and strangely pleased to meet me. Also, she has turn down her radio because she can’t listen to Eisley and me at the same time. Also, sitting in that seat is a tastefully decorated journal in which she reflects and writes magical poetry.” (>>)

“I want someone to pluck me off the side of the road and love me with total abandon. I’m not talking about God here, not something ephemeral, but a woman, a flesh and blood woman. A woman who’ll cast out my self doubt and drive it into the lake to be drowned. A woman who thinks I’m worth everything.” (>>)

“You hear that? She’s not very good at slushy stuff? That, to me, is a problem, as it would be to any male who heard Dusty Springfield singing ‘The Look of Love’ at an impressionable age. That was what I thought it was all going to be like when I was married (I called it married then–I call it ‘settled’ or ‘sorted’ now). I thought there was going to be this sexy woman with a sexy voice and lots of sexy eye makeup whose devotion to me shone from every pore. And there is such a thing as the look of love–Dusty didn’t lead us up the garden path entirely–it’s just that the look of love isn’t what I expected it to be. It’s not huge eyes almost bursting with longing situated somewhere in the middle of a double bed with the covers turned down invitingly; it’s just as likely to be the look of benevolent indulgence that a mother gives a toddler, or a look of amused exasperation, even a look of pained concern. But the Dusty Springfield look of love? Forget it. As mythical as the exotic underwear.

“Women get it wrong when they complain about the media images of women. Men understand that not everyone has Bardot’s breasts, or Jamie Lee Curtis’s neck, or Cindy Crawford’s bottom, and we don’t mind at all. Obviously we’d take Kim Basinger over Phyllis Diller, just as women would take Keanu Reeves over Sergeant Bilko, but it’s not the body that’s important, it’s the level of abasement. We worked out very quickly that Bond girls were out of our league, but the realization that women don’t ever look at us the way Ursula Andress looked at Sean Connery, or even in the way that Doris Day looked at Rock Hudson, was much slower to arrive, for most of us. In my case, I’m not at all sure that it ever did.

“I’m begining to get used to the idea that Laura might be the person I spend my life with, I think (or at least, I’m begining to get used to the idea that I’m so miserable without her that it’s not worth thinking about alternatives). But it’s much harder to get used to the idea that my little-boy notions of romance, of negliges and candlelit dinners at home and long, smoldering glances, had no basis in reality at all. That’s what women ought to get all steamed up about; that’s why we can’t function properly in a relationship. It’s not the cellulite or the crow’s feet. It’s the… the… the disrespect.”

(>>)

So, I bet you’re thinking, “Ian’s gonna post some bitter, depressing, hateful diatrab about Valentine’s day.” Admit it, you know it crossed your mind once or twice. It’s ok, I don’t really blame you. I did help plan an entire party dedicated to defying everything the “holiday” stands for last year. And the year before that, I wrote a slightly bitter rant about it here on Daily Random. So I can’t really blame you for expecting something similar this year. Perhaps, if you’re so inclined, you’ve even been waiting in eager anticipation.

But you won’t read anything like that this year. No, I’ve grown. I’ve matured. I’m ok with my “singleness.” I’m not lonely, or bitter. I don’t miss her at all. I don’t dream about kissing. And I definitely don’t dream about cuddling. Those dreams where it’s so real you remember exactly how it felt when you wake up? Not once.

I won’t be making any depressing/hopeful/love-her/hate-her mix CDs this year. I’m not stewing in dejection, regretting all the mistakes I made–besides, that takes at least a long weekend spent driving around in my car listening to depressing music, and I just don’t have that kind of time these days, what, with my new-found sense of hope and all.

No, I’ve moved on. I’ve realized that all those authors and single’s-Bible-study leaders were right all along. God is all I need. Really, I can’t even relate anymore to all those immature Christians who think they need a “significant other” to be happy. God is so much more “significant” than some silly girl could be. If they would just realize that the huge, gaping, bloody hole in their hearts is nothing compared to the glorious riches of God’s love revealed in His one and only begotten Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ then they’d be happy. Just like me.

There’s just no comparison. I mean, just because she made you feel alive; just because all you ever needed was to hold her and when you finally could, there was nothing that could pull you away; just because… well, you see where I’m going with this. None of that means there’s any reason to be sad. Jesus loves me, what do I care about the fickle love of a woman? I just can’t believe how shallow I was before.

So, you won’t hear any of that silly whining this year. Nope. I’ve grown. I’ve matured.

Happy Valentine’s Day

“I was hoping we could work it out some way
But she had had enough.
So I took the diamond ring to the shop downtown,
I left the ring on the glass; he left the money laid down.
And I was left in the lost and found.”

“It’s the sound of her voice that lingers in my mind. That little girl voice is something she doesn’t offer up to just any man… Hearing her voice was somehow even more intimate than the feel of her body.” (>>)

It’s not the song you listen to in the car on the way to work, or the one you play in your head while pretending to listen to the pointless conversations that surround you. It’s the song you put on repeat in the middle of the night when you’ve run out of distractions.

This time be different

You lie down on the floor, in the dark, and let it haunt you.

Don’t go

It lures the memories out of the recess of your soul, gently, slowly. The warmth she gave. The warmth you ached for. The warmth she stole.

Please stay

The song keeps playing, but you’re not tired. This song will never end.

Magoo and I are trying to plan an Anti-Valentine’s Day tomorrow. We’re going to get a bunch of single friends together and complain about being single while watching movies and eating lots of ice cream. So, we need 1) a bitter anti-love movie; 2) a hopelessly romantic movie; and 3) two very good flavors of ice cream. Suggestions?

This is a good story from Chasing Hats. Make sure you check out the reader response, too.

Right, ok, it’s Valentine’s Day. Here’s How it’s Gonna Go Down…

I’ll head over to the library to pick up Grosse Point Blank. I’ll go in, see the movie, and, just as I reach for it, the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my entire life will also be reaching for it. We’ll both politely draw our hands back and say “oh, you can have it.” Being the chivalrous gentleman that I am, I’ll insist that she take it. And, being the noble woman that she is, she’ll gracefully accept. Then–and, here’s the part where my pathetic scheme pays off–she’ll notice my Apex fleece, and say something like “Oh, wow, you go to Apex?” I’ll say yes and she’ll explain how she just moved to Dayton from Montana (her dad’s an engineer with the Air Force, you see) and she’s been coming to Apex for a few weeks and thinks it’s where God wants her to call home. There’ll be an akward pause, and then I’ll ask if she’d like to watch the movie together.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Normally that would sound like a stupid pick-up line from some jerk who’s just trying to take advantage of a beautiful, Godly woman; and, normally, she, of course, would refuse. But this isn’t normal. This is divinely appointed.

So, being the divine appointment that it is, she accepts. We hit it off instantly. She has the most amazing countenance: quiet and peaceful and full of joy (Yes, even more joy than Kristi Gleason!). We make jokes throughout the whole movie, and it’s feels like we’ve know each other our whole lives. Her personality fit perfectly with mine, and after two hours we both agree that we were meant to be together.

So, don’t be surprised if y’all get a wedding invitation in the mail next week.

Update, 6:40PM: Oh Lord, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

You want to know what happened? Ok, here it is. I checked that stupid “eCatalog” before I left and it said that they had Grosse Point Blank in stock. But, just as I was heading out the door, a thought occured to me: “hey, this would make a good post to your blog” “huh, you’re right, good thinking.” So, I sit back down, login, and type out my beautiful plan. Then, after it’s spell-checked and reworded four or five times, I hit “publish” and I’m on my way.

So, I get there, and, after holding the door open for a pretty young lady who, I thought, just might have been my aforementioned future wife, I headed over to the movie section. Well, guess what. It wasn’t there. Nope. Someone had allready gotten it. And you know what? It was her. Yeah, the girl from my plan. I missed her, all because Bob conviced me to start this stupid blog. Instead of running into the girl of my dreams, I was at home, alone, at my computer, on the Internet. It’s all your fault Bob! “This is the burning of a dream“

Oh, and, ofcourse, it wouldn’t be Valentine’s Day if the world didn’t torture me just a little bit more… On the way home I noticed that I was almost out of gas. So, I pull into my friendly neighborhood Shell, and ofcourse, the only pump available is the one without Pay at the Pump. As if that weren’t enough, the magnanimous OPEC Cartel has decided that we, quite frankly, don’t pay enough for oil, so it cost me $18.38 to fill up my tank. Eighteen dollars and thirty-eight cents to fill up a four-dour sedan. Oh, and I owe the IRS $138, because, you know, they really haven’t taken enough out of my paychecks already. Perfect.

I’ve always known that God had a dark sense of humor, but this is a little much, even for Him.