romance

Love Letter To Someone I Don’t Know & Never Met

/ James Browning

Today offered the opportunity to stroll back through some of the blogs I’ve written over the last four years. While pure fantasy and fiction, this one is a favorite and was originally posted on August 12, 2011. It’s filled with hope, fantasy and love for an imaginary person. Hope you enjoy its’ reboot.

“The Love Letter” painted by August Toulmouche

Recently I have read several articles about old love letters being discovered by people unrelated to the writer or addressee.  In one instance a letter discovered was written 50+ years ago and finally made it to the intended recipient.  Another was a note scribbled 200 years ago and discovered folded up tightly in the arm of an antique chair being restored.  In another example a bundle of love letters from World War I were discovered in an antique shop and the finder was trying to locate the family of either the writer or the one being written to.  Reading these stories brought what may be viewed as a silly thought, but one I followed through on.  I imagined a letter I had written being discovered decades after my death.  I decided to try letting one flow from me that I would be pleased for a future third-party to read and what follows is what flowed without effort from within me.

An old love letter never written from a time long ago to someone I don’t know and never met…..

Dear ________ ,

When we met for the first time is as fresh in my memory as one moment ago.  As of today it was exactly one month ago.  So much has happened in a very short time.  My world is permanently changed and I am altered beyond what I can express with language.  If I never saw you again I would mourn that happening deeply.  Yet what has been awakened within me would remain as a permanent reminder that my heart is not yet dead as I had long thought it was.

How do I express the feelings growing inside me without seeming to be lost in some obvious state of delirium and euphoria?  My answer is “I can not”.  Science says the initial attraction between a man and woman creates a sort of partial insanity.  Then that explains it.  I am insane over you my darling and I revel in my madness.

How well I know that life never brings a path filled only with joy and delight.  To think things are so is a true hallucination.  I know what fills me now will be intertwined with challenge, trial and difficulty.  Am I a lunatic to think now that such moments can be borne with grace upon the back of the love I have discovered?  No.  I do not think I am crazy to think that. What is built in the future upon the rock of what we are sharing, can withstand most any force a human can bear.  Of that I am certain.

Yes, I dare speak of love knowing it has not been spoken between us so far.  Am I am a coward for writing here instead of looking into your eyes as the words are formed by my heart and released through my voice?  Maybe so, but my feelings are true.  I write because my poetic soul within is determined to use beautiful words to express itself.  The depths of my feelings demand I can do no less.

Yes, my sweet… I am in love…. with you.  As I write this letter I know as certainly as the moon will rise later tonight and the sun will follow in the morning, what is expressed here in pen and ink is dependable and true.   My restless soul seems to no longer be searching for something unknown for now the purpose of its quest has been found:  YOU!  Without confusion and with complete clarity I say again, I love you ______.   I speak first of what I am nearly certain is within you in like form.  With all my being I hope my perception is accurate!

What we are sharing is admirable and sincere.  Our enchantment is real.  Our bliss is genuine.  I know someday when we share the delight of our selves in physical form our delight will be heightened and multiplied beyond what I ever could have hoped for.  For now I am glad we have resisted what could have happened so easily.  It is a testament that we guard what has been discovered and so want only the best for the gift of love between us.  May we continue to take the time to build a love strong and lasting while resisting haste.

So please know my sweet darling you have touched me as I have never been touched before.  You have reached me on a deeper level than I thought possible.  It has been said by some that loving another makes them feel more complete, yet I question the accuracy of that.  I do not feel more complete by loving you, but I do feel richer and as if I have discovered so much more of myself through knowing you.  It is as if you were the light I needed in order to glimpse who I really am and all I can be.

After reading this letter, I wonder every minute until then how you will greet me when next we meet.  My heart vibrates with hope that you meet me then knowing you have found a match for what you hold inside for me.

I love you my darling,

__________

With much gratitude that I am able to do so, I wrote the above openly and without reservation.  The words traveled from mind to fingers to screen at the moments I thought them just as I thought them without editing.  No longer do I feel the need to hide away any element of my hapless romantic soul.  I no longer fear the real me within and instead here and now express my thankfulness again for it.

A day, a week, a month are past,
Another year is by;
Beside her on the open’d desk,
His old love letters lie.
She reads them till the day-light fades,
And ‘neath the moon-lit sky,
She sleeps at rest, for on her breast
Those old love letters lie.
Auguste Toulmouche

You Bring Me Joy

/ James Browning

Originally posted September 3, 2012

The years have not caused me to forget. Still there are remnants of feelings strong beyond explanation. You cracked me wide-open and I was never the same again.Was it because you loved me so unwaveringly deep and passionately?

Was it because you were so exotic and intelligent that you were able to enter my heart so easily?

Was it because I filled your need to be loved?

Or you filled mine?

It was all these things and a hundred more. There was a time we found ‘home’ in each other’s arms.

Once in a great while a feeling of loneliness for you, and you only, still touches down to the quick of my heart. Always I smile with hope that you are well and happy. You married in your 30’s and our contact appropriately stopped not too longer after.

Maybe my memory has elevated what we shared to a fantasy beyond fact. Although our love covered a lot of years it was not long when measured in the actual length of time we spent together. But in weight of what was shared we took a trip around the world.

Times change.
People move on.
Some grow together.
Some grow apart.

Some like we knew each other at the wrong time. I was still a boy in a man’s body pretending he knew what he wanted and needed. I pushed you away because I was afraid to be cared about as much as you loved me.

Hidden away safely, even for the time being from myself, is the only physical memory I have of you: the gift you gave me of a small music box shaped like a heart with a beautiful photo of  you inside. It will go to my safe deposit box once I find it again.

I will always be grateful that once I knew you and for the space you occupy in my memories. The pain has long evaporated and today only a sweet memory remains. There has been no greater love in my life. I’m grateful that whenever I hear Anita Baker singing you always come to mind…

If I can’t see your face,
I will remember that smile
’Cause you’re the finest thing
I’ve seen in all my life.
You bring me joy.
From an Anita Baker’s “You Bring Me Joy” by David Lasley

Love Letter To Someone I Don’t Know & Never Met

/ James Browning

Today offered the opportunity to stroll back through some of the blogs I’ve written over the last four years. While pure fantasy and fiction, this one is a favorite and was originally posted on August 12, 2011. It’s filled with hope, fantasy and love for an imaginary person. Hope you enjoy its’ reboot.

“The Love Letter” painted by August Toulmouche

Recently I have read several articles about old love letters being discovered by people unrelated to the writer or addressee.  In one instance a letter discovered was written 50+ years ago and finally made it to the intended recipient.  Another was a note scribbled 200 years ago and discovered folded up tightly in the arm of an antique chair being restored.  In another example a bundle of love letters from World War I were discovered in an antique shop and the finder was trying to locate the family of either the writer or the one being written to.  Reading these stories brought what may be viewed as a silly thought, but one I followed through on.  I imagined a letter I had written being discovered decades after my death.  I decided to try letting one flow from me that I would be pleased for a future third-party to read and what follows is what flowed without effort from within me.

An old love letter never written from a time long ago to someone I don’t know and never met…..

Dear ________ ,

When we met for the first time is as fresh in my memory as one moment ago.  As of today it was exactly one month ago.  So much has happened in a very short time.  My world is permanently changed and I am altered beyond what I can express with language.  If I never saw you again I would mourn that happening deeply.  Yet what has been awakened within me would remain as a permanent reminder that my heart is not yet dead as I had long thought it was.

How do I express the feelings growing inside me without seeming to be lost in some obvious state of delirium and euphoria?  My answer is “I can not”.  Science says the initial attraction between a man and woman creates a sort of partial insanity.  Then that explains it.  I am insane over you my darling and I revel in my madness.

How well I know that life never brings a path filled only with joy and delight.  To think things are so is a true hallucination.  I know what fills me now will be intertwined with challenge, trial and difficulty.  Am I a lunatic to think now that such moments can be borne with grace upon the back of the love I have discovered?  No.  I do not think I am crazy to think that. What is built in the future upon the rock of what we are sharing, can withstand most any force a human can bear.  Of that I am certain.

Yes, I dare speak of love knowing it has not been spoken between us so far.  Am I am a coward for writing here instead of looking into your eyes as the words are formed by my heart and released through my voice?  Maybe so, but my feelings are true.  I write because my poetic soul within is determined to use beautiful words to express itself.  The depths of my feelings demand I can do no less.

Yes, my sweet… I am in love…. with you.  As I write this letter I know as certainly as the moon will rise later tonight and the sun will follow in the morning, what is expressed here in pen and ink is dependable and true.   My restless soul seems to no longer be searching for something unknown for now the purpose of its quest has been found:  YOU!  Without confusion and with complete clarity I say again, I love you ______.   I speak first of what I am nearly certain is within you in like form.  With all my being I hope my perception is accurate!

What we are sharing is admirable and sincere.  Our enchantment is real.  Our bliss is genuine.  I know someday when we share the delight of our selves in physical form our delight will be heightened and multiplied beyond what I ever could have hoped for.  For now I am glad we have resisted what could have happened so easily.  It is a testament that we guard what has been discovered and so want only the best for the gift of love between us.  May we continue to take the time to build a love strong and lasting while resisting haste.

So please know my sweet darling you have touched me as I have never been touched before.  You have reached me on a deeper level than I thought possible.  It has been said by some that loving another makes them feel more complete, yet I question the accuracy of that.  I do not feel more complete by loving you, but I do feel richer and as if I have discovered so much more of myself through knowing you.  It is as if you were the light I needed in order to glimpse who I really am and all I can be.

After reading this letter, I wonder every minute until then how you will greet me when next we meet.  My heart vibrates with hope that you meet me then knowing you have found a match for what you hold inside for me.

I love you my darling,

__________

With much gratitude that I am able to do so, I wrote the above openly and without reservation.  The words traveled from mind to fingers to screen at the moments I thought them just as I thought them without editing.  No longer do I feel the need to hide away any element of my hapless romantic soul.  I no longer fear the real me within and instead here and now express my thankfulness again for it.

A day, a week, a month are past,
Another year is by;
Beside her on the open’d desk,
His old love letters lie.
She reads them till the day-light fades,
And ‘neath the moon-lit sky,
She sleeps at rest, for on her breast
Those old love letters lie.
Auguste Toulmouche

A Walk To Remember

/ James Browning

Jamie-Landon-A-Walk-to-Remember-nicholas-sparks-novels-and-movies-11160610-512-372

Writer and film producer Nicholas lost his sister to cancer and events in her life inspired him to write “A Walk To Remember”. The book was made into a movie I have not seen. However, the book touched this old hapless romantic’s heart.

“Do you love me?’ I asked her. She smiled. ‘Yes.’

‘Do you want me to be happy?’ as I asked her this I felt my heart beginning to race. ‘Of course I do.’

‘Will you do something for me then?’ She looked away, sadness crossing her features. ‘I don’t know if I can anymore.’ she said. ‘but if you could, would you?’

I cannot adequately describe the intensity of what I was feeling at that moment. Love, anger, sadness, hope, and fear, whirling together sharpened by the nervousness I was feeling. Jamie looked at me curiously and my breaths became shallower. Suddenly I knew that I’d never felt as strongly for another person as I did at that moment.

As I returned her gaze, this simple realization made me wish for the millionth time that I could make all this go away. Had it been possible, I would have traded my life for hers. I wanted to tell her my thoughts, but the sound of her voice suddenly silenced the emotions inside me.

‘Yes’ she finally said, her voice weak yet somehow still full of promise. ‘I would.’

Finally getting control of myself I kissed her again, then brought my hand to her face, gently running my fingers over her cheek. I marveled at the softness of her skin, the gentleness I saw in her eyes. even now she was perfect. My throat began to tighten again, but as I said, I knew what I had to do.

Since I had to accept that it was not within my power to cure her, what I wanted to do was give her something that she’d wanted. It was what my heart had been telling me to do all along. Jamie, I understood then, had already given me the answer I’d been searching for, the answer my heart needed to find.

She’d told me outside Mr. Jenkins office, the night we’d asked him about doing the play. I smiled softly, and she returned my affection with a slight squeeze of my hand, as if trusting me in what I was about to do.

Encouraged, I leaned closer and took a deep breath. When I exhaled, these were the words that flowed with my breath. ‘Will you marry me?” From “A Walk To Remember” by Nicholas Sparks

For a soul that is open enough to accept big love; for a heart that is strong enough to love with every fiber; and a mind that can get out of the way and let love soar… I am deeply grateful.

Love is like the wind,
you can’t see it
but you can feel it.
Nicholas Sparks

Someone Somewhere for Everyone

/ James Browning

Some say a hapless romantic is hopeless; always searching, but never finding. They believe an insatiable yearning for ‘someone else’ afflicts some people to the point they can never be fully content with one person. I believe they are wrong and there is at least one ‘someone’, somewhere for everyone. I find inspiration, hope and even joy in the possibility of what Tom Hiddleston wrote:

When I love someone’s character, over time I’ll see that personality, I love so much, shining through their eyes and fusing with their appearance, turning them in the most beautiful girl in the world.

It’s not about appearance, it’s about someone’s beautiful, amazing, wonderful, fantastic personality, you’ll see every time you look at her.

It’s about the fact that when you look in her eyes, you just feel home…

You forget all your problems, all your fears, you just feel safe, you feel like you’ve finally found a place where you belong…

A place you can spend an eternity, where you will spend an eternity, cause those enchanting, beautiful eyes will slow down time and make every second; looking in her beautiful eyes, right into her amazing personality, last more than a lifetime.

It’s about the fact that the whole world, the whole universe just looks so much more beautiful!

All of a sudden everything looks different and your heart will just start smiling.

That’s what love is all about… the moment someone you only “liked” before, changes into the most aesthetically pleasing girl in the world.

The moment you realize how blind you’ve been all those days, how you were living in a fake universe, never knowing that the only thing your life is all about, the only thing that keeps you smiling, was all the time right next to you.

I am grateful my youthful heart is still alive in this middle-aged body and capable of appreciating, even feeling joy, at just reading such words. Truly blessed am I to be so open to love.

My whole body sank forward into his arms.
His lips moved against mine, exploring my mouth so gently.
I tried to mimic his movements–slowly,
uncertainly, until I didn’t have to think about it at all.
It just felt right. He cupped his hands behind my head,
pulling me closer until I couldn’t tell where my mouth ended
and his began. A liquid sensation swooped throughout my stomach.
It was the most amazing thing I’d ever felt
and it kept growing,
the vibrating heat expanding outward.
I was surprised I was still able to stand.
Heather Anastasiu

Reposted from October 4, 2012 

Rare and Prescious

/ James Browning

forever-love-to-him-Favim_com-446327Good Morning Gratitu…

Borrowed from a post at http://www.rachaellay.com/blog/page/2/

I am Rachael Lay, and I am a whole-hearted believer in love. Self love, shared love and HOT love!

I do my core values at the start of every year, and at the top of the list is always the same core value: LOVE

I believe that when we return to love, anything is possible, and we can know ourselves and others with an intimacy that provides the strongest of life’s foundations.

I am a big believer in perseverance. I feel strongly about making the effort, about fighting for love, and moving away from the disposable thinking that too many people have about their marriage or partnership.

I believe my stand on these things comes from not only being a child from a family of multiple divorces and the chaos that followed, but also from having been divorced myself and then fighting for my next relationship, to get it to the amazing place it is today.

Love can be hard work, and a marriage or long-term relationship can be even tougher.

Melding your life with another person’s can be fraught with challenges, and yet it’s what so many of us yearn to do, and go out of our way to make happen.

We want love, we want to get coupled up, we want to have that person in our lives who we adore, who adores us, and who we can live happily ever after with.

Except it doesn’t always go that way.

Every day I work with people who feel like the dream has ended. They feel hurt, stuck, frustrated, out of love and ready to walk away. All the love they started out with seems to have faded, life has got in the way, and it’s usually only a last-ditch effort that brings them to me, to see if their relationship is worth saving.

Most of the time it is.
————————————————————————————————————–
Oh to know then what I know now and I might have not given up so easy on love in the past. But I promise the sky above, the Earth below and God’s wisdom in all things; given the change again I will fight and persevere for love. Gratefully I have learned how rare and precious it is.

As long as you faithfully love
and respect me
as your partner, lover, and friend…
I will always be there for you…
through good times and bad…
I will do everything I can
to help you have the life you’ve dreamed of.
I will love you above all others
until my last breath
and even afterward if God allows it.
James Browning

You Bring Me Joy (Still)

/ James Browning

Near two and a half years of daily posts now total near 900. Once in a while I skip back months or more to see what was was at the top of my thoughts then. Today I was curious about what was on my mind a year ago. This is what I found:

The years have not caused me to forget. Still there are remnants of feelings strong beyond explanation. You cracked me wide-open and I was never the same again.

Was it because you loved me so unwaveringly deep and passionately?

Was it because you were so exotic and intelligent that you were able to enter my heart so easily?

Was it because I filled your need to be loved?

Or you filled mine?

It was all these things and a hundred more. There was a time we found ‘home’ in each other’s arms.

Once in a great while a feeling of loneliness for you, and you only, still touches down to the quick of my heart. Always I smile with hope that you are well and happy. You married in your 30’s and our contact appropriately stopped not too longer after.

Maybe my memory has elevated what we shared to a fantasy beyond fact. Although our love covered a lot of years it was not long when measured in the actual length of time we spent together. But in weight of what was shared we took a trip around the world.

Times change.
People move on.
Some grow together.
Some grow apart.

Some like us knew each other at the wrong time. I was still a boy in a man’s body pretending he knew what he wanted and needed. I pushed you away because I was afraid to be cared about as much as you loved me.

Hidden away safely, even for the time being from myself, is the only physical memory I have of you: the gift you gave me of a small music box shaped like a heart with a beautiful photo of  you inside. It will go to my safe deposit box once I find it again.

I will always be grateful that once I knew you and for the space you occupy in my memories. The pain has long evaporated and today only a sweet memory remains. There has been no greater love in my life. I’m grateful that whenever I hear Anita Baker singing you always come to mind…

If I can’t see your face,
I will remember that smile
’Cause you’re the finest thing
I’ve seen in all my life.
You bring me joy.
From Anita Baker’s song “You Bring Me Joy” by David Lasley

Doorway to a More Brilliant Reality

/ James Browning

romeo-and-juliet

I used to think Romeo and Juliet was the greatest love story ever written. But now that I’m middle-aged, I know better. Oh, Romeo certainly thinks he loves his Juliet. Driven by hormones, he unquestionably lusts for her. But if he loves her, it’s a shallow love.

You want proof? Soon after meeting her for the first time, he realizes he forgot to ask her for her name. Can true love be founded upon such shallow acquaintance? I don’t think so.

And at the end, when he thinks she’s dead, he finds no comfort in living out the remainder of his life within the paradigm of his love, at least keeping alive the memory of what they had briefly shared, even if it was no more than illusion, or more accurately, hormonal.

Yes, those of us watching events unfold from the darkness know she merely lies in slumber. But does he seek the reason for her life-like appearance? No. Instead he accuses Death of amorousness, convinced that the ‘lean abhorred monster’ endeavors to keep Juliet in her present state, cheeks flushed, so that she might cater to his own dissolute desires.

But does Romeo hold her in his arms one last time and feel the warmth of her blood still coursing through her veins? Does he pinch her to see if she might awaken? Does he hold a mirror to her nose to see if her breath fogs it? Once, twice, three times a ‘no.’

His alleged love is so superficial and so selfish that he seeks to escape the pain of loss by taking his own life. That’s not love, but infatuation. Had they wed ― Juliet bearing many children, bonding, growing together, the masks of the star-struck teens they once were long ago cast away, basking in the love born of a lifetime together ― and she died of natural causes, would Romeo have been so moved to take his own life, or would he have grieved properly for her loss and not just his own. J. Conrad Guest

Clearly I remember at sixteen going with my friend David to see Franco Zeffirelli’s movie “Romeo and Juliet”. My young heart swooned at what I then thought was a magnificent love to be admired. Heartbreak, grief, contentment and joy have conspired together to teach me how foolish Shakespeare’s characters would have been in real life.

Love should be a bit foolish, irrational and even unwise, but not simplistically childish like I now perceive Romeo and Juliet in the story told of them. Beautiful tale, but a horrible example of love in real life. I still believe in the magic more than ever but not how portrayed in the Shakespearean story. In coming to my present point of view, I am grateful for every heartache and beautiful moment loving ever brought me. Such feelings have been my tutors of the truths of love.

It is having once believed in fairy tales, then seeing beyond them while retaining their essence that has given my heart its ability to love best in the real world.

The fairy tale is not the conclusion,
but the doorway to a more brilliant reality.
Pushed onto a pedestal as the final answer
their worth is misshapen and distorted.
Natalie Nyquist

Love At Whatever Age

/ James Browning

artlimited_img289562

Romantic Love has been described as… intense emotional experiences such as increased energy, euphoria, obsessive thinking about the loved one, feelings of dependency and craving. When people are ‘in love’ they may feel as if they have uncovered the meaning of life. People often report feeling complete and that their life feels whole.

Bronte superbly captured the experience in Wuthering Heights: ‘‘I am Heathcliff – he’s always, always in my mind – not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself – but, as my own being.” The arts continue to be consumed by efforts to describe and understand romantic love.

The book by Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera, is but one example of a story illustrating the power of enduring love, where a couple fall in love in their youth, go their separate ways during midlife and return to one another’s arms in their old age. Michael Hogan, Ph.D

Ah, ha! So there is yet hope for me! Now some random facts about people and love:

The age-group most likely to find love abroad is the over-sixties. Almost 10 per cent of holiday romances lead to wedding bells.

Engagement rings are often worn on the fourth finger of the left hand because the ancient Greeks maintained that finger contains the vena amoris, or the “vein of love,” that runs straight to the heart. The first recorded wedding rings appear in ancient Egypt, with the circle representing eternity as well as powerful sun and moon deities.

A four-leaf clover is often considered good luck, but it is also part of an Irish love ritual. In some parts of Ireland, if a woman eats a four-leaf clover while thinking about a man, supposedly he will fall in love with her.

Plato asserts in his Symposium that initially all humans were whole, hermaphroditic beings with four hands, four legs, two identical faces on one head/neck, four ears, and both sets of genitals. When these beautiful, strong beings tried to overthrow the gods, Zeus split them into two—man and woman— and created the innate desire of human beings for one another to feel whole again.

Scientists suggest that merely staring into another person’s eyes is a strong precursor to love. In an experiment, strangers of the opposite sex were put in a room together for 90 minutes where they talked about intimate details and then stared into each other’s eyes without talking. Many felt a deep attraction for each other, and two married each other six months later.

To remain in love for a lifetime, therapists advise couples to listen actively to your partner, ask questions, give answers, appreciate, stay attractive, grow intellectually, include your partner, give him/her privacy, be honest and trustworthy, tell your mate what you need, accept his/her shortcomings, give respect, never threaten to leave, say “no” to adultery, don’t assume the relationship will last forever, and cultivate variety.

While living life alone is something I have become accustomed to, I grateful to still daydream about lasting romantic love coming into my life. Until the day I die and beyond, I will remain open to true love; not driven to it… but open to the possibility.

The human heart, at whatever age,
opens to the heart that opens in return.
Maria Edgeworth