OT:Love leter from DeCav to the Mrs on her birthday!

[DeCav]

Dear wife Lisa,
First of all let me wish you a heartfelt and sincere HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
At this point I'm not sure where around the world this post might take you. You have been my best friend ever since the night we met chatting on Yahoo Personals 16 years ago. I wish more than anything those words had been preserved in a time capsule like a diary that we could go back and read today.
I recall having had to deal with people with very thin skin and sensitive egos when we started chatting and I started to feel stirrings for your sense of humor, your ability to make me feel comfortable, and the lovely pictures of yourself you'd email me everyday. I still have them and still look at them. You're as lovely today as you were back then. Even more so! And the more I liked you the more afraid I was. afraid that you wouldn't understand what loquacious, bloviating, sarcastic kind or arrse hole you were dealing with. But I leaned into it a bit folks. I went after what I aimed to be my honey pie! I wanted to see if she had a thick NorthCarolina skin on her or if she was one of them thinned skinned ego-centric folks I'd been introduced to before as real sandlapper women. Well she let me know real quick what she thought about my witt and cleverness and what she could do with it (Which is tie a cherry stem in a not with her tongue yes sir! all you twits who came before me but did not worship at the alter of Lisa) She was a Carlolina woman through and through!!
The most difficult part about us dating across state lines for more than six months was having to be without you Monday through Thursday nights every week. Of course I'd drive up Friday after work so we got to be with each other Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Then I'd drive back to South Carolina. Some Sunday nights we stayed up talking for so long that I'd just drive straight to work from North Carolina and just pull up to the plant in upstate SC and clock in for what I knew was going to be a lovestruck zombie dream of a workshift.
It was truly a special time and an exercise in patience all week long only being able to talk on the phone with you or chat or email with you. One thing that would pop into my mind from time to time during those long weeks without you was a poem my English teacher read us in the 12th grade. The poem has to do with two lovers who cannot physically be with each other but nonetheless have a stronger bond than other lovers who are with each other. Stoic is the best word I can use to describe this poem's theme and mood.
The enjoyment of this poem rests in it's dissection.

John Donne's "A Valediciton: forbidding mourning"
Valediction: the act of saying parting words whether brief or extensive.

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
The meaning behind the first two stanzas of the poem have to do with whether or not we protest the leaving or absence of the people we love.
At this point it occurs to me to write out some lyrics to a song about a father on his deathbed...

Take away my pain
Leave the cold outside
Please don't let it rain
Don't stumble on my pride

There is a great stoicism expressed in those lines meant to be those of a man on his death bed to his loved ones. Basically he is saying, "this is hard enough for me to leave this life without the weight of your sorrow and tears weighing on me also. Lift me up! Not down."

The author of the poem means to express that virtuous men who are dying need not make a fuss and need not fight the enevitable and enexorable. There need not be floods of tears and sighs and audible mourning from the friends and loved ones because the author feels it profanes the divine love felt between the loved and the soon to be departed.

The last two lines of the stanza are meant to express the futility of trying to explain to another person how much you really truly love the one who you will be away from. The profanation of our joys to tell the laity of our love, the laity referring to the people outside of the bond you share with that person and the pointlessness of trying to put into words what they mean to you. The author feels it's almost a betrayal of the love to try and put it into words, the wordless love being all powerful and divine and what matters most.


Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
You see? Platetechtonics, earthquakes, mother earth asserting it's will?
We as hapless flies just flittering about on Mother Earth's Sphere. We're just ants wondering when the next boot will fall and where. Like Countries or States or Teams. right? And we see all the floods or sandstorms as mere playthings of the God. All the while smarter minds than us are trying to assess our place in what we shall for lack of a better word just call our one wonderful universe!
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Meanwhile we think we understand the linguistics of our forebearers. we only think we discern it folks....trepidation??? We think we're intelligent if we define it as a sort of fear I suppose, trepidation an uncertainness???

BUT!
BUT!
ho, no, the old astonomical definition of the trepidation of the sphere thing....it took own it's own life! The trepidation does not mean fear your neighbors, no, no, trepidation means a procession from one culture to another, you feel me?? trepidation means literally re allignement with the stars. seriously you guys who think i'm looney: look up trepidation on wikipedia.org It has a Whole other astrological or astronimixcal or whatever Brian May calls it becuase he's my true guitar hero and the person I'm probably least likely to ever meet although I have unending questions about the recording tapes for Jazz and News Of The World. Freddie we miss you dear! Please Lord let this post find its way to a surviving member of queen so I can die a happy American man.

Did you guys see what just happened there? Because I'm pretty damned sure Mr. May is watching it. While we're all focused on this one little message, again I'll highlight just in case you missed it:

But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

uh, err...maahhh....I think what he's getting on about is you know. The planets just keep goin round the sun. Yay us! RIGHT? and no big deal because everything seems innocent enough right?


Dull sublunary lovers' love
Oh the poor sub luminary souls who thought they needed a hearvest moon to light thier way when all they needed to do was follow the love in their hearts!
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it

Because two lovers are parted does not mean that there love is still not whole........

IT IS.

How is this not so? That's what that whole passage is about. I cannot admit absence because to admit it admits that I do not exsist. Bullcrap. I'm here and I still and always will love you!

Notice the ellagant use of the word "elemented" that the original author intended. It's easy to substitute the word "eliminated" for "elemented" but let your mind wander for a bit on the elemented side rather than the "eliminated" side of that conversation... those enlightenened minds will find the journey a worthy one.



But we by a love so much refined,
That our selves know not what it is,


what a perfect statement of true love. by guilding it with gold and trinckets and cheap $5 anniverasary cards. We don't even comprehend that what we have together can never ever be captured by words or cards or flowers or songs or silver or gold or any of those things which the Good Lord will not let us take with us to heaven No, it's all within our hearts



Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Inter-assured of the mind, it bears repeating. Together with the next line it literally means if I had not the eyes to see you with, if had not these lips to kiss you with, if not I had these hands to hold in yours in your times of need. I would still love you with no less passion than I already do!
All of that is said in the above two lines written centuries before I was born.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
AYE! Now you're speaking my language. Because we're talking about pounding gold. Pounding it so thin it might be planck-length high yet infinitely wide.........this gets sort of quantem physics on you https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/w ... cle.96380/
But basically what this bloke was saying was look....you and I....(a queen song I might add)...anyway this bloke was saying, "Look, you and I we're gonna be separated whether we likeitRnot certainly by space and indeed by time in some cases...look we've got this thread running through the whole thing. This golden thread that has strung it along all together all these years My love! So no matter what kind of wiles space and time have for us we'll always have each other! In each other's hearts. And that's better than any physical love that can be had between two earthy lovers. Because the love we share, it does not wax or wane with the rising or the falling of the tides. It is not dependant upon on the winter or summer solstice. Our love has as little to do with the last president's tweet or the last siesmic reading around the globe as it has to do with the twinkling and wonderous night sky. Our love is just what it is...Our Love. And no matter how far apart we are physically to each other, the gossimer gold leif that gets hammered ever so thin between us is still golden and whole.



If they be two, they are two so

In other words...if you and I Lisa saw us as two separate souls then we would be seeing ourselvse as less than what we are which is one.
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.
Yes and to my most beloved part of the poem and truly the only part of this poem that leant me enough google terms to even ever find it again
To truly appreciate the metophorical themes at play here, just simple imagine a compass needle squarely (ironic language isnt it?)...but squarely in the middle of the page while the other arm of the compass draws lovely arcs and circles all about the center which in this analogy is of course Lisa Stubbs.
The most precious of moments for me because it is the perfect marriage of geometry and love. The Compass by which the author speaks is not a magnetic one! But rather a geometric tool used oddly enough by astrologers and see-goers. You see it is the type of compass one uses to describe a perfect circle of a radius of 1 unit.
And you see Lisa and I are but two arms of the same compass, she always the steady foot, always the center.
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
If one or the other of us strays from center the arms yet lean towards each other as if in a longing desire to embrace one another again.
And grows erect, as that comes home.
ummmmm.....well yeah! THAT! Yeah world!!!

take that from John Donne!

gee it seems these two arms of the compass come in pretty close contact and yes (in my best marland brando voice) sparks do tend to fly! fireworks happen. Certain...things....as John put it "grows erect". Listen all you sensitive people these are the words of the original Donne himself folks! It don't get more real than this.,,,Donne is commemorated as a priest in the calendar of the Church of England and in the Calendar of Saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on 31 March. He passed in March 1631. Damn shame we lost so many great artists to time. Donne, Freddie, James Brown, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jerry Garcia...and so many more

but anyway, where were we? OH YEAH! ERECT THINGS! Which led to $5,000 babies I kid you not you little bugger your better give your old dad the creds he deserves for getting your arrse this far!! The rest of the credit goes to your mum and the $5,000 she had saved up just to have the surgery that would make yer sweet little arrse even possible. But give it up for me sailors! Aye! They got the job done and got it done quick I tell you!

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
And here I shall define the word obliquely thus: Having a slanting or sloping direction, course, or position; inclined.

Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

Lisa, no matter how many silly spins I take, no matter how many inane drawings I may make on your giant spin art of a life machine, just know that at the center of it is where it all begins and where it will all end. With you Lisa! Happy Birthday and I love you!!! And you want to give me a special birthday well a fireplace guitar signed by Brian May himself would be about as good as a father or husband could ask for. That is if he were puttin earthly possessions above ones that deal souly with the heart. In that case, I just want a hung. (And seriously Brian May if you're listening somewhere around the world..........)
Nah, but it's all about LIsa! And the many things I did wrong right from the start and the things I still get wrong to this day. But I'm still trying. Let me just have this one day to show the world how much I love you Lisa!

And just so this doesn't go unnoticed by everyone on planet earth. This is the education an AVERAGE Dorman High School student got back in the late 80's. And one who didn't even go to college. Seriously Rebels, Vikings, Indians, I know your academic programs are all that but what district other than district 6 spat out a DeCav. So all I'm saying is yeah if you're a Cavlier then you might win it all this Saturday! But even if it's not in the cards, that Cavalier education always will be in your deck. Folks, there's worse high schools to send your young shakepeares to than Dorman High School.

[EHSMeanGreen]

Happy Birthday to Lisa!

[DeCav]

She's pretty sore at me for staying up all night writing her a love letter. Oh well, time to get the Linseed oil heated up!