You are not like every cliché repeated often till meaning dies

You are like brilliant truth, revealing my weakness for your body

You are not like a rose whose fragrance and guarded beauty is oft repeated

You are like the smell of a thousand pines calling and seducing me to lay in your arms

You are not like an angel whose wings carried you to me from afar

Your are like mischievous devils whose temptations take me from fantasy to reality

You are not like a song, a tune sung over and over, children clapping their hands

You are like the sounds of waves, crashing your sexuality over my beaches

You are not like gentle swans, perfect beauty so many times compared

You are like violent lightning, striking the lies of men and melting my soul to yours

You not like the ordinary and common seen on every poet’s page

You are like the grandeur of space, possessing the beginning and ending of my life

Photo Credits

 The Microsoft Office Clip Art Collection

First written in opinionsofeye.com

Guest Author Bio

Drew Sager
Words. Deep thoughts. Eccentric. Madness. Lover. Dark. Music. Melancholic. Beaches. Guitars. Addict. Primal. Curious.

I’m an apologist and an apostate. I’ve been knocked down, way down, and fought my way back up, way up. I’ve been an advocate of peace and a destroyer of the same, in a word, I am dichotomy. A battle of polar opposites.

Blog / Website: http://www.opinionsofeye.com/

You Are Not is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Have you ever heard the sound of a vehicle approaching and known instantly who it was?

It was one of the hottest mornings I had experienced in the summer months of July in a very long time, and the nervousness, anxiety and excitement filled only my being it seemed, because the world outside was calm. I could hear the others starting to slowly move about, getting ready for our day together. I lay there listening to the crackle of the fire, spending those last moments of this morning watching my children sleep peacefully and then I could hear him approaching.

I instantly lost focus. My heart started beating faster, so fast it was more of a rapid flutter than a beat at all and felt my face flush. I had spent hours in that truck to know what the sound of it would be like, and he had returned like promised before the day had even begun. We had spoken previous to his leaving about his prior business commitments and he promised he would take care of what he needed to and return immediately. I sat up. The other women began their preparations for the day. The smell of sage began to fill the tipi and the low murmur of the camp fully awake now was able to be heard. Frequent laughter surrounding us all, but all I could hear was his truck. Now let me explain. This was no time to lose focus, more than any other situation in my life this was the moment I needed to have my head on straight and my thoughts clear. Somehow in that haze of a fluttering heart and loss of concentration I was more focused than ever before.

I began to wake my children up; “Bella, Nate, it’s time to get up and get ready” and they both shot up out of sleep, filled with excitement. Looking around the tipi, we all were spread out much like the blankets are for a giveaway ceremony, each of us in our precise spot with our things surrounding us. Shawls, dresses, towels hung up on the tipi poles and our bins of what we deemed as necessary next to us. There wasn’t much talking, each of us getting dressed and preparing for the day, helping one another if asked, my thoughts booming although my voice remained silent. Ringing out loudly in my head “maybe it isn’t him, it is too far of a drive for him to be here already, he must have driven all night.” Could it be true? I mean seriously was this happening, I had never had this kind of support in my life from someone, no one has ever made what I thought to be of the utmost importance, to be just as important to them and here I sit listening to this truck approaching trying to talk myself out of this reality. It wasn’t just that he made my heart go pitter patter; it wasn’t just that he made my skin flush, it was deeper than that. It was that he believed in me and what I was doing and the reasons behind my reasoning. He gave me confidence to make up my mind on the suffering and he promised me when I made that decision he would be right there to support me. I sat there for a while, helping my children get dressed, watching the other women take care of what they needed too, contemplating what the day would bring us all, but never once did I lose that sound.

Finally the truck shut off, it didn’t make a difference I already knew that with that sound brought my source of confidence, my hope at true love. I prolonged stepping out of the tipi as long as I could, taking time with each movement I made and being exact and purposeful with each thought and prayer I began. When I could no longer avoid facing the new day, my reality, the truth of not just this moment but also the early morning sun, I took a deep breath walked towards the door and stepped out into the beginning of a new me. Once outside the tipi I looked around and watched the dragonflies as they had already begun dancing for the day, slowly moving my eyes toward where I knew he would be. Although I should not have been surprised when confirming that the sound I had heard was him, I still was. My heart fluttered again and my face flushed at the sight of the truck and within that truck a promise had been kept and was being fulfilled and the only real confirmation I needed for all of this was the ability to hear a familiar sound.

Photo Credits

Tipis – The Microsoft Office Clip Art Collection
Dragon Fly – Creative Commons
Article Thumbnail – Dragon Fly Site

First Morning is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

The list of health benefits that chocolate provides is long, but the reason we associate it with Valentine’s Day is that it contains a natural substance which triggers the same reaction in the body as falling in love.

Raw cacao is particularly good for us because in its purest, whole food form it contains no added sugar, emulsifiers or dairy. Cacao is noted to have very high levels of magnesium, which perhaps explains why women crave chocolate during their menstrual cycles, as magnesium balances brain chemistry and combats depression. Raw cacao is also purported to contain 28 times more heart-protecting, cancer-fighting antioxidants than black tea.

Now let’s talk bliss! Cacao contains a chemical called anandamide, otherwise known as “the bliss chemical” so named because our brain also releases this chemical when we’re feeling good. A small dose of raw cacao may help us hang on to that blissful feeling just a little longer. Beautiful!

This Spiced Love Potion is sexy smooth and will infuse your body and spirit with warmth and wellness. A little goes a long way! Serve it at room temperature in martini glasses as a romantic pre-dinner (alcohol-free) intoxicant.

Spiced Love Potion
(for two)

• 1/4 cup hemp seeds
• 25 organic almonds (about 1/4 cup)
• 1/4 cup raw cacao nibs
• 1 1/2 cup spring water
• 2 whole cloves
• 1/2 a cinnamon stick + 2 for garnish
• 2 cardamom pods
• 2 quarter-sized slices of fresh ginger root
• 5 medjool dates, pitted
• 1 small vanilla pod or 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Soak the almonds and hemp seeds in purified water for at least an hour. Drain in a fine sieve.

In a blender, starting on low. blend all ingredients except the dates and the vanilla. Work the blender speed up to high and blend until creamy smooth.

Drain again in a fine sieve. You may need to use a spoon to help drain the “milk” through. Save the pulp in a bowl and set aside.

Rinse out the blender and pour the almond and hemp mixture back in. Blend with the dates and vanilla until creamy smooth.

Pour into two martini glasses and garnish with a stick of cinnamon.

*You can make the pulp into a creamy dairy-free spiced cacao ice-cream by stirring in 2 or 3 Tbsp of agave nectar and a tsp of vanilla extract and freezing!

Photo Credit

Photo By Moira Nordholt – All Rights Reserved

First Published At Feel Good Guru

A Love Potion For Two is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

It’s Valentine’s Day. Love and lust are warming the air with lilts of dark chocolate and whispers of expensive champagne. Can kissing be very far behind? Today is the launch day of the Canada Kiss Map, an inspired creation of writer, creative process facilitator, and my friend, Chris Fraser.

As big brilliant ideas often begin, this one started small in her home town of Toronto. With her love of story and words as the seed, Chris set out to create a garden for lovers across the city to map and share in words and photos their first kisses, their best kisses, and, with bittersweetness, their farewell kisses. The project was embraced wholeheartedly by Toronto’s lovers and lip service proved to be rampant from Etobicoke to Scarborough.

The Canada Kiss Map is like GPS for lovers: nationwide access to the best spots north of the 49th Parallel for a passionate French kiss or a shy and tentative peck on the cheek. My kissing spot? First date, blues dancing at Swan’s Brew Pub in Victoria. The music was hot, the dance was sensual. At the end of a song our lips met. Ah, scintillating.

Check out my kiss story at www.canadakissmap.com and make your lip print too. You never know where romance lives.

Photo Credit

Couple Kissing on Cobblestone from Microsoft Office Clipart

Pucker Up Canada! is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

I have no particular sentimental attachments to Valentine’s Day. It conjures up memories of the second grade at Condon Elementary school in 1955, and an empty envelope taped to the front of my desk because none of those kids who brought in silly cheap cartoon valentines had addressed one to me. To my recollection, only once have I received an affectionate valentine that might possibly have been a genuine expression of love. I never found out for certain who sent it.

In February of 1969, when I was living in a shared student apartment and had zero romance in my life, the mail brought me a fancy commercial valentine, signed “Guess who”, that contained a tiny gold colored key and the message: “This is the key to my heart: in one month the lock will be changed.” I asked every suspect, but no one admitted to sending it.

I now wonder if it was from my father, who had a fine-honed sense of humor. At twenty I rarely communicated with my family. In later years we became reconciled, and going through his papers after his death I realized he loved me much more than he was ever able to express. My own daughter is now grown. I love her, and I make a point of telling her so, in words and in my actions. I tell other people I love them and don’t worry about being thought sentimental or insincere. At least that’s better than casting a genuine expression of love upon the waters, and never being suspected of being the author of it.

Photo Credit

Image From – The Microsoft Office Clip Art Collection

Key To My Heart is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

In my early twenties I went through a devastating break up around Christmas and was still reeling when February rolled around. I made it through a particularly bleak Valentine’s Day with no word from secret admirers, invisible friends, or my Ex whom, for all intents and purposes, had quite happily moved on.

That spring I was riding my bicycle into town and noticed an acquaintance of my Ex standing on the corner. He was a slightly older, New Age kind of guy with a live-in girlfriend who burned incense and wore colorful hand knitted socks from Nepal.

He was waving at me to stop. I hadn’t seen him since before my break up and I pulled over to the sidewalk. He told me that he had been sorry to hear about the split and that he had something for me. He’d been carrying it around for weeks, hoping to bump into me. With a grin, he opened up his backpack and pulled out a gnarled rice paper envelope with my name on it. “For you,” he said. “Have a good life,” he called as he walked away.

He had made me a Valentine’s card, and it meant the world to me. It was decorated with a collage of exotic postage stamps and red and black calligraphy. Inside he’d copied out a pithy little quote from Confucius expressing something about inner light. Apparently he had been concerned about my well being.

I bumped into him outside a grocery store some 20 years later. He wasn’t panhandling; he was just standing there passing time. We went to the restaurant across the street and caught up. The years since our last meeting had taken a toll on him. He was craggy looking, his face was deeply lined and it looked like he’d been having a struggle with substance abuse issues, maybe he’d even had a stint or two on the streets. I didn’t pry. He and his old girlfriend were having a long distance relationship, he said, now that she was working on her Doctorate back East.

When we parted I thanked him for his kindness and empathy, and for making me that card at a time when I had needed one most. “No problem,” he answered, “I knew you’d be happy.”

Photo Credit

Crop From ‘Calligrafie, Jan Van De Velde (1605)’ – Public Domain

It’s the Thought that Counts is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

” A kiss is just a kiss; a smile is just a smile” as the song goes. So many kisses, a short kiss, a long passionate kiss, a peck, the kiss of death. ” Kiss me and smile for me tell me that you’ll wait for me.” Will you? Or am I going to get the kiss of death from you?

If a kiss was what you were waiting for why didn’t you just do it! Like the ad reads ” just do it!” Pull me into your body and hold my neck in your hands and put it right there, give me a kiss, a long luxurious wet kiss! I watched Humphrey Bogart kiss Lauren Bacall like that in a movie once and it was palpable; the feeling the emotion the tenderness and lust in their eyes. I felt the same way when Jimmy Stewart finally grabbed Donna Reed in It’s a Wonderful Life. It was like someone had let the air out of a balloon. Thank God they finally kissed and boy oh boy what a kiss!

I won’t kiss and tell will you? So many kisses so little time. There are big kisses and little kisses, chocolate covered kisses, air kisses and hungry passionate kisses. There are kisses filled with revenge as men kiss not once but three times and quietly plot each others demise.

One kiss can make it real, sent through the mail or email or twitter or on Facebook, now it’s gone viral this kiss. A kiss can betray you or give you goose bumps. It can make you angry or fill you with love.

Once upon a time nobody kissed in public. That is it seems a thing of the past, and now people are not shy and kiss anywhere at anytime. But what about the mystery, the lust the passion that drove you quietly insane as you waited for the right moment the right time to plant that kiss. Just one kiss on the lips can and often does seal the future making you the one and only ‘real deal’!

Photo Credit

Humphrey Bogart kiss Lauren Bacall – Public Domain

Guest Author Bio

Martha Farley
My name is Martha Farley and I am a Daycare Technician at the Lester B. Pearson School Board. I am also a freelance writer. I have had several articles published in the Montreal Gazette and the West Island Gazette as well as a story published in an anthology celebrating the 100th anniversary of Pointe Claire.

Follow Martha: Facebook

A Kiss is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Valentine’s Day, as corny as it may sound, is my wedding anniversary. I figured with all the hearts and cupids around at that time of year my husband was bound to remember it. Sorry to disappoint all you romantics out there this was not a sentimental gesture, but a totally practical one on my part. Well, it worked, because without any prompting we celebrate every year with either a weekend away, a candle lit dinner at home, or a night out. One year we even went to a marriage enrichment weekend complete with covenant certificate. And when we returned home we had a little ceremony where our teenagers signed it. It was our way of renewing our vows and binding our family together a little more.

As I think back on our Wedding day I’m glad it was on February 14. I could never top that year’s valentine revelry at the summit of the tallest building in Calgary; and what a gift – a partner that’s still my mate for life.

The honeymoon to follow was wonderful and we got to meet other honeymooners who had the same Valentine Wedding date. We exchanged contact information on that California honeymoon with those new friends from Beatrice Nebraska and kept in touch for a lot of years. But over time our letters and cards dwindled. I think of them and their baseball playing brood that came along later and raise my glass to toast those two and all the other couples who had the brilliant idea to claim Valentine’s Day as their Anniversary.

Photo Credit:

©Moira Gardner

Valentine’s Anniversaries is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

February 14th – Valentine’s Day comes in the middle of a month that for many people feels like the apex of winter. There is still an urge to hibernate and withdraw from the world with only a few brief glances out the window to check on the progress of spring bulbs. In a way, this quasi holiday is perfectly timed. Whether single, dating, married, widowed or divorced, it is a fabulous time to take stock of those around you – the one’s you love and those who love you. Once, when I was single and feeling sadly alone, I took refuge in Shakespeare’s Love Sonnet 18. I dramatically recited it to my cat after which he sat on my lap and I ate some lovely dark chocolate.

So, if you are looking for that perfect love poem, you need look no further than best-known of the 154 sonnets written by the Bard.

Love Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

An arranged marriage between a Canadian man and an Indian woman turns out to be a strong love match.

My wife Baljeet and I had an arranged marriage on April 1st, 2007. That’s right, April Fools Day! Apparently, it was the only day my Dad could book both the reception hall and the Gurdwara for the actual ceremony on the same day.

Oh, and it gets better — the first time we met was our engagement, two weeks before the wedding. I remember our parents continually asking us if we were sure about what were agreeing to, that we could back out if we wanted to. So it wasn’t forced on us.

The story begins when my dad had arrived in India in February of 2007. I was planning on joining him for the last few weeks of the trip. But the first few days he was there, he met Baljeet and her family through relatives. And then I received the call:

Dad: Jeff, I need to talk to you about something.

Me: (nervously) Your car had that dent way before I dropped you off at the airport.

Dad: No, no not about anything like that. Son, there is someone here I would like you to meet.

Me: Really?

Dad: No pressure. I have just recently met her and her family and I think she would be a good fit for you. But like I said, it is up to the both of you whether or not you want to go through with it.

Me: Well, since there is no pressure, there is no problem from me. What else is there to do in India other than get married? (I said this hoping for a laugh.)

Dad: (not getting the joke) There are plenty of things to do here, but something inside of me just felt that it was my responsibility to introduce the two of you. After speaking to her, I just know that the two of you would get along great.

I am going to cut in here: My Dad and I are polar opposites but I have always respected his judgment. So when he tells me that he has good feeling in his gut about a situation, I will go with his gut everyday of the week and twice on Sundays.

To continue conversation:

Me: Sounds good to me. We will talk more about it when I get there.

Dad: Good, now what is this about a dent in my car?

But what sealed it for me was the first conversation I had with Baljeet. My mom insisted that we both take some time to talk to each other before we decided. The two families had met at Baljeet’s cousin’s home, and so she and I walked up stairs to the roof where we could over look the village and talk.

I still remember she was wearing a traditional Punjabi women dress, a salwar kameez, which was royal blue with pink highlights. (I, meanwhile, was wearing brown Gap jeans, blue New Balance causal shoes and a green shirt – just a natural Casanova).

But Baljeet wouldn’t talk, other than giving yes or no answers. So I talked about myself, which I enjoy doing. I talked about how long it had been since I last was in India (21 years) and that I was enjoying myself (I wasn’t, at least in regards to the living accommodations) and asked if she was ready for what we were about to do. Instead of saying yes or no, she just smiled and looked at the ground, probably wondering why I was wearing blue shoes with brown pants.

I didn’t need any other confirmation. People ask me all the time how I knew she was the one when we had only met once before we were married. The honest answer is that I didn’t know until she smiled at me at that moment. Sometimes it is the non-verbal that speaks a thousand words, and that smile is only something I could see and understand. If you ask me to explain it, I can’t. The words I speak will never do justice to the way I felt at that moment. All I knew was that she was the one.

So, to make a long story short, everyone is happy and we get married. One year of talking on the phones and a trip by me for our anniversary then led to Baljeet joining me in Canada. The Canadian kid who doesn’t like Indian food or movies but who loves ice hockey and steak with potatoes marries the Indian Desi girl who is a vegetarian and is self professed to be “Cricket Crazy”.

I can understand our story may not be anything special or romantic to anyone else, but for us it couldn’t be more perfect. I always believed that the love grows stronger as we learn more about each other. For the first couple of years it was an adjustment, learning to live with each other and recognizing each other’s habits. But every day we have a new story to remind each other how strong our relationship has grown since that first day we met.

A couple of years ago, Baljeet and I watched a Punjabi movie called Tera Mera ki Rishta, which a love story similar to ours about a Canandian born boy falling in love with a Indian girl while he visiting India with his family. Since then, once in a while, especially after I have done something to annoy her, I like to sneak up behind Baljeet and whisper softly in her ear “Tera mere ki rishta?” which, translated into simple terms, means “what’s our relationship?”

Without fail, Baljeet will always turn around, hug me and whisper in my ear, “The world’s best relationship,”

With those words, all is forgiven.

At least until the next time I leave my work clothes on the closet floor

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Photo Credits

“Love” Theopholis @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

Tera Mera Ki Rishta (What is Our Relationship?) is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN