your one hundred valentines.

from the archive: compensations for those who feel ill-prepared for the privileges of living

Feb 14, 2025

dear little voice,

i have never understood the fashionable cynicism that clouds Valentine’s Day, or why we seem to associate ‘intellectualism’ with a kind of cynicism toward succour and gentleness.

it is easy to roll eyes and toss out words like Hallmark and naïveté.

what takes real strength is taking any directive, no matter how small, or cliche, to be gentle and kind.

so: in addition to next week’s letter, i would like to tuck something from the archives in your pocket.

so: do something beautiful for someone today.

so: i would like every day to be Valentine’s Day.

so: pick the rose. eat the chocolate. tell someone you love them.

while you still have time.

love,

ars poetica.

dear little voice,

they arrived today. with your name written on the front.

we weren’t sure whether we could leave them outside.

the man on the television said it might rain.

and the dog was barking.

and they wouldn’t fit beneath the door.

i’m just glad they could find you in time:

the first minutes by an open fire after stepping inside from the cold, spent re-learning the shape of your body
cats’ perceptions of daily trivialities
the wind and how we never see it
delicate words like wings and tea
how fields’s secrets emerge in quiet flowers
the private comfort of reading a children’s book to no audience
the sight of a bird escaping, finally, through an open window
your thumb finally breaking the skin of an orange
the shock of lightning in the night and the arms that pull you closer.
the private, innocent pleasures of nakedness in clean sheets
Alessandra Sanguinetti. From 'Some Say Ice'. Fawn.
the sudden magnitude of all feelings felt by the ocean
the fact that somewhere it is snowing on a beach
the lines in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof when Brick’s father says “life is important. there’s nothing else to hold onto.”
the way the stars show up every night without asking
breakfast for dinner
the distinct melodrama of airports
the moment felt walking alone in the dark when something illuminates and you realise that it exists not just in stories: that moonlight is real.
walking alone when the street lamps begin to turn on, one by one, just for you. the feeling that your legs could take you anywhere. into any moment. into any life.
the way people all over the world keep showing up and reading these letters
the way trees are always available to listen
Anvar Norov, Swan.
the unnecessary persistence of flowers in winter
the elderly men who still put on their suspenders and shirt ties to go grocery shopping
how German neuroscientist Onur Güntürkün spent two years around airports, railway stations, parks and beaches, watching people kissing. he recorded 124 "scientifically valid kisses."
the ease of July
the haste of december
the laughter that accompanies burning dinner that can only be felt in the company of friends; how the presence of others makes our personal failures deserving of something other than punishment
unnecessary glamour— particularly in the form of purple hair on older women.
the muffled sound of music, as if through a screen door or glass, heard floating from a window on a walk home—the accompanying knowledge that ‘there must be thousands of people in this city who are dying to welcome you into their small bolted rooms, to sit you down and tell you what has happened to their lives.’
being alone on a train carriage where for the first time you realise that rilke was right: you really can change your life
the child offering you the larger piece of cake
The small, wild horses of Camargue
the knowledge that nothing is ever stopping you from beginning to dance— especially not the absence of music.
how despite the seriousness of our aging bodies and all of our accumulated wisdom, the earth still becomes very funny after you spin around faster and faster
the marble in the bored schoolboy’s pocket, rolled about between thumbs like an intimate secret
all the ways we try to refrain from harming one another every day
how mike davis wrote: “I’ve always been influenced by the poems Brecht wrote in the late 30s, during the second world war, after everything had been incinerated, all the dreams and values of an entire generation destroyed, and Brecht said, well, it’s a new dark ages … how do people resist in the dark ages? What keeps us going, ultimately, is our love for each other, and our refusal to bow our heads, to accept the verdict, however all-powerful it seems. It’s what ordinary people have to do. You have to love each other. You have to defend each other. You have to fight.”
the stranger who says bless you at the sneeze. a relic from the Bubonic plague, yes- how they are actually saying please don’t die
the waitress who calls you sweetheart as she sets down your tomato sandwich
the young people marching; the sustainable and vital agony of discovering the truth of the world.
the door held open: go ahead, you first.
National Geographic, 1972.
comfortable words: words like warmth and trust. words like kindness and bread.
removing your hat, tipping back your head, and tasting the rain
that one dream so frequent it begins to feel like a familiar room
the persistence of life in flowers on tables
the sublimity of an excellent sandwich
the pink revelation of a starfish in a tidal pool that reminds you that you were once a curious child
how tomorrow will be just like today, but different
the eternity of the sea. our useless play of running back and forth from waves
how poetry, like air, is available always and for everyone
the way that we named some plants things called ‘tucked bark’ and ‘thunder god vine’
the creak of rain and every different word for river.
Neck and neck ~ Amanda Owen
how every night you pretend to not exist in your little bed until you start telling yourself stories
the enthusiasm of a friend when you begin to share a strange dream
that inarticulable sensation upon glimpsing your childhood football pitch
the sounds of young people stumbling off toward the bars and bright houses. the sadness. the envy. the hope
the way flowers sleep too
how even the cruellest person you know has at least once listened to a shell
throwing spaghetti at a wall to see if it’s cooked
the uncircumscribable joy of finding a penny
the casual magic of an aeroplane journey
Horses, Scott Stulberg.
standing elbow to elbow, cooking at the same stove. the casual sensuality of juggling, jostling, bumping, chopping, eating.
the photograph that was never taken where you all look so happy
driving slowly when suddenly a cloud departs and the sun muscles through and ignites the hills and you realise that whatever this ache is won’t last.
that there was very likely one bird that decided to sing first
the intimate silence following a shared secret
the fraction of silence pulsating from an audience before music; how they are in communion with the violin; how they too thirst for the bow
music. music. music.
sitting over words and the buzz of wine very late, the whispered sighing, the contact two eyes make in the in-between silences.
the friend that dances first— on their own on the tiles to an ordinary song, suddenly mystic, the wisps of their roughened hair, the surprise of their body, of your love for it.
how the first words that the first astronauts in space said were: “is it inhabited?”. that they laughed. that then they did not laugh. how what came to their minds a hundred thousand miles and more into space- "half way to the moon,” as they put it- was the life on that little, lonely, floating planet; that tiny raft in the enormous, empty night. “is it inhabited?" “is it inhabited?
Swans, unknown.
the incomparable love of a friend felt over a telephone from far-away.
the fact that dinosaurs smelled magnolias
watching a couple emerge from the intimacy of a photo booth
those places on your carpet darkened by sun
sundays
the surprise of rain when it’s warm. even when it happens all the time.
all of those surprises that happen all of the time
the seconds before seeing someone you love
the writing of letters you’ll never send
the uncomplicated affection of dogs
the way john berger wrote: “Down the road there is an old man who sits in a chair under the porch of his front door to enjoy the sun. He is very old. In fact, he is dying. And because I know this, every time I pass him I pass the time of day with him. I tell him he is getting brown in the sun. Or he asks me about the price of the vegetables in my shopping bag – once he lived in the country – and I answer him at length and with great warmth. Why do I do this? It is a natural reaction. Soon he will die [and] I want him between now and then, and perhaps even at the moment of dying, to have good thoughts, not of me personally, but of the living, of the world he leaves. I want to give him reason for thinking the best possible thoughts.
Doves, unknown.
the distinctly adult surprise of having your hand held as you cross a busy street
the cleanliness of the first day of a month
grace and how we can always give it
the smile of a stranger witnessing your crying
taking your shoes off and rubbing your feet beneath a table
the company of a radio on a long evening highway— we’re going to be here all night long, ladies and gentlemen.
the warmth of the sun on the back of your knees
the itch of grass and all it means
the subtle triumph of ticking off an item from a list
your quiet envy of those who walk down public streets singing loudly
Deer and crow.
all the knowledge in the world and how you’ll never exhaust it
the first smell of woodfire in winter that makes it all worth it
the quiet communion felt with terrible poems scribbled on bathroom stall walls
the hopelessness of beauty. how you’d do anything for it
the sudden humility felt when remembering the age of trees
the casual invincibility felt in the moments after coffee
all of life’s casual compensations, like how the way our breath only makes itself visible when we are uncomfortably cold.
snowangels
‘are you home safe?’
the knowledge that you have absolutely no idea what you will love next.