So close that your hand on my chest is my hand.

It certainly isn t an everyday occurence, love. There seems to be many forms of this, which on many levels is really a fantastic thing. There is love for your pet, well, dog in this case. Nothing holds a candle to the kind of love a dog gives. Or so we like to think. Human s are so insecure at the best of times, we actually believe the love a dog gives is the same love we think we give back. Cept it aint. Is it.

The love we feel is the need/want to please. It is really that simple. We can t be that messed up as a north american society to think otherwise. Personally, I love to think my dog loves me. But I am a romantic.

Then there are the 432 forms of love we claim to have and we pigeon hole individuals into spots we think they need to go. We have friends we love for various reasons. Some crap they pull we put up with because..well, we love them.

How about the love/hate relationships we have. Mostly they tend to be family. Odd that is, because we spend years with family and we end up in the twisted love/hate thing. Do we love them because they are family? I do love my siblings. I think my sister walks on water and can build a fire with green wood. My brothers are good guys, really good dads. Mike was my hero with his 76 400cc Kawasaki. He once told me if I could pick it up I could have it. Well, the effer weighed about 1000 pounds so it was not going to happen. And I didn t want the bike, I just wanted to show him I was strong. I was strong because he told me there was no other way to be. I think that is where it started for me. This whole challenging love thing.

Then there is the love we feel but never say a thing for fear of rejection. The love from a far love. The kind that has a rule that we cannot tell the other person we love them in a will-you-be-my-lover way. There are those who have no clue, no idea how to make that love work out loud. We just won t take the chance. Rather, we play out the love in our head without the other person even knowing and suddenly that love ends and the loved person, who had no idea they were in a relationship to begin with is out in the cold because they did not return the love they had no idea they had to in the first place.

I think we make love complicated. There are all these standards and expectations and rules to love. We forget to keep it simple, basic. Love should have one rule. Forever. What you sign up for is a long time of love. Big, unafraid love.

The only person I have ever come across that really understood love was Pablo Nerudo. He wrote I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;so I love you because I know no other way.

Lyrics in my head wanna grab a hold of that little song bird, take for a ride to the top of the world...