Love Is In The Air!
Celebrated on 14th February each year, the cynics among us could be forgiven for viewing upcoming Valentine’s Day in its current incarnation as a colossal commercial venture seized upon by big businesses to drive huge sales.
Flowers – red roses are by far the most popular, with estimates of around 110 million sold 2-3 days leading up to February 14th.
Chocolates – more than 35 million heart-shaped boxes of chocolate will be sold.
Jewellery – estimates suggest us Brits alone will spend 58 million on jewellery.
Cards – then, of course, there are Valentines Cards where an estimated one billion will be sent worldwide making Valentine’s Day the second largest seasonal card-sending celebration after Christmas.
However, the writer and romantic in me prefer to believe there is more to it than that. So, straight from the heart, and in the true spirit of love and romance, here are a few declarations of love taken from several famous love letters.
Zelda Fitzgerald to F Scott Fitzgerald
Darling – I love these velvet nights. I’ve never been able to decide … whether I love you most in the eternal classic half-lights where it blends with day or in the full religious fan-fare of mid-night or perhaps in the lux of noon.
Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf
I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way.
Katherine Mansfield to John Middleton Murry
My darling,
Do not imagine, because you find these lines in your private book that I have been trespassing. You know I have not – and where else shall I leave a love letter? For I long to write you a love letter tonight. You are all about me – I seem to breathe you – hear you – feel you in me and of me …
John Keats to Fanny Brawne
My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you — I am forgetful of everything but seeing you again — my Life seems to stop there — I see no further.
Johnny Cash to June Carter Cash
We get old and get used to each other. We think alike. We read each other’s minds. We know what the other one wants without asking. Sometimes we irritate each other a little bit. Maybe sometimes take each other for granted.
But once in a while, like today, I meditate on it and realize how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met.
Eva Jordan 