Your Next Post

Today I would like to guide the next post on your blog. Our last post was all about anger. This post will be all about love. Before you start to groan, I will state for the record that you are not going to create a post of a lovely memory, or a memory that describes how you fell in love, or how much you just love your parents. We think about our own love way too much already. "I love Fridays." "I love that skirt." "I love skateboarding." We concentrate so much of our lives on the ways in which we love things. This post is going to be of a moment in which someone else showed love to you. However, this moment cannot be ruled by any other emotion. Your moment cannot be of your parents mixing worry with their love when they told you not to stay out too late and it cannot be about both pride/envy and love when your friends helped to win a game or they set you up with a friend. This moment should be of pure love from one other person to you. You may have a lot of trouble coming up with this moment (I was able to find it by brainstorming a list of all of my best friends throughout my life and then thinking about things they had given me or important moments that we have shared), but when you do find it, I want you to describe the loving person's face in detail within your memory. Their face is the key to understanding this moment and figuring out why you still remember and cherish it. Post this description of pure love to your blog. Mine goes like this:

We pulled up, as we often did, to the park that no one knew about. It was far away from the normal crowd of town rats that waited for nighttime to bite them before they could come alive. Chris and I slowly crept into a parking space long forgotten by other cars. Straight ahead of us were thick woods that held the many mysteries of these moments. Chris reached into his backpack and brought out a CD, cradling it in his hands. He said it would change my life. And it did. As the harmonies started to stack in my ears, I saw Chris making sure I heard each distinctly. His fingers tapped gently on the dashboard, and every few songs he would pause the CD, hoping that I had understood the importance of how those notes and words played with each other. Then he would press play again and let his eyes dance along with the infectious beats. I can still see this moment, with Chris' hair long and unwashed, with his cheeks dotted with imperfections, with his inviting smile that said "I just couldn't keep this to myself." Although Chris and I have lost touch, I know that he would remember what he gave me that night. I know he would remember as the dusk faded in and we listened to the 13-minute track about loneliness, that with his eyebrows lifted in anticipation, he had shown me love.