Much like shit, you can smell love once you've stepped in it. You become hyper aware of your surroundings, wondering if anyone else notice that love is on you (in you).

I recently saw this poster for the new Jennifer Aniston movie, Love Happens, in the 5th Avenue Station. Some lonely soul tagged it, "2 everyone else but me...". And it hit me how lonely people are in general. How people are hungry for love, so much so that they cry out on movie posters in subways.

Solidarity.

Exes and Oh's will join you in your fight for love. Let's step in love together. We can sit back and laugh while we watch everyone wrinkle their noses as they try to figure out where the smell is coming from.

Courtesy of Soulpancake.com an Article by a penny for the old guy

The first time I fell in love, I was driving us home from the movies. I remember it being dark, with regular stabs of yellow light for every streetlight we drove under. She was huddled up with her legs against her chest on the passenger seat. No one spoke. I was about to turn off the main road when she said, “No baby, keep driving.” I did. Some minutes passed. At a red light, I looked at her, smiled, leaned in a bit so she might kiss me, and asked, “Why?” She didn't move. She had the saddest face, looking right through me, like I was already a memory, before saying, "So that it never ends." Her name is Tameeka. Her song is Drive by Bic Runga.

Memory is a funny thing: building association upon association, layering our senses atop one another, linking neuron to neuron, binding songs to images to words to moments forever more. Maybe that's why Tameeka—and everything about her—is folded and packed into that drive home. And that one song is that drive home.

With ----- (we don't say her name out loud), it was the night I fell asleep in her lap. Truthfully, I fell in love with her every time I saw her, but the sharpest memory is that night. She played with my hair as I mumbled, trying to keep the conversation going. Shhh. Sleep, baby, sleep. (I swear, if asked to choose between the memory of her saying that and all 10 of Mahler's symphonies, I'd pick her.) Her song is Wild is the Wind, the Nina Simone version.

Distilling the essence of a singular moment into a song is an expansive process. The whole experience of that person, the course of an affair, the atlas of a person's body, the dictionaries of words between you, that miniature history of two people—all of it captured in a song.

Then something odd happened. It was Vanessa's song—Gravity, also by Bic Runga. At first, it was just her song. But soon I found myself sneaking other experiences and ideas and memories and people and moments into it. Of course, it's still hers and everything I am grateful to know of her and have of her. But the song means more to me now.

Gravity is my song for the whole of love and everything that it encompasses.

Obviously, the music gets my heart racing. But it’s the lyrics. They're just soo ... real. There’s the bleak, unfair reality of having to say, I'll promise you what I can. No more than that. Just what we can. I remember that. I remember it from when ----- asked me for more, and I couldn't give it to her (and I felt soo small because a man is such a tiny thing when faced with the illimitable). Or the lines:

I forget myself when I'm with you/Please remind me who I am

Looking at faces and being unable to separate time and distance and fantasy—the dream of it, the constant sadness in my gut, the premonition of endings and goodbyes. Gravity is my song for love because, for me, love is pillow-fights in the living room; the sound of their voice when they say your name, how gorgeous it sounds; the heartbreak of discovering your own fragility—and wanting to be better, stronger, to improve. And promises you want to make, you dare to make, unafraid for once, in the face of time and making-rent and long-distance-phone-calls-across-datelines and every conceivable obstacle. Because you are not yourself if that person does not say your name…

Say my name aloud/And make it new/How strange the sound,/How strange the sound...

All of this… packed into 3 minutes and 40 seconds.

Homework: What song gives you the most honest and real construction of love? Describe its memory, its experience here.

:: a penny for the old guy

Courtesy of Soulpancake.com an Article by Lindsay McComb

But passion is pretty much the only part of love and romance that London-born photographerChris Craymer focuses on in his recently published book, Romance: A Beautiful Look Book On Love. Romance features pictures of strikingly beautiful, real-life couples engaged in the physical act of love. Craymer says that Romance is “essentially emotional.” I’m not sold. While some of the photos have passionate, bright, even smoldering compositions, the real problem is that Romance seems to focus on sex, not love.

“Romance, for me, was the perfect vehicle to make pictures which can covey a number of emotions,” Craymer said. “I wanted to try to make pictures which could be, for example, sexy, funny, joyful and also powerful and even soulful.”

He told Vogue.com that romance is about new love. “It’s the kind of love before you have any other commitments or baggage like a mortgage, children, past relationships, divorces, maybe even careers,” he said. “It’s the kind of relationships you might have in your first year of college, but it’s very intense, nevertheless.”

While passion and a little bowchickabowwow are a big part of romance, it’s not enough for real, lasting love, in my opinion. I think there was a lot more that could have been incorporated into defining romance. And I’m not talking about clichés such as flowers and dinner out on the town.

Bottom line: I’m not sure sure Craymer’s take on love tells the whole story.

How would you define romance?

:: romance pondered by Lindsay McComb

A British man and his Spanish former sweetheart have finally married 16 years after they drifted apart, reunited by a love letter lost behind a fireplace for over a decade, reports said on Monday.

Steve Smith and Carmen Ruiz-Perez, both now 42, fell in love 17 years ago when she was a foreign exchange student in Brixham, southwest England, and got engaged after only a year together.

But their relationship ended after she moved France to run a shop in Paris.

A few years later, in a bid to rekindle their love, Smith sent a letter to her mother's home in Spain. It was placed on the mantelpiece, but slipped down behind the fireplace and was lost for over a decade.

The missing missive was only found when builders removed the fireplace during renovation work.

"When I got the letter I didn't phone Steve right away because I was so nervous," Ruiz-Perez told the Herald Express local newspaper.

"I nearly didn't phone him at all. I kept picking up the phone then putting it down again.
"But I knew I had to make the call."

When they were reunited, it was as if time had stood still, said Smith, a factory supervisor.

"When we met again it was like a film. We ran across the airport into each other's arms. We met up and fell in love all over again. Within 30 seconds of setting eyes on each other we were kissing.

"I'm just glad the letter did eventually end up where it was supposed to be," he said, after the couple married last Friday.

What's in a name?

As we grow closer to the ones we love, as our relationship blossoms into the most intimate it can be, we tend to drop the formal names in conversation with each other. How many of us have parents who refer to each other simply as "Mother" and "Father?" There are the standards -

"Hon"
"Babe"
"Sweetie"
"Hot Stuff"

But there are those who reach further out and really work on the perfect pet name for their significant other. They find new monikers for their loved ones that mean something to both of them; a cute inside joke, a pun, or something so endearing that it makes the rest of us vomit a little in our mouths.

My last pet name was Peeve.
As in Pet Peeve.
As in I am her pet.
I actually dug it.

It meant that we meant something more to each other, in so much that we wanted to have our own private names for each other. We had the "vomit in your mouth" endearing type relationship. When we broke up, and we both began to date new people, I asked her if her new beau was her Peeve as well. She replied that there would never be another Peeve. That was nice to know it wasn't a recycled nickname.

Exes & Oh's wants to know, what were some of the pet names used in your relationships?
And if you, like me, sometimes have problems coming up with a good nickname for your SO, we're here to help.

Love according to Patricia Arquette in True Romance

I love music. A lot. Like, a lot alot. My iTunes playlist if chocked full of music across all genres, eras, and continents. Lately my "Recently Played" playlist has been filled with some delicious treats from Billie Holiday. There is something exquisite about her voice - tone, phrasing and soulfulness - that speaks to me. When I listen to her music it moves me, physically and emotionally.

Many of Holiday's songs, like many songs form her era, are torch songs - songs filled with longing. The lyrics of these songs speak to the lengths to which the singer is willing to go for love. Romantic, no?

Good morning, on July 7

Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us - I can live only wholly with you or not at all - Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits - Yes, unhappily it must be so - You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart - never - never - Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. And yet my life in V is now a wretched life - Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men - At my age I need a steady, quiet life - can that be so in our connection? My angel, I have just been told that the mailcoach goes every day - therefore I must close at once so that you may receive the letter at once - Be calm, only by a calm consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together - Be calm - love me - today - yesterday - what tearful longings for you - you - you - my life - my all - farewell. Oh continue to love me - never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.

Ever thine
Ever mine
Ever ours

Murder Mystery's Love Astronaut off of their album, Are You Ready For the Heartache Cause Here it Comes.

Music soothes the savage beast. And brings people together. This song is a pepped up love song, in the vein of They Might Be Giants. One of the great things about this song, is that it is being romantic while being goofy, which fits me like a glove.

The snippet of song and the video below capture the essence of what I love about this song.

Love Astronaut by Murder Mystery from Pearl Wible on Vimeo.

Progresso Light Soups. It's a hot bowl of awesome. Low in calories and not afraid to share the spotlight with a whole wheat sandwich. I love you, Progresso. There. I said it. I'd bathe in your savory goodness and dab you behind my ears before a night on the town.

You're just that good.