Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

A Special Valentine

So here's what I was going to do. I was planning to make you a Valentine myself! Make it with my own hands. You know how sometimes, you can picture something so perfect in every detail, and you know exactly what you're going to do and how you're going to do it, it's already so perfectly realized? That's this Valentine I had in mind, for you.

I was going to make it from heavy stationery of a deep, dark Prussian blue. Yes, I know, that somewhat rips off Tom Waits. But if you go to all the trouble to make a Valentine, and you use red...as perfect as I'm going to make it, anybody is going to think it's store-bought and of machine manufacture! Because that's how fully, perfectly conceived this was. High-quality.

I was going to cut out a large heart, of slightly off-kilter shape, higher than it is wide, and border it in perfect white lace. Don't even ask how I'd get the lace shape to match the off-kilter heart - don't even ask that, I'm telling you I had it dialed in. That would have presented no problem. No problem. And on the reverse of the heart, in a white heart pasted onto the back - a white heart only slightly less large than the blue heart, so that it would be edged in Prussian blue - I would have written my heartfelt message.

That's where the whole thing broke down, actually. Because, I could not think of anything that I would be able to write there that wouldn't seem flippant - compared to how beautiful and perfect this heart was.

In a greater sense, that sums up a lot about the difficulties I have expressing myself.

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