When we remove beauty from life, we are left with only ugliness.  When we remove pleasure, we are left with only pain.

The highest high that we can reach in life is to be in love; to co-exist in a universe that is created by and shared between two people.  The space that love creates -- its pleasures, longings, its rules and even its sadness -- is as separate from everything else in our lives as night is separate from day.

I've said before that what is between two people cannot be understood by a third.  So just as the sunset divides the night from the day, the state of being in love must be kept divided from life's practicalities (work, friends, family...responsibilities).  When too much of love's drunkenness bleeds into our days, the sun only grows frustratingly harsh until it leaves us sick and dehydrated.  On the flip side, when the practicalities of our days shine too intensely into love's sacred spaces, those spaces are ultimately burned away like a fleeting morning fog.

On love's bus rolling through the night, the day can seem far away.  But it will come.  And when it does, we must find the strength to open our eyes and to face it...just as we always have and just as we always will have to.  And let us also find the strength to keep and protect that sacred space of love...remembering the conditions in which that secret universe was created and maintaining those conditions so that it may continue to grow.

Only through such strength can we love fully and live fully.