It must be love.

Summer skies and winter snows have passed in an endless progression and sixty seasons have passed since a young girl and her friends stood here by this tree. A laughing walk together down a tall wall lined alley that left the main road next to the candy store far behind us, found us far enough from most people's inquisitive eyes. We stood in a ruined warehouse forgotten by all except perhaps in the memories of men that used to work there back in the years before I saw my Mothers first smile.
Those were the days that we smiled as we found our place to meet each other after school and on weekends. Our hideout! There within its broken walls and under a partial roof we played our games and exchanged our news and made our gang plans like the young yakuza we sometimes pretended to be. Just outside those crumbling walls and to one side of the bolted gates with the small creepy hole in it stood a tree that had seen the games of girls from my mother's generation and of her mother's generation before her, all laughing together beneath a deliciously green umbrella that shaded us and them from the summer sun. One branch had a large truck tire hanging by an old rope and it was pride of place during the good weather days as we swung with carefree attitudes. Back inside, during the cold months we sometimes made fires and roasted sausages and fish on sticks and we baked potatoes in aluminum foil and then we'd run and hide if the police or property inspectors came to investigate the fire. Children are amazingly adept at secreting themselves in the labyrinth like and tumble down office and warehouse complexes, finding the most impossible hiding places. Little holes and niches and inside boxes and out on a ledge just past the glassless windows helped make the building look deserted to those who extinguished our fires. Our spirits were never extinguished.

I have fond memories of those times and of those faces who gave me the loyal smiles of co-conspirators.
Fifteen long and eventful years pass and my hand once again touches my tree.
Gone are the broken buildings and the laughter of innocence. The tree, minus its branches, stands inside a cafe-bar as its centerpiece to a forgotten history. A more sophisticated ambiance pervades its immediate territory and the aroma of liqueur and coffee replaces the smell of peeling paint and wooden decay.
The bar is called the deep forest and it has been built around that tree. This single tree, my tree, bears little resemblance to the building's name. One tree does not a forest make! The marks we made upon its bark as vicious teens have been etched away by polishing machines as it stands now almost as an artificial icon of nature. The days have changed and I have changed with them and my gang grew up and probably look disdainfully upon the gangs of today. But for a few school years, we were the world and we had our moment in time and our place within our collective history.

As I read great tales of history, I read of people who are no more but they left a memory and a mark so that we, generations later will read of them. When we look at today what do we do? Those in the news perhaps make their mark but you and I perhaps do nothing more than plan for today, the week, our summer vacation. During this time we don't consider the mortality of this finite life. Why should we consider our end of days?
The simple answer is that there is no need to because no matter what we think, it is there waiting for us in one of our distant tomorrows. Until then we have life and we live it like we have forever until something like age or serious injury or disease reminds us of that thin thread like line that tethers us to a sometimes fragile mortal life.

Perhaps a personal encounter with that cold angel makes me respect his presence and acknowledge his great power to take away all that I hold dear. His touch changes the way we see and changes the values we once held as unshakable and reorder certain perspectives in a way that those who were never touched cannot possibly understand.

Swim and join the egg, a spark,
the match is struck
I erupt in a glorious flare
I burn bright and hold back the darkness
I warm those close to me
Burn with me companion stars
Slowly I'll fade to red.
Then I disappear from sight,
my essence the smoke that drifts away from you all.
Just a memory and a cinder, ash returned to the soil.

But fortunately it doesn't take this cold icy touch to know the greatest thing in life.
The greatest thing is love.
My family has remained consistent with some leaving for their final destinations and new members arrive to be welcomed with loving arms and warm smiles.
My friends from school and my gang have moved into adult lives far removed from mine and rarely do I see any of their smiles these days and the one I love most has changed several times as we look for someone to share our life with. I sincerely hope that my current lover is my last one because of all my lovers, she is the one without doubt and with whom I feel the greatest rapport.

Love is a many a splendid thing, all you need is love and we have all heard the songs but love comes in many forms and into many different parts of our lives. Love is that promise of happiness and the threat of its loss is distressing to the point of grief.
Love is a wonderful topic of conversation between friends who smile at its intimacy and pure emotion. The word whispered between lovers is a secret word, a powerful word that electrifies nerve endings. Its tenderness across my tongue as I say "I love you" with meaning and with feeling to the one who so needs to hear me say it most. The completeness I feel when she says it to me with equal depth and truth. Love is a passion and we are all passionate about someone or something.
What do you love, is it a sports team, food, money, power, politics or work or art or books or music?
We can love those interests but without passion I don't think there can be an interest at all. Passion is the drive!
I love 'love' and without love I can wonder is life worth living? The suicides of lost lovers shed no more tears and smile no more. Lessons lay in pools of blood for those with eyes to see yet the only question we ask is why they threw it all away. Time counts down to our final moment and a lost love is a step as we learn and then we hope that we may love again. My heart was broken several times and I looked down into deep dark waters that seemed cool and inviting, waiting to step forward and be swallowed whole. Thankfully I am a coward and I never took that last step.
Now I am here and I'm glad I have learned all that I needed to learn so far in order to love again and perhaps become more lovable for my special one. I am still learning and learning together is far more enjoyable. Moments are fleeting things like the flash on a camera that freezes one instance of time. The image we capture today may last a lifetime in our digital age and we try to preserve those photographs from a hundred years ago. The future is as always uncertain and as much as we think of it as sustainable, the past tells us that all things must change. Lifetimes are also fleeting things in the grand scheme of things. Our names may not be recorded in books for all of the future generations to read of but while we are here, we can mean something to some people just as they can mean something to us.
Let's try to make that meaning as meaningful as we can.
Let's all find our passion and let us love ourselves and those special people in our lives.
Do not let your seasons pass emptily, life is made up of time, give that time some meaning if you know what I mean!