I always wish, on this day of the year, that I had something to say; something pithy or eloquent, something philosophical or carnal.

I feel I should talk about love; love of the heart, love of the body. About the celebration – both in a universal sense, LOVE in capital letters, and in the small-scale, personal sense, to celebrate one’s love, or loves, as people, as minds, as bodies.

I get lost in it; i wind up ranting about the inherent wrongness of a holiday where we mix up the love of child or parent or friend, with love, love in the filthy, sweaty, carnal, animal sense. We give our kids paper to pass out to classmates, and buy gifts that buy favor. We celebrate, not love, not romance, but commerce and acquisition. We celebrate love by buying things.

And there you see, i’ve done it again. When I want to talk about love – love in it’s purest, most profoundly human, physical, biochemical sense, I wind up angry with our language’s failure in words that mean love, and our culture’s schizophrenic confusion about what love is, and how it’s celebrated.

Celebrate love where you find it. There is nowhere near enough. If you love someone, tell them. If someone you love is with you, do not let them get away. And do not scoff at the word love; it’s nowhere near enough, as words go, to define something so huge, important, and varied. Yet it’s the word we have. Celebrate it.