How do we experience the world alone? How do we experience the world accompanied? Are there companions that we can be with and experience the world as if we were in solitude? Or is there always something lost in togetherness. Silvio Rodriquez has a song, “¿Dónde pongo lo hallado?”, in which he describes finding a loving companion and losing his conversations and connection with the doves, the moon…Can we have both? And a few more questions: With whom, or with what, are our deepest connections? In what company do we feel peace? With whom do we feel free?

Sometimes companionship can be a kind of separate togetherness. And sometimes we feel very much together when we are apart. And then there is that deep love in solitude. So many ways of being together and alone. Happy Valentines Day! To love in all senses of the word and between all beings in the world. (photo of two female Red Breasted Mergansers, Mergus serrator, in Boston Harbor last Sunday)