What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Today is the day before February 14th and some silver-haired readers may remember an old adage about liking something or lumping it. But are we absolutely certain that there are no other possible alternatives to this (ahem) ‘sugary’ routine?

Talking about love may imply realising that many of those things that are (or are not) one’s cup of tea can be talked about “even if (or precisely because) we don’t know exactly what we’re talking about”. This is what Italian writer Diego De Silva suggests in his preface to a book by Raymond Carver whose title we have borrowed as our own title of today.

We could start by counting all those little things that never make it over the fence into the memorable, like buttered toast or steaming-hot coffee or tea. Love is perhaps the sum of the simple things in life: the jam on the toast, the cream in that coffee, the lump of sugar in one’s cup of tea.