I (heart)

You see – I am a great believer in romance. I love to hear stories about it. I can get spellbound by an old movie where some leading man swoops in and gives the leading lady a kiss that bruises her lips and makes her limp. I like the little things that people do in the name of romance. I hope against hope that it isn’t a dying art. I am a big fan of the stuff. For, you see – I want romance to survive this age of cookie cutter greeting cards with champagne toasting couples on the cover. I want it to survive the era of love songs with lines in them like “not gonna let this bull crap keep me away from you ” - I swear to God and cupid, this is a line from an R. Kelly song. A song that is supposed to be romantic….

I am concerned about the state of romance. Not only that, but I crave it like a junkie craves a fix. I like the songs. Give me Chet Baker singing mournfully – “My funny valentine, sweet comic valentine, you make me smile with my heart….” Hell, give it to me a dozen times in a row. That is the stuff that I am talking about. Give me the Ink Spots singing about how they don’t want to set the world on fire but “I just want to start a flame in your heart.” Who among us has heard Doris Day singing “I’m in the mood for love” and didn’t have their heart throb – either because we were in love or just plain wanted to be? I like the idea of it. I want to meet someone and feel my heart beat like a big bass drum. We all do. I think that this too is the reason that there are radio stations that offer “all love songs all the time”. After my last breakup, this is the station that we listened to at work. I swear to you, these were the most awfully written, over produced songs about love and the lack of it. I thought that I was going to die or poke my eardrums out with a sharp pencil. But, in retrospect it make me realize that there is a reason that there is a market for these recordings – even if they are unbelievably bad. That reason is that we all travel our lives in different stages of love – in love, falling out of love, unrequited love, feeling unloved, searching for love….. it is a common bond. A common bond that in its very nature has made love just as commonplace. It is something that is marketable because we all are a part of it from the day we are born until the day we die. They market it to us because our hunger for it never ends. The quest for love never ends. We are a given.

The Victorians were fascinated by romance and the art of love and wooing. I used to collect Victorian valentines and was always amazed at the time and energy that went into the making of them….the intricately designed and hand-cut details, the perfect handwritten sentiment from one lover to the other. Love was an art. Today, love is offered up as a mass-produced, glossy product. An assembly line production. We approach it the same way every time and sometimes, we kill it the same way every time. A pattern of seduction and quick retreat. There are scads of dating services for just this very purpose. There is even one now called "Speed dating" where you spend something like 5 minutes with 10 or 12 people in a row to see if there is chemistry. Something has been taken out of love - the chance, the magic. Something has been put in the place of these things - an urgency to not be alone. We are a culture of coupling. There are more TV shows than I can count - shows about dating, love and marriage. Some of them have people competing to win the romantic affections of a "bachelor" or "bachelorette". Some of them throw in valuable million dollar prizes. Some of them even let the American public call in and vote on who should end up together. Some of them have the eligible single's friends or family choosing their betrothed. And, the main thing about these shows is that they are glossy and well-produced. It is easy to get caught up in them. It is also easy to look at love and romance as a game. It is easy to think that our romantic lives should also be just as contrived . We have become consumers of romance. We want it fast and simple. We want it now. I have a friend who has been trying "Lunch Dates". This is a service where a company takes your profile and matches it with other people's. They call you and you go to lunch. All of his dates have been duds. Recently, they called him and told him that he had one last date left in his package. Now, he was quick to say that he was tired of the process and that he really didn't see it producing the girl of his dreams. But, he also agreed to go on that final date. I said to him, " I hope that you find what you are looking for." His reply was that he wasn't expecting to find what he was looking for on this final date. He looked me dead in the eye and said, "I just want to get my money's worth."

Tonight, I spoke with a friend who has also tried internet dating (okay. so the cat is out of the bag. I am Kelly and I have tried internet dating.). There are more internet dating services than you can imagine. It is easy to feel like an item on display in a store window. People are reduced to well-chosen photos and a series of questions and answers. You can spend hours at a time flipping through profiles looking for just one sentence or picture that peaks your interest without the prospective dates even knowing that you are checking them out. Shopping for a mate through one dimensional photos and witty blurbs is easy. It is as simple as logging on and clicking the mouse from one profile to the next. It is indeed a mind numbing way to look for a spark. A spark that you honestly aren't going to find there in a website. It becomes a hobby -this search for love. It is also a business as they bill your credit card for the service.

My friend and I mulled the whole thing over and tried to decide if such services help add to the possibility of romance or do they somehow sterilize it? He reasoned that back in our parent's days, people were somehow parts to an equation. You married your high school sweetheart, you had 2.5 children, the white picket fence, the whole nine yards - just like your friends and neighbors. People, he says are more "evolved" now and go out and have careers and lives before they begin t his age-old search for a mate. So, does this in some way make us expect more out of a partner? Are we so selfish because we have had time to "find ourselves" that we expect too much out of that 'special someone' or perhaps are too greedy with the lives that we have made for ourselves outside of the bounds of a relationship? We also deducted that services like internet dating make us somehow "jaded" or complacent because we view these people that we meet as "a product". Does the technology take the romance right out of it like air from a tire? Or does it allow us a new frontier of sorts to meet people who we wouldn't ordinarily meet? I have always been the first to admit that it is very near-sighted to believe that in this enormous world, the person who we are supposed to be with (if indeed there is one person) lives in our very town. Are we asking too much to want the convenience and technological advances but at the same time expect to have that moment when we are struck by lightning and a touch of perhaps - love, romance and sentimentality?

This may sound like some sort of codependency to some and I don’t hesitate to go on even so…but I want romance. I want to be wooed. . I want someone to think of me - just think of me out of the blue, or because he saw something that reminded him of me. I want someone to feel a tug at his heart when I'm not around. But, also I want someone to fall for me - and hard. Not just because I fit a profile that they are told that they need or should have. I want them to be wowed by me. I want them to think that they can't live without me. My friend told me about his grandmother who lost her husband two years ago. She sits at her kitchen table. She looks out the window. She won't go into the TV room because that is where he used to like to sit. A part of her is gone. Is this what love is? Is this what romance leaves in its wake? Is it worth the gamble to give yourself to someone so completely and with such passion that once they are gone, you are also gone too? I have to go out on a limb here and say yes. Because, of when they are here, you see. When you are sitting with them in that TV room or looking at their smiling face morning after morning at that kitchen table, you realize that you are the luckiest person in the world. That is, if you do this thing right. If you get it right. If it sticks and your heart is completely theirs - and theirs is yours too. A completed equation.

There are those of you who have had to watch with mind numbing attention (much like passing a car wreck) as different stages of my life and love life have gone awry. You have seen the things I have done for love and the things that I have had done to me for love. And, all you could do was sit back and realize that yeah, you probably would have done it too if in the same circumstances. The circumstances being wanting love to work out. The circumstances being that blind faith and the hope that this time, romance and love are going to save the day. Not too long ago, you saw me believe in love only to have it prove me wrong. You probably saw a little of yourself in me too. Or, in him. Or in the nature of how love almost made it but died at the last minute. You probably even said, "....if it were meant to be, it would have..." It's okay. I said it too. The only difference is that I didn't believe it at the time but I do now. We can't force love. Society may make it seem easily accessible but it isn't. Back to the 'formula' thing....

Today, I polled some people about romance and was given the following from my brother:

"Romance is the cloying candy shell hiding delicious scoops of familiarity and a mutual understanding that you dig each other in a quiet, pleasant way.”

At first, this one kind of made me feel sad. I guess because it mentioned familiarity which at first makes one think of monotony but then I read further into it and really liked how it ended: “you dig each other in a quiet, pleasant way”. Hmm…perhaps romance isn’t all banners and flashy shows of sentiment. Perhaps it is that quiet, pleasant way that he spoke about. The knowing that someone will be there and that they just “dig” you because they do. Is this romance? Perhaps. Perhaps it is part of it, for sure. I also got this from my poet friend, Chance:

“Romance is the thin, sweet shell that melts away leaving sticky, stomach-turning, confused, disillusioned nougat that fills your mouth with a taste not unlike regret.”

It is interesting that they both compared romance to something with a candy shell...but what if we take it down a notch and notice not the candy coating but the “shell” part. Andy was saying that it is what is under the shell that is romance. Chance was saying that is the shell that is the romance and then you are disgusted by what is underneath there…”the regret”. Now, I can say that I have been on both sides of this whole candy shell argument and at this time, I have to admit that I can see both sides as if I have a box seat.

Desmond Morris says that romance is something that is contrived chemically by our bodies to attract a mate for procreation. A girlfriend of mine says that romance can only be satisfyingly achieved by distance (thus “makes the heart grow fonder”) or in the initial stages of courtship alone before it dies once “they know that they have you” (back to the Desmond Morris theory?)

At this point, I am not sure. All I know is that it has to be out there and it doesn’t have to leave you with a sour taste in your mouth and feeling like you had a stiff sucker punch to the stomach. Good lord in heaven....DOES it? I sit around with single friends and we go back and forth with comments like, “I just wish I could meet someone that I connect with” or “Love sucks. I feel sorry for people in relationships. They are slaves.” But, I notice that when we see a friend with their lover and they look really happy – that happy that puts a glow there on their face – we all kind of get a wistful look on our faces and it seems to say, “Yeah…but what if….what if…”

My best friend wrapped it all up pretty well:
"Honey, if someone told me that love was waiting for me in Hell, I'd be on the 5:01 train."

so, friends......
I’m going to keep believing in it until further notice. And, I encourage you to do so too. Whether you are falling into it, past it, looking for it, getting over it, poking it with a very long and sharp stick, reeling from it or sitting fat and pretty in the lap of it......

Whether you call it love or romance or sentiment or stupidity.

I am going to stick in there and see what happens.

Is there someone for everyone? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Is life like the movies? Chances are that it isn't.

Is it a competition? A game? A well-contrived series of formulas and equations? I am going to bet against that.

I didn’t buy a card at the drug store. I decided to make one because in my heart, the sentiments don’t rhyme – sometimes they don’t even make sense. We are all muddling along and trying to grab this illusive thing – we want it to be just right – to look right, to feel right, to be right. Perhaps it is just a state of mind? Perhaps when it is right, we will know? The questions will fall aside? I only wish I knew.

So, I am going to go now and listen to some love songs – some instrumental love songs. Because, I am getting the feeling that love is what we don’t notice – what is in between the lines of songwriters and crooners. What the Nielson ratings can't compute. What some greeting card writer can't sum up with a rhyming dictionary. It isn't the obvious - the commonplace - the x's and y's in the formula......

It is what our souls know when it comes into view....

A sheer magnetic pull out of the blue.