Hear/Say

ON THE NOTION OF ROMANCE:

The Spice Girls crooned “when 2 become 1″…

I need some love like I never needed love before
(Wanna make love to ya baby)
I had a little love, now I’m back for more
(Wanna make love to ya baby)

Popular fiction facilitated the heightened “romance” of love and romance through its darker edge, an edge of doom, curse, comparative to the reflexive sadomasochism of drug addiction: blurring lines between pleasure and pain, indeed, intentionally mixing them in order to elicit more spark, more kick, more drama. Which somehow makes us feel more… alive.

The boring parts of any life might have conquered most of mine; slow Sunday mornings, trudging gingerly between puddles mirroring the sober grey Seattle sky, moments of “in-between-ness” (i.e. strolling to and from classes, driving here, driving there; how many minutes have we stood at a doorway, mentally practicing the greetings and shift to social disposition?) where you are truly alone in mind and body, and your auto-pilot alter-ego subconsciously asserts itself from the balls of your feet to the tips of your fingers, and your gut is relaxed and loose, your muscles slack and yawning. Nothing to be expected. Yet that is you in the ultimate every-day.

My most vivid memories derive from the most subtle nuance of daily interaction; the silhouette of my father during my childhood,  in the flat contrast of overcast day light narrated by his most pedagogical tone of voice; watching a man run a pool umbrella in during the green haze of a tornado; lining up to visit the library at Briar Glen Elementary school. Tears bursting into vision as Adam screamed into my ear in kindergarten for taking his “first place” in line. Some silly ones– grinning bravely as I tried to befriend bees, listening to them hover in my palm as I whispered hello, or my stupid neighbor who drowned the worm I was trying to save in a bottle cap of a milk jug. The voiceless neighborhood dog who only growled during a boisterous game of tug-of-war, and hugging the cat across the street as it tentatively placed both paws on both my shoulders. The fatal turn at the bottom of a hill that scraped both my knees. Seeing Michael’s ugly baby face.

The first time I read a crime thriller, in fourth grade: James Patterson’s Cat and Mouse, where I found myself horrified and excited at graphic realities beyond the household of my protective parents.

Out of all the boring and banal memories a life holds… these moments haunt me for no reason at all– until somehow, they coagulate to impact my life in significant and subtle ways. The small things count for more than any memory of any grand gesture could: I will not especially remember my high school graduation, which was a bore of a ceremony– or my college one, where all I felt was a rush of nervous energy that strung me out underneath the black pillows of gowns. Rituals become assumed, and taken for granted, that any joy or feeling of accomplishment have become part of a template of a life that anyone could have had.

The grand gestures that supplicate the “bigger and better” notion of romance– red roses, self-sacrifice, gaudy proposals, the public enunciation of love, devotion, excitement– these declarations make me uneasy, because they are easily a performance, gilded with intentions of sincerity, success, and the most un-romantic aspect of appropriateness.

I wish more could realize happiness in the small things; the movie Amelie portrayed the beauty of simplicity, of trust and love in daily interactions with strangers and acquaintances. In the end the grand gesture– the scavenger hunt for love– forgets the beautiful feeling of Amelie’s fingers sinking into the bean bag, or how the smallest strokes that can create a glare or sweetness of a painting recreated over and over again.

Most will sum up with “it’s the small things that count”; but that’s not specific enough. It is the consistency in the small things that occurs that count. Together, they leave an atmosphere, an ambiance, of a relationship, that accumulates and morphs into meaning. Love is not given when asked; nor is romance. The performance of love or romance may be given when asked; but it is genuine nature of love or romance(which then defines the romance of love and the romance of romance) that derives from the consistency of its effort unprompted and raw.

In saying this, romance and love doesn’t have to only be of the sexual-partner-(soul)mate kind; a romance of a friendship exists in the folds of emotional and communicative understanding. When the romance of any relationship dies, what is left? A shell of chronological history: social obligation that mistakenly rectifies and falsely worships the characteristic of time– ritualistic conversations to excuse and disguise the absence of sincerity and interest. The romance dies long before the realization of the facade. What is left but a skeleton of memories tempered by the collection of experiences you had together; the death of romance in a relationship will not recall ritualistic gestures and pastimes as strongly as the tone and nature of privately shared moments in public areas, or their face in response to your happiness, your sadness, your future, or the smallest nuance in their voices and expressions that give away how they truly feel. It is not their profile About Me that tells who they are, but the romance of intimate nothings: how they take their coffee and why, what they’re like in the morning before they’ve spoken a word to anyone, their side of the conversation during an evening drive home. The feeling of gratefulness for their company, appreciation for their words and thoughts, and not taking any part of them for granted, even through harder times when the tightropes of what binds your existence are tested.

As for love– its unconditional trueness is its make-up. Actions for it are never off-record. Unspoken gestures of self-sacrifice and unrealized gestures of devotion are more romantic than the desperation for acceptance and the declaration and performance of love; they are more heroic because they are given unprompted and expect no credit where the credit is due.