The Two Step

Current Mood:Contemplative
Music Playing: Ben Gibbard, Home Volume 5


What is it that draws two people together? I guess its my romantic nature that makes me want to believe that when people come together, it is due to fate; whether you were meant to date for a month, a year or the rest of your life, fate is what brought you together. “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.” (Marcus Aurelius) Putting aside astrology and chemistry; your life is a sort of first draft, and when you start living your life, you complete the final draft as you go along. But in that first draft are the moments and the people that change your life. “Life is not how many breaths you take, it's how many moments take your breath away.” (Hitch) Even harder to grasp are those moments of “courting” and what is it that actually draws you to that specific specimen over another. Everyday we probably see half a dozen or more people that we find attractive, but how do we end up actually talking with them, flirting with them, dating them? I think this question is so elusive, that even finding words to describe how you get to that point of feeling smitten is difficult. Perhaps we feel a sort of emotional comfort just from observing the other, and so we forget about taking a risk, and just go for it, and the rest is history. But for the life of me I can’t remember a time where I wasn’t absolutely terrified to talk to a girl for the first time. Recently I found myself in a similar situation; there is a girl that I met months ago, and at first, as usual I found myself a bit faclempt; but I recently had the pleasure of actually taking her out for an evening. That night, it was as if everything came together, and talking came easily and naturally. By mid evening I was totally smitten, this girl was beautiful, smart, funny, and loved food and wine, what more could I ask for. At the end of the night, back at her place on the couch, it was as if there were magnets attached to us and we were slowly being drawn to each other. We went from a small gap between us on the couch to cuddled underneath the blanket, legs delicately draped across my lap. After just one night with this girl, I was in this position of intimacy, yet it didn’t seem foreign at all… Everything was so cozy; it was as if I had been there before with her. Is this when we start to believe in cupid and his love arrows? Is cupid just fate dressed as a cherub strapped with a quiver of arrows? We constantly read magazines about how to attract the right person, or how to keep them once we get them, but there is really no science to attracting a mate, if it happens, it is because it was meant to happen. So here I am on the couch with this incredible girl and it just feels right… the night progressed… (Sorry that part is inappropriate for blogging)… And then here’s the kicker… she lives in Boston. What is the reason for this? Is this girl everything my mind has created her to be? Is there something there? Or was it just one extraordinarily magical evening? “We touch one another, bond and break, drift away on force-fields we don’t understand.”(Written On The Body, Jeanette Winterson) There’s part of me that wants to drop everything and move to Boston, who cares about how cold it is; I could learn to love the cold if I could learn to love her. But, I think I’ll need at least a 2nd date first…
We are attracted to one of two different types of people: the people that we have a lot in common with, or the person that is almost opposite of us; but strangely, they end up being complimentary. How are we to decide which is better? The only answer is experimenting, finding out what feels better, solace in familiarity or, stimulation in new discovery (this is why we date). "Can love have texture?" (Written On The Body, Jeanette Winterson) I believe so; when we can begin to feel, that is the texture of love, this is not to be confused with the texture of lust, (We are all drawn together by a physical attraction in the beginning, it's is only when we can wade through each others minds and hearts to find out whether there is texture there that we can begin investigating the possibility of love) That is the position I find myself in, I felt something, it wasn’t just lust, because there was so much more that happened before we got to the lust part of the evening…
There’s overwhelming evidence to suggest that we are attracted to people who are consistent with our ideal self. In essence we are attracted to someone that will bring out that part of you that you wish you could express. The person who is well traveled, and you are not, the person that lives free-spirited and you only wish you could get out of the place you are in. Then there is the theory of chemistry, pheromones and testosterone working interconnected with dopamine and serotonin creating a giant ball of chemical love. But my brain does not think that scientifically, I do like the way girls smell and serotonin does play a major role in our brains when falling in love, but the whole science of things is too much to think about, what draws two people together has to be simpler then that. Some people say it is in the stars, astrology; some people swear by it and will only date people that match up with their sign…I’m sorry that’s just a bit too eccentric for my thinking… Psychologists have shown it takes between 90 seconds and 4 minutes to decide if you fancy someone. 55% is through body language 38% is the tone and speed of their voice and only 7% is through what they say, so that night, over half of what happened between us was done without the amazing conversation; it was in the leaning towards each other at the bar, the soft touches on the small of her back, every nuance that was done without opening our mouths had more of an impact in drawing us together then talking did.
So do we have an answer of what draws two people together? Not really, but apparently it happens a lot easier then what you make it out to be; a lot of it happens unconsciously and your body language does a lot of speaking for you, I guess your job, during the 7% of dialogue, is not to screw it up by saying something stupid…

Loves Most Powerful Victim

Current Mood: Romantic
Music Playing: Mars Volta, De-Loused In The Comatorium

Though still a romantic soul, I’ve grown to have a bitter taste in my mouth due to the malevolent actions of the female species. Every once and awhile there comes along a break up where you can’t seem to get the taste out of your mouth. I believed that when I found love, it would last and the first true love would end up being that last; but as it turns out, sometimes you end up getting burned by love. But just as I was starting to think that I would never get that unrelenting taste out of my mouth, amidst the loss of strength and courage, I thought I had lost the ability to accept love again. For a temporary moment, love had become my greatest adversary; I loathed the thought of being in love, I hated couples blatantly PDA-ing it up in front of me, but it wasn’t long until I started to come back to my senses and realize that, that hatred was fleeting and I still welcomed love with open arms, I just had to go get it. I had found myself wrapped up in the stories of friends who had become so jaded by love that they no longer wanted any part of at. They desired the attention and the comfort of a mate, but they lacked the desire to turn those feelings into love. As an “anti-lover” those who disdain love end up becoming loves most powerful victim. At heart, I am a hopeless romantic, and therefore there was no use in fighting and disdaining love because it would eventually come back my way. As for my friends, they are destined to succumb to the unrelenting arrow. It is in moments of despondency when love captures you. It’s like when your immune system is low after a night of drinking and cold virus attaches itself to you and manifests. Love attacks you when you’re weak, but instead of making you feel worse, it makes you feel better. Love enters through the eyes upon that first glimpse; hence the phrase love at first sight. Love then like a virus, metastasizes inside you without you knowing about it, totally guerrilla style, without your consent and out of your control. Those who managed to resist and push away love are dumbstruck when love finds them. Love grabs hold of every pessimistic ideal and heals all previous wounds and scars as a persuasive cure all, attacking blood cells, controlling the flow of the body. Happy love has no history, so it should come at no surprise that the majority of songs written are about love lost. But once you have lost love, it makes you all the more susceptible to it. The songs within the pop culture seem to be written for the demographic that listens to them…young and in love, all going through the same ups and downs. But that artist that you vibe with because he/she speaks so eloquently or angrily about love lost also knows both sides of love, and the very next single is about new love. Once bitten by love, you need to get some hair of the cat the scratched you. Being single is a fun and enjoyable time, and you may think that you are content being single for the rest of your life because love has treated you so poorly, but contentment is not a feeling, it is an absence; “contentment is the positive side of resignation. It has its appeal but its no good wearing and overcoat and furry slippers and heavy gloves when what the body really wants is to be naked.”(Written On The Body, Jeanette Winterson) When you desire the company of the opposite sex, you desire love. You desire because you lack; you no longer remember love and you lack its warmth. You desire passion and passion means suffering and your heart has suffered enough! When you think you might have found love again, it becomes unattainable until your self-realization of your jaded perspective and so you desire the unattainable to keep from desiring and you become loves most powerful victim… until you realize that love is again an attainable thing. It is tangible, because you feel it…

Why Is The Measure Of Love Always Loss?

Current Mood: Pensive
Music Playing: Atmosphere, You Can Imagine How Much Fun We're Having

"Why is the measure of love always loss?"(Written On The Body,Jeanette Winterson)
Sometimes you never really realize how much you love something until it’s lost, regardless of what that something is; and so in the future we always measure the things of life based on what we have already lost. When you lose what you love most dearly, it makes you realize that there are so many other things in the world worth loving, things that you forgot to love; like friends, family, hobbies or even yourself. The bad things in life open your eyes to the good things you weren't paying attention to before. When we are able to regain all other loves that we pushed aside, the love we lost becomes more and more not worth mentioning. The loss of love will always be measured against new love, thought it’s hard to imagine when new love might re-appear, sometimes the loss of love is the best thing that can happen. Often times it does one of two things; it can make you a stronger person and makes you realize that the love you had was quasi blind and though it felt like love, there was always something missing. Or it can make you realize that what you had was true love and the separation pulls at your hunger pains for the companionship and love of a soul mate lost. Sometimes neither person wants to admit the struggle and deal with it until it becomes too late and sometimes the most minor event can affect everything, and when that seemingly insufficient thing happens it sets everything else in motion...the most minor event can change everything...sometimes for the better, even if it doesn't seem like it at first (Scrubs). There is always some madness in love, but there is always some reason in madness. (unknown). No one is perfect, and therefore there is no such thing as a perfect relationship, but every so often the person that you are with may seem like they aren’t the right fit, but often times all it takes is a little work and compromise and understanding to make you realize that they are the right fit, you just have to find a more comfortable pair of shoes… because you both had grown up and didn’t fit into the shoes you started in. Unfortunately its not until they are gone that you can realize this. I think the problem with most people who act impulsively believing that they will get want they want, end up feeling guilt, remorse and invariably want back what they cant have. But sometimes, when they are finally gone, it can make you realize just how much it was never meant to be and you wasted away the days hoping that fate would step in and make a decision for you. Time can expose you to a whole new feeling in your heart, and it makes you ask the question, what was I fighting for? What was every thing I had to say, every letter I wrote? Was it your stubbornness or my own? Bottom line: it's couples who are truly right for each other that wade through the same crap as everybody else, but the big difference is they don't let it take them down. Love is so terrifying in a multitude of ways, when you have it you always fear losing it, and when you don’t have it you fear that you may never find it again. The loss of love by itself is enough to kill a man. It was once believed in the times of Shakespeare that when one sighed, it took the most vital blood away from the heart. Who is to say that one is not capable of dying of a broken heart? It happens all the time, the loss of a lover frequently drives people toward suicidal tendencies, and then sometimes the death isn’t so sudden, it is a slow agonizing death, in which, with every sigh, the heart grows weaker. We like to think that there is a good excuse, a good reason for acting the way we do when we push love away, but for the life of me I can’t really think of a good one, not for me, not for her either… Typically, symbols of love are supposed to remain strong and remain a promise and a bond between two people. Rings have always been representative of what is supposed to be an everlasting love. Unfortunately history has shown that putting a ring on someone’s finger doesn’t always mean happily ever after, but when you plan for it, you plan for a future and you give a loved one a ring and make a promise to each other, you would think that you owe it to each other to at least try to revive something that may have been lost along the way. Promise ring, engagement ring or wedding band, they are symbols of a promised love, through thick and thin. If love is worth fighting for, you stick it out at any cost, and that’s what I tried to do… but it became obvious that her affection for me was gone, and there was no fight for her, because she just didn’t care… within six weeks it became obvious that the relationship was not worth exploring, the happily ever ending that we had worked for, turned from a fairy tale to a nightmare. What happens when the future is lost? You get to re-invent yourself… somewhere along the way things changed, the stresses of life battled against cupid and in the end won, but the loss is worth measuring for yourself, not just for you both. It is the clichés of love that make it so hard to give up on. When you lose someone you thought was your future, it perpetually alters your life. You don’t just hit delete and pretend that there was nothing ever there, nothing is done quick except tying shoes and electric bills(Astronautalis), and you never, ever, ever get over it. There will always be a piece of that love that you carry around with you forever; eventually the pain does stop, but the memories never do, there will be new faces and new love, but that wound will never be properly mended. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you, and no one else can fit it.(Written On The Body,Jeanette Winterson) In the end it's the “what ifs” that hurt the most… and trying to forget someone you love is like trying to remember someone you never met. What is the point of movement when movement indicates life and life indicates hope? (Written On The Body,Jeanette Winterson) Sometimes life really surprises you and often times it is the small things that make the biggest impression on you, like seeing an old friend and meeting new, fresh, beautiful faces, beautiful souls… and though they may live 1,000 miles away, it makes you appreciate everything, and it is a reassurance that the heart of life is good. I guess that’s the funny thing about love; you never know which way it's going. Like me: I lost love, lost the battle...but at least I went down swinging.