St. Valentine's Daydream
Feb. 14th, 2008 05:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"Love is the most terrible, and also the most generous, of the passions; it is the only one which includes in its dreams the happiness of someone else."
- Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (French critic, journalist and novelist)
In my younger days, I considered myself a really romantic guy. Even as an awkward teenager, I enjoyed Casablanca, Shakespearian sonnets and the assorted works of Peter Cetera (whom, by the way, I still consider to be an historically underrated songsmith). I was just wild for my various sweethearts; I must have found a million different ways to tell them "I love you," even (and especially) when it was way too early in the relationship for me to be saying so. By that time, I was already half-drunk with the rush, the swollen sensation of being in love.
And maybe that's the definition of common romanticism: not the state or business of loving someone, but the unabashedly earnest infatuation with love itself. A.C.P. used to say, apropos of nothing, "To love for the sake of being loved is human; to love for the sake of loving is angelic." At the time, I could only pretend to know what that meant. But now I think it illustrates romanticism's inherent impracticality -- the imagination required to conceive of it, and the faith required to sustain it.
And though I loved my sweethearts, in the uncompromising way that only the naive can love, there was always something selfish in it. I can remember imagining scenarios in which married life with my beloved was cut short by my untimely death, and the idea of my widow finding love again without me was saddening enough to make me physically ill. For all my enthusiasm and devotion, I could not resolve the division of loving and being loved.
Today is my third Valentine's Day with J., and it's been a long, long time since I shared a Valentine's Day with anyone else. Recently, I daydreamed my way back to that morbid scenario, in which my life with her was interrupted by my death. I found myself sincerely hoping that she would mourn me, and move on, and find someone new. Because more than anything, I look at her and I simply want her to have the love she deserves.
In my life I've said "I love you" a million times, a million different ways. Today I merely wish her all the happiness she can find, and thank her for letting me be the one to find it with her.
- Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (French critic, journalist and novelist)
In my younger days, I considered myself a really romantic guy. Even as an awkward teenager, I enjoyed Casablanca, Shakespearian sonnets and the assorted works of Peter Cetera (whom, by the way, I still consider to be an historically underrated songsmith). I was just wild for my various sweethearts; I must have found a million different ways to tell them "I love you," even (and especially) when it was way too early in the relationship for me to be saying so. By that time, I was already half-drunk with the rush, the swollen sensation of being in love.
And maybe that's the definition of common romanticism: not the state or business of loving someone, but the unabashedly earnest infatuation with love itself. A.C.P. used to say, apropos of nothing, "To love for the sake of being loved is human; to love for the sake of loving is angelic." At the time, I could only pretend to know what that meant. But now I think it illustrates romanticism's inherent impracticality -- the imagination required to conceive of it, and the faith required to sustain it.
And though I loved my sweethearts, in the uncompromising way that only the naive can love, there was always something selfish in it. I can remember imagining scenarios in which married life with my beloved was cut short by my untimely death, and the idea of my widow finding love again without me was saddening enough to make me physically ill. For all my enthusiasm and devotion, I could not resolve the division of loving and being loved.
Today is my third Valentine's Day with J., and it's been a long, long time since I shared a Valentine's Day with anyone else. Recently, I daydreamed my way back to that morbid scenario, in which my life with her was interrupted by my death. I found myself sincerely hoping that she would mourn me, and move on, and find someone new. Because more than anything, I look at her and I simply want her to have the love she deserves.
In my life I've said "I love you" a million times, a million different ways. Today I merely wish her all the happiness she can find, and thank her for letting me be the one to find it with her.
