Love

Considering my last blog had a frank discussion about the show Blossom, I thought it time to start writing about something a bit more substantial. Today's Blog is about Love.

In the brief history of my existence, I have come to learn that love is the most complex, confusing, awe-inspiring, and powerful force in the world. The few times that I have experienced it, it has changed me fundamentally, sometimes in ways I would never have expected.

In some ways I view myself as a rock, unmovable and solid. When there is something that I want, I take it. If there is something I feel, I express it. This has always been my strength, my ability to see clearly how I feel about moments as they confront me. Love has always been the one thing that I don't see clearly, that when it worms its way into my heart and mind, I lose myself completely. For this reason I fear it because I am not in control of it.

I remember when I was in love back in University. Back in those days, I was what most people would consider a douche bag. I had no interest in women other then the drunken sex they may provide. I listened to a lot of mainstream rap back then and somehow bought into the idea of myself as a 'playa'. Bros before hoes; hoes down, G's up and all that nonsense.

There was a girl in my class, a quiet type, who kept to herself and didn't say much. Although attractive, I had never given her much consideration. One day she expressed interest in me and we went on a few dates, and something inside me started to change. I found myself thinking about her constantly. When I'd go to the bar, I wasn't interested in meeting women because I was too busy thinking about where she was. I wrote poems about her. Music reminded me of her. I was falling. Here was my perfect women, the one that would make me forget all others.

Unfortunately, she didn't see it that way. She was from BC and she was going to be gone for 5 months during the summer and didn't see much point in keeping it going. On the final day of our being together, we lay on her bed and kissed. I told her I would wait. She said she couldn't.

When her cab pulled her away, it pulled away a piece of me with it.

That summer was awful. I cried a lot. I listened to Coldplay. I counted down the days on a calendar until her return. Every conversation I had led to her until friends who lent their sympathetic ears started to lose their patience with me. Women, some of whom were quite beautiful, would become intimate with me only to see me break down and talk about her. They didn't last. I would try to call her every now and again but she never would return my calls. When she did, she was brief and cold. Being in BC, it bothered me that when I lay in bed thinking about her in the wee hours of the morning, being 3 hours behind me, she was still enjoying her evening. I had somehow convinced myself that I was the reason she didn't love me back, that I wasn't good enough. I spent four days a week in the gym, in some bizarre attempt to create a better me, so that when she came back I would be more attractive and desirable.

Of course all this was pointless. The facts remained, we were young and she was gone and it had nothing at all to do with me. Women are slow to love, because men promise themselves so frequently that they simply must proceed with caution to protect themselves. And when men experience love, being resistant to feeling anything, they embrace it so fully they make fools of themselves. Being gone for 5 months and having really just gotten to know me, she was the one being reasonable. I was the one acting like an obsessive twit.

When she came back to school in September, we eventually did go out and spent a few years in a relationship. But because of that summer, where my heart literally imploded, I carried a resentment inside myself. In any argument, I couldn't give an inch, because I felt like all my slack was expended that summer in tears and bad pop tunes. The reality was, we weren't that great together anyway and the reality of us did not live up to the idea of us.

And so we fell out of love. But love doesn't go away. It transfers and becomes something new.

I will say this: I hate falling in love. For all my logic and intelligence, I can't get over the fact that from time to time someone enters my life that turns me into a puddle on the ground. I have remarkable restraint and a clear sense of self but when love enters me, all this is dropped to the floor. Suddenly I am whisked away to a place of extreme vulnerability, all my writing becomes mushy and unreadable, and I am seemingly unable to focus on myself which, for someone as self-absorbed as I am, is extremely frustrating. I never ask to fall in love. It just happens.

Why does it do that? When I hate something, its very clear as to why. "This guy stole my girlfriend". Now I hate him. Cause and effect. "My house burned to the ground" Now I'm sad. Again, cause and effect. So what is it about love that takes you by surprise? You can meet person after person, all beautiful in their own ways, and then one day your at work and a new co-worker stands besides you and BANG. You're in love. How?

I have thought a lot about this. For one thing, love cannot be manufactured, and in not being a human construct, has a life of its own. You can't make love in a laboratory because if you could, the USA would be dropping bombs full of it as we speak. You can't will yourself to love, and you certainly can't buy it. This was a lesson I learned, as I've learned many of my life's lessons, from a comic book.

You see, there was this guy named Thanos. He was a big bad villainous bastard from outer space who was in love with death. So in love with death was he, that he searched the cosmos for the infinity gems, 5 gems of power representing the fundamental forces of the universe: Power, Time, Space, Reality and Soul. He who possessed all five of these gems would become a God, for he would have the power to alter the very fabric of existence. Long story short, Thanos travelled the cosmos and found all 5 infinity gems. Upon acquiring them, he became all-knowing and all-powerful. His first act as a God was to meet Death herself, for so powerful was he that he could conceptualize the force of Death as a women. Upon meeting her, he snapped his fingers and killed half of the life in the universe. A gift he said, for his undying love. Death stared at him and turned away, unimpressed. Next he built her a gigantic monument made of bones, a floating shrine in her honour. She rejected it. He took the planets and arranged them to spell her name. She ignored it. Every gesture, bigger then the last, fell on blind eyes and deaf ears. Thanos was confounded. Here he was, the most powerful man in the galaxy and yet he couldn't with all of his power, the very fabric of the universe his to shape, make someone love him. Oh sure he could force her to love him, snap his fingers and create a reality where Death loved him back, but that would prove hollow. She simply did not. Thanos would eventually in jealousy and anger, create his perfect mate, a creature created in his own image. But that too was empty. All he craved was the love of a women.

In the end, Earth's superheroes come, they fight and save the world. At the end of the day, the Infinity Gauntlet story of which I speak is nothing but a big, stupid comic book. But even at the tender age of 11 when I read it, I saw huge meaning in Thanos and his quest for love. Love could not be bought and all the power in the world could not artificially create it.

So looking at it in this way, one begins to realize that love is a fundamental force, greater then all other forces combined. It isn't just a feeling, it is a power beyond human understanding. And that is why it takes us by the scruff of the neck and flings us into the deep end...it's a power far out of our control.

Now I am not a religious man. Being raised Catholic, I have seen all too many times the disconnect between what one believes and how one actually behaves. And I have seen the hypocrisy of telling others to follow a path that they themselves do not follow. And I don't believe in anything that man has written, even if it's a holy text. And I can't be restricted by anything short of the lessons I've learned and the morality that has come with these lessons. So I can't say conclusively that there is a God, a higher purpose, a deeper meaning to existence. If I could, I'd probably be selling it to you in a book right now.

But here is the kicker. I BELIEVE in Love. And love, having nothing to do with anything earthly, makes me believe that perhaps there is an unseen world all around us, something greater then a world filled with automobiles, dance clubs and twitter. There are scents greater then Chanel. Tastes more glorious then Big Macs. Fabrics richer then the paper of legal tender. And it is through love that I have experienced the greatest heights of human experience. Not through drugs, not through money, not through Coldplay, but full out 'shift the very ground you walk on and knock you on your ass' LOVE. And I can't explain it, I can't quantify it and I can't express it. It's there and we are at its mercy.

I wasn't going to write this blog. These days, love is a bit of a joke word. It doesn't titillate the senses like sex and violence. No one wants to see love. When its on TV, in our magazines or on the big screen, we laugh when it happens. "Oh right" we say. "Now they live happily ever after. Puh-leeze." Seeing love sickens us. When a movie ends happily, we roll our eyes. Shouldn't they have died? Would they really have met up in the end? Is anything in life perfect?

Well, no. Life is a great deal more complicated then that. It seems whenever we love someone, they don't love us back. And when we could care less, that's when people start to get stars in their eyes. Love is difficult. And anything depicted in the media that makes it seem simple offends us. But we've gone well beyond that now. Now we have no tolerance for it at all. We would rather see a man beheaded. A persons toe cut off. Two mannequins fucking. Donald Trump wagging his finger firing people. Simon Caldwell making young girls cry. Pain, suffering, aggression. That's the stuff of entertainment.

I was afraid to write this. Love isn't a popular topic and I'm not the man you'd expect to hear it from. You Blogging Bastard is my place to be flippant about the world and air out my completely superficial grievances about being a piece of shit actor in an uncaring capitalist society. And don't worry, it will continue to be. But sometimes I've got more on my mind then how to rip off the TTC, or what's my favorite breakfast cereal.

For you see, I am in love. And it is the greatest force in the universe.

Mushy Gushy

That Blogging Bastard