ROMANCE
A CONCEPT WITHOUT A HOME IN 2007

Romance is an ideal. It makes us giddy, attenuates us to what it is to be a human, and sets our old-brain on its heels. Our heart feels like it will burst.

Unfortunately, we are encouraged to believe that romance is a formula, and that third rate hookups, computer based “interface” and meshuganah yentls at 1-900 numbers will produce the right biochemical mix to make it happen.

My uncle once said to me that romance is 90% luck and 10% showing up with your teeth brushed.  That is certainly a bit simple.  However, he had a point. We have to present and notice what is going on around us.  The fact that we must rely on utterly flat methods of contacting others because we don’t go out to meet them may say it all.

In the 90’s  people went to Grocery store singles nights.  When that didn’t work they went to singles dances, and when that didn’t work they resorted to the dreaded fix up.

In 2007 you can be sorted through a computer, a data base listing, make a video, connect on the internet and talk live on a phone to some very strange people.  I would guess that speed dating which allows you to talk for one minute to about sixty people presupposes that these people, like you, apparently have no time anyway, so you can see them for sixty seconds. Sounds promising.  Seven years ago, my friend in a fit of pique and desperation sent out  133 faxes describing her ideal mate. A lot of people responded, and she met most of them. Then she gave up. One day she was at Stanley park, tripped and fell over a dog. The owner apologized and drove her to the hospital because she had sprained her ankle. Boom. It was love and who could have predicted it?  They are happy and have formed a lasting friendship with romance thrown into the mix.

Everyone who has any financial acumen tries to bottle, publish, define or trade on romance. It remains a mysterious, luminous beacon for every lonely heart, and every person, no matter how jaded.  If you aren’t looking for anything but an improvement, a retrofit, so to speak, remember the places, times and memories that demonstrated real romance.  Those were probably times when no extraordinary thing took place, but everything seemed brighter, the world rushed around you, but you saw only one person in a world packed with people.  That is romance, and you can’t buy it or invent it or love the idea more than the real thing.