Flashback
One day I was working with my coach on examining
various areas of my life, my perspectives, my “worldview” if you like, when I
was overtaken by a short-lived moment of absent-mindedness. And in the
suspended silence of that nanosecond of cosmic time my aural perception had not
heard it said what the next topic of personal context would be.
“So, Peter,” I was asked, “What about romance?”
I returned to the here and now with an abrupt landing – it felt as if I had
been face-slapped out of some distant reverie – shaken and, most definitely,
stirred! And, after an almost endless pause, instead of launching into eloquent
discourse concerning my views on romance or even some harboured wishes, perhaps
desires, all I was able to say was,
“Oh.”
I’d always been an incurable romantic,
yet for me romance was interlaced and intertwined with a connection at what I
now would describe as being on an intuitive or even a spiritual level. In my
youth, in spite of dreadful shyness, I’d be regularly seduced by the perfectionist
notion of “when eyes meet” or “when she walked in the room.”
I blame Hollywood, popular song writers, the lyrical poets and Shakespeare for
this far-sighted view of teen and twenteen romance and love. My Moons and Junes
and Ferris wheels really were fairy tales – illusions on a grand scale – and I came
a cropper on a regular basis back then as I gave my heart away, time after time,
to nothing more than a perfectionist’s dream of ideal romance.
And perhaps my single utterance, “Oh,”
was all I could muster as I was carried, by those wings in Jeffrey Osborne’s
song, all the way back from my coach’s question to the lazy, hazy, crazy days
of the summer of my youth.
I can remember thinking, “Blimey, do I
really want to go through all that again – for the sake of supposedly wanting
to fill an empty part of my life?” And I can remember saying something
completely different - like, “I hadn’t really thought about it, to be honest,” which
is, on the face of it, totally dishonest! I’m sure my body language gave me
away in that fleeting, lying moment!
The Passage of Time
Of course Heraclitus reminds me that
there is no chance of me “going through
all THAT again” in his famous quote:
“No
man ever steps into the same river twice – for he is not the same man, and it
is not the same river.”
As someone else explains, other waters are ever flowing onto us. And it is true
for me – from the days of my youth up to right now, a lot of waters have passed
under my bridge. I’m not the person I was one, five, fifteen years
ago – let alone in those days of callow youth.
So, what can I, as an incurable
romantic, say about Romance ... as we are in February and the 14th
is upon us? Well, perhaps I was right all along about the whole notion
of connecting with each other at a level beyond the everyday, the Temporal.
Perhaps the Spiritual connection is the True Romance? The whole idea of always knowing
someone on a non-corporeal level yet getting to know them in terms of their
physical presence is a boundless joy – for each day is a new discovery about
the other person.
Perhaps, too, my romances are built on friendship – which means
that my life in that area is not empty at all? Could be –
Who knows? There’s something due any day, I will know right away, soon as it
shows. It may even come cannon-balling down through the sky – and wake me up
from yet another reverie!
This is a highly subjective world-view
of course, based upon the connectivity of all humanity at the Spiritual level,
the collective unconscious, the cosmic domain. You may scoff, laugh,
chuckle, or even echo “bah humbug” if
you wish – for we’re all different in our perspectives. And some of you – and some
of me - may yet wonder if little old ME will ever again get to walk with
someone, hand-in-hand on the beach after a Sunday lunch of roast beef and Yorkshires
as our golden retriever bounds into the waves or across the sands after a ball.
This is romantic imagery, though, isn’t it?
Well, in my case Heraclitus knows best!
There was a time when I actually did fulfil that very same romantic image I’ve
just conjured up. But that was a different ME and a different RIVER. I now am united
with my version of the Spirit of Romance. There are no illusions, no clouds, no
fairy tales, and no perfectionist’s dreams.
Postscript
So, now I’ve been seduced into
considering things Temporal, I cannot let the moment pass without examining
that most romantic of gestures – The Kiss.
Here are some interesting quotes:-
“A kiss is a secret told
to the mouth instead of the ear; kisses are the messengers of love and
tenderness.” ~ Ingrid Bergman
“How did it happen that
their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts,
that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees
on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.” ~ Victor Hugo
“A kiss is a rosy dot over
the ‘i’ of loving.” ~ Cyrano de Bergerac
And
I’ll leave it there ... can’t have too much of a good thing! 💋💋
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