38: don't read this post!!! (unless you're in, like, a really girly mood and don't have time to watch a chick-flick)

I have a subject on which I wish to muse, a subject which has no value for the reader, and yet I take it up with all the fervency of a girl and a writer and none of the purpose of particular edification.

The subject being chemical attraction.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of going to a play of Jane Austen's Persuasion. I love Persuasion. I just do. I love the melancholy sweetness of 8 years of waiting, loving, without hope. As I watched the play, I loved it for another reason too.

The romantic tension.

You know when you like someone, and you wonder if they like you, and when they are standing close by there's just this electrical zing-zing happening between you even though you might not even be talking to them?

Or when you glance their way, and they are looking at you, and your stomach flip-flops as you jerk your head away?

That is the glory of Persuasion.

Ok, so Captain Wentworth is trying to spite Anne. He was rejected by her after all.

But really, every moment that they are in the same room together, there's this tension. They are so super-aware of each other. And sitting in the audience, I was a basket case of nerves, clenching my fists in anticipation when they actually had to interact.

It's the beauty of not-knowing.

Did I say there is a beauty in not-knowing? Yes, there is.

It's the beauty of subtlety. It's the beauty of flirting. It's the beauty of tension.

And it's that beauty that I wonder if I would miss if I actually did meet a guy online. I know why he's on, he knows why I'm on. It's simply a matter of seeing if it'll work (beliefs, personality, values) before starting the "relationship." I would imagine everything would be rather upfront.

Unexpressed, pre-relationship attraction, ie. crushes, are juvenile and pointless . . . yet glorious when you're in your late 20's. I'm not sure if I want to give them up in favor of a straightforward relationship. (This is me being emotional over logical.)

Excuse me while I wax poetic.

Crushes are like tornadoes. Heaven temporarily touches earth, destroying all sense of order in its path, sucking all of life into its vortex, and you can't decide whether you want it to continue to wreak havoc (because it hurts so good!) or if you want it to go away so you can continue on with life (since we all know that 99.9% of crushes go nowhere in the long run).

Crushes are bursts of magic upon which love seizes and works a miracle.

Chemical attraction, romantic tension, not-knowing--*happy sigh.*

"All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone."

She could not immediately have uttered another sentence; her heart was too full, her breath too much oppressed. . . .

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. . . . Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you."

 

--Persuasion, chapter 23

 

P.S. I promise to return to some more sensible topic when next or next-next I take up keyboard and screen.