The romantic landscape: blind people with hatchets (or Infatuation for the depressed)
Whoever envisioned the romantic landscape as a breeze-swept field at a raspberry-hued sunset, where figures in medieval grab glide in a Brownian ballet, barely touching — shoulder to shoulder, back of hand to back of hand, gazing deeply into each other’s eyes and longing to be close — must have died in agony, the poor, afflicted poet. Nothing could be further from this thought and vision than the true romantic scene, akin to swimming in the murkiest of seas, among a world of people who hope and despair every day, those who must swim or sink by the hour. Dive deeper into the insidious, treacherous mechanism of relationships that form without enduring, constricting in endless torment, where you find the irony of fate and the cynicism of the so-called euphoria of love. You love, admire, wound, reject, hope, pursue, obsess, and cultivate obsessions, pouring out onto poor beings your aspirations and pains. And as you suffer in ways more inventive than your mind could conceive, pondering why you have drawn such fate, you dismiss another being with a simple wave behind you, eyes averted, one who suffers and yearns like a faithful hound, emaciated and ready to decay from the lack of love. A vicious circle in which we spin aimlessly, wandering with hatches held tight and closed eyes, following the scent of blood, sometimes to love, other times to strike. Those who chance upon connection vanish soon after the wonder, never to be glimpsed again. They are said to dwell in tranquil love or may be dead and food for worms, since nothing of that sort can last, nor find home in sacks of flesh so badly knit as human bodies. May their sleep be filled with loving dreams and lack of hate from those still feeling the cuts and bruises coming from the trenches of our reliance on oxytocin and endorphins. Poor bastards we are. And barely living. Mislead early on with promises of grandeur and then just hurled from the tailgate of a pickup truck into a field of love-starved blind people, madly bound, in an apocalyptic scene where the crow on the lone remaining branch in the wind watches like Mephisto a dance of death more whimsical than ever. I wonder if God could ever fit this picture. I guess we wander outside their realm. I am convinced God bears no responsibility for this grotesque vice, that offers neither peace nor pleasure, only a subtle form of self-destruction, eternally unsatisfied. Let’s take a couple more steps and swing the hatchet one more time, see if we bruise another chest or slash another thigh, hoping that the warmth of blood will fill our empty hearts and bring one drop of comfort for a couple of seconds more. We may call this “adore”.
