symphony

day 5: your definition of love.

ha. can you tell i've been avoiding this post?
well, i have.
everyone loves to define these highly personalized abstractions, and no one can do it effectively. it's like describing color to a blind person, or music to someone deaf: if you've experienced love, you know it and you feel it and it changes you--but if you haven't, people can try to explain it to you until they run out of words but you will never completely understand. so i think this post is a little bit futile, because if you've loved, you don't need to sit and watch someone else to try (and fail) to put it in words; and if you haven't, then all the words in the world can't help you comprehend.
(cue voldemort reference.
i'm sorry.
i can't help it.)
but, the prompt is supreme, and i told you i'd follow through with it.
so here i go.
i've actually spent the whole weekend thinking quite a bit about love, a lot more than i usually do. being incapacitated these three days leaves a girl with few entertainment options. forgetting the pain happened most easily when i watched a movie. and action movies are great in their time and place, but only rarely. too much loud noises and jerky camera movements to mask fake choreography for my taste. scary movies are the absolute bane of my existence. motivational movies get draining after just one or two. comedies start to all seem the same after the second one in a row. so, the only genre left? you got it--chick flick. nothing too sappy, mind you. cute and creative enough to engage my imagination, funny enough to keep me entertained, exciting enough to get me invested, and, most of all, happy. i've become a sucker for happy endings, i'll admit it now. so anyway. i sat in my basement all weekend, chock-full of ibuprofen and tapioca pudding, watching romance after romance after romance. and all that brainwashing made me think a lot about love--where it comes from, why we want it so bad, what is it that makes my stomach jump and my eyes water (just a little bit) when the two beautiful people who have been convinced of their own unworthiness and inadequacy and of the other persons' endless charms and perfection for the past two hours finally realize that the other one maybe even loves them? and even though i know it's all carefully- (and sometimes unbearably cheesily-) scripted nonsense, and elaborately-constructed facial responses, re-shot dozens of times to get the exact effect--i try, like so many women have before me, and like so many women will after me, to pretend that it's real and that it could happen to me.
aren't we women pathetic?
or are we?
i still haven't decided for certain.
i'm still uncertain if i've felt real life, true life romantic love. sometimes i think i have, sometimes i think something even higher is out there. but i know love anyway. i know it when i say goodbye to my friends when they leave for two years, i know it when i see my family after being away for weeks, i know it when i walk the paths around my house, i know it when i look through the old pictures, i know it when i say a long overdue thank you or i'm sorry, i know it in the sounds of old music that reminds me of old times and older feelings, and i've known it in someone else's eyes. it's something heavy and light at the same time; heady and high-pitched, then eyelids half-closed and a warm blanket-feeling; sweet-smelling and laugh-making; the kind that makes me want to stand up and dance and sing and run and shout and fall down close my eyes and feel someone close without touching them, kind of like the sun, all at the same time.
do you understand?

lovers in japan (acoustic) -- coldplay

you and i -- ingrid michaelson

my hands are shaking -- sondre lerche