All the Pleasures Prove

I don’t consider myself romantic (anymore). A bit sad, isn’t it? If someone had told me in my twenties that all my pining and longing for what didn’t happen (and the underwhelmed feeling for what did) had a basis in the human organism and the presence of oxytocin as Louann Brizendine writes (some say theorizes) in The Female Brain, I would have really appreciated that knowledge. Right or wrong, scientifically sound or not (the book is criticized for lack of this by some) having the book then would have given me something to at least step back on and really call the bullshit out for what it was (and the effect it was having on me). I just needed a tool for talking myself out of the romantic pains of my 20s- THERE, I said it! {Big sigh}.    :)  Yeah, NOW you publish your book!

But I had a welcome reunion with this verse on a coaster for sale the Globe Theatre Museum Shop in London recently. It took me back to the days when as a tween, I was not even yet capable of lusting after anyone specific. They were years of my life when I adored this poem (I still do, all hope is not lost). 

But is it my imagination or have we lost the ability to be romantic? My mind reaches out with some vague commentary that because aspects of our lives are being swallowed by the digital and the instantaneous state of being, romance has lost some of its best footing. We’ve done just about all we can to destroy what romance needs to thrive in a human brain.  Anticipation:  we’ve done away with waiting in our communications. Patience:  because we don’t wait any more, we now lack this talent. Imagination:  is there an app for that in the iPhone App Store? Fantasy:  log in and we’ll give you some template worlds where you can have it all visualized for you. Surprise and the unexpected are perhaps the last holdouts to which romance can cling! My phone is ringing as I write here--- who IS that? Oh. Surprise! Ha, knew it was him.

I am grateful for having been able to go immerse myself physically (and not digitally) in a city that was the birthplace for Elizabethan ideals. As for my love of London and the family to whom I return: