As I told a friend of mine right now, I'm getting bored, which means I'm getting introspective, which means I'm going to be philosophical...so I've been thinking about the different types of love there are.  Does anybody ever think about how expansive the word love is? Everyday someone says that they love something, much in the way that they say that they hate things as well.  "I love ice cream!" "I love study breaks!" "I love my Ipod!" This kind of love is easy because those are all things that are inanimate and have no feelings.  They make us feel good, and there really is no way for them to make us sad or angry unless they break or something.  Now there is also the sort of love that one feels for their family and friends.  This kind of love is important as it represents a large portion of the love that one encounters.

But what I'm interested in, and probably everyone else, is the love that most people talk about when they think of the word love; that is romantic love.  Now it would seem that whenever people are in love they usually are very confused about whether they are in love.  This is as if, people can only be in love every once in a blue moon.  However, I would have to disagree with that.  Love is one of the few things that is both fleeting and everlasting.  One can feel love at the drop of a hat when they see someone for the first time, e.g. love at first sight.  One can also feel love when seeing someone they've known forever, the love between an old retired couple.  So you want to know how you can tell whether you're in love or not? This is how.  Love hurts.  You see someone and it gives you this sinking feeling to see them, or you think twice, three times, about whether to say hi to them, or you think exactly how you're going to get them to remember your name, your face. And when even the smallest hint of failure comes out you worry.  If you've ever looked with envy and horror to see that that person is smiling and having fun with someone else and wonder why it isn't you that they're having fun with, you know it's love.  And for those who have been in a relationship for a while, it's a bit easier isn't it? You can just look in the eyes of your beloved, and you just know from the look they give back at you.

*To be continued*

      She left me a note saying that what she really wanted me to know was why, this way. I couldn't tell her; I didn't know why myself. But I felt like a monster. I had made a desperate bid for self-preservation - or what felt like self-preservation - in the only way I knew how. I hadn't wanted to hurt anyone. But I had. I promised myself never to get involved like that again.
     Guilt can be very useful.
     For the three days this went on in the hall way, Rhea was her usual quizzical and accepting self. I had to tell her about the affair, couched in the fact that it was now over. What she thought about Bea I never stopped long enough to ask, but what she said made good sense to me.
     "Just because you're strong doesn't mean you can let other people depend on you too much. It's not fair to them, because when you can't be what they want they're disappointed, and you feel bad." Rhea was somtimes very wise, just not for herself.

excerpt from Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde

Here is a question that I often wrestle with and am still unsure how exactly to deal with it.  A person is always a prisoner of the circumstances that he/she is in, which means that opportunities are only open for a brief window of time.  Doors open and close all the time in a person's life, but when a particular door closes, that one regrets missing everyday, should he or she wait for it to open again, or is it not worth missing all the new doors that open up in the future?

So I take my usual drive home on the usual path that I usually take paying the usual tolls, listening to the same music with the same drab straight road ahead of me, and the same boring skyline.  But along the way I90 gets totally blocked off and I sigh because of all the traffic that I am bound to meet.  After an hour of going about 2 miles an hour, which would mean that I travelled 2 miles in that hour, the detour took me onto a winding local road full of hills, trees, and corners so I decided to change the radio station to something...different.  It was a light/soft station playing all those old songs that everyone knows the words to.  The next two hours just flew by.  I was detouring around flooded roads, driving on dirt, driving on roads that were half built, driving through water, curving around twisty pathways, and all the while I was singing these old school songs so loud I think people outside of my mazda6 could have heard.  I didn't care.  I was just having the time of life by myself, and all the while I was just thinking about that scene from Elizabethtown where Orlando Bloom takes that cross country trip by himself.  I wonder what I would learn about myself if I were to take my own trip cross country...make that "when".

I would say that about a year ago I read a Meg Cabot novel, which would be considered chick lit, which I find...*ahem* somewhat interesting to read...,this particular novel uses the pride and prejudice approach of putting a worldly, egotistical, pessimistic guy who is of course "damaged" from his first love leaving him, and now is negative to all things love, next to a down-to-earth, neurotic, self-conscious, Bridget Jones wannabe (without the British accent of course) who like every stereotypical girl is looking for her true love.  They of course go through their meeting phase where they're annoyed and appalled by every action and word spoken by the other, but there is always that attraction, which they both hate themselves for admitting, but continue on anyway, and then long story short, they almost get together, but third party interferes, however, in the end, theyre together at last.  Now the thing I'm interested in is the moment that the guy "discovers" that he's in love with this girl, because all of this takes place with them having no real flirting stage and actually no real friendship stage.  He just has this epiphany that he can't deny, and can't believe himself is actually true.  Basically it means he has no control over the fact that he's in love with her.  And all he can do is tell her how he feels, this is the moment where if the reader is a girl is the magical moment she's been waiting for after 300 pages, and for that rare guy reading the book it is...well probably the same thing...what kind of guy would read chick lit anyway? and after that the rest is history.  Well what does this all mean, it must be that this guy is freaking sick, he's crazy, he doesn't agree with this girl on many philosophical issues, he's a renowned author and well travelled man while she's a comic strip artist, he gets with hot sophisticated foreign women and yet he wants someone who is sorta nice looking, has okay fashion sense, no knowledge of what is going on in the world nor has any interest in it, watches TV shows like ER....*sigh* but the thing is besides all this crap he knows what he wants, knowing what you want is sorta nice