Without my wife, who passed away six months ago, the holiday season doesn't hold the meaning for me of past seasons. This is an empty time, devoid of happiness, filled with sadness. Certainly, there are no thoughts of romance in my mind and no feelings in my heart.
Yes, I have family, but, still, my beloved gave me courage and optimism. She was my courage and my heart. Without her, I am indecisive, hesitant, and fearful.
There were better times. My memories are filled with this beautiful young girl smiling as she walked toward me or caught my eye from a distance when we were separated by several aisles in a large department store.
We loved shopping for gifts for our children, taking great care to have an equal number and quality of Christmas presents for each on Christmas morning.
We enjoyed sitting across from one another in a booth in our favorite restaurant, having breakfast, drinking coffee, and talking.
There are so many more memories. I'll leave now. Remembering brings tears and sadness.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
I'm (not) in the Mood for Love
If you've lost your loved one, you'll understand how difficult it is to feel romantic. Even when you're thinking about your life together, about how beautiful she was, how her eyes shone with starlight, and how her smile pulled you to her, the memories soon give way to reality. She is gone and she will never return.
How can a person move beyond the malaise of loss? I don't know. I've never experienced it before so there's nothing in my background to guide me. But I think about it a lot and I wondered today about goodbyes.
As I visualized scenes of past goodbyes, I began to formulate an idea. I finally phrased it this way:
Goodbyes are moments of revelation or illusion. In a reflective moment, we may wonder if the goodbye is permanent or if we may meet again someday.
Revelation occurs when we know with certainty that a reunification will never occur. Death is a prime example of revelation, although the revelation may not occur immediately.
Illusion is a state of mind dominated by fantasies and daydreams of an eventual reunification. When I think of this, I am reminded of an old song with a line or two that goes something like this:
We'll meet again, don't know where don't know when
but I know we'll meet again some sunny day.
When we say goodbye to a living person we can always hold out the hope that the person may return or we may go to them. But when we say our goodbyes to a departed individual, we know intellectually that unless we believe in an eventual reunification in heaven or in our version of heaven, we are in the realm of a very realistic revelation.
Sometime, if we are unable to separate the real (death) from the ideal (together forever in Heaven), we may exist in a twilight zone between revelation and illusion, alternating between states, existing in one state for a moment and then the other. I find myself in that twilight zone.
I don't know if we consciously choose these states or if the mind has a mind of its own. Those are matters for philosophers.
I don't even know if I will ever regain a sense of romanticism. The thought that I might look at another woman and feel the existence of a sense of romantic possibility, seems somehow unfaithful.
Maybe it's too soon after her departure. Only time and my moods will tell.
How can a person move beyond the malaise of loss? I don't know. I've never experienced it before so there's nothing in my background to guide me. But I think about it a lot and I wondered today about goodbyes.
As I visualized scenes of past goodbyes, I began to formulate an idea. I finally phrased it this way:
Goodbyes are moments of revelation or illusion. In a reflective moment, we may wonder if the goodbye is permanent or if we may meet again someday.
Revelation occurs when we know with certainty that a reunification will never occur. Death is a prime example of revelation, although the revelation may not occur immediately.
Illusion is a state of mind dominated by fantasies and daydreams of an eventual reunification. When I think of this, I am reminded of an old song with a line or two that goes something like this:
We'll meet again, don't know where don't know when
but I know we'll meet again some sunny day.
When we say goodbye to a living person we can always hold out the hope that the person may return or we may go to them. But when we say our goodbyes to a departed individual, we know intellectually that unless we believe in an eventual reunification in heaven or in our version of heaven, we are in the realm of a very realistic revelation.
Sometime, if we are unable to separate the real (death) from the ideal (together forever in Heaven), we may exist in a twilight zone between revelation and illusion, alternating between states, existing in one state for a moment and then the other. I find myself in that twilight zone.
I don't know if we consciously choose these states or if the mind has a mind of its own. Those are matters for philosophers.
I don't even know if I will ever regain a sense of romanticism. The thought that I might look at another woman and feel the existence of a sense of romantic possibility, seems somehow unfaithful.
Maybe it's too soon after her departure. Only time and my moods will tell.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
We Belong Together
I'm sitting around clicking my clicker up and down the hi def channels. It's one of my bad habits.
But tonight, a couple of programs filled with romantic music are drawing me. One is the movie La Bamba with Lou Diamond Phillips as fifties rock and roll phenom Ritchie Valens. Even though rock and roll was his basic style, Valens is also noted for a couple of romantic ballads.
One is Donna, a song he wrote for his high school sweetheart whose real name was Donna. The second is one of my all time favorites, We Belong Together. I still remember a couple of lines:
You're mine and we belong together
Yes, we belong together for eternity.
Tonight as I listened to it once again, I could feel the goose bumps rising. This has got to be one of the really all-time romantic ballads. I first heart the song in 1986 when the movie La Bamba was released. My wife and I saw it in a Kahala Shopping Center movie theater in Honolulu. We both loved it, and when I hear it, I think of her. If you've never heard the song, get it and listen. I think you'll like it.
The other program is a PBS Special about Italian-American singers and their music. Most of the songs are from the fifties, and oddly, most of the Italian Singers have Anglicized names. It seems that back in those days, the custom for anyone without a good old Americanized name was to adopt one for business purposes.
You may or may not know the following names, but all of them belong to Italian-Americans: Bobby Darin, Frankie Laine, Bobby Rydell, Connie Francis, Tony Bennett, Jerry Vale, Dean Martin, the list goes on.
Not all of the singers succumbed to Americanization, at least as far as names go. Some of the more popular singers retained their birth names in whole or in part. These included Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Vic Damone, Juliis La Rosa, and a host of others.
But one thing is clear. Whether the Italian-American entertainers changed their names or not, they were universally top flight singers who produced some of the most romantic music ever. We'll never roll back the nusical clock. Music evolves, and each generation has its own version of romance and romantic music.
Still, you just can't beat the sentiments in We Belong Together. Let your mind and memories drift away for a moment and imagine you're in another era.
You're mine and we belong together
Yes, we belong together for eternity
You're mine, your lips belong to me
Yes, they belong to only me for eternity
I'm willing to bet you have a special person in your past or present who is that one special love you want to spend an eternity with. Am I right?
But tonight, a couple of programs filled with romantic music are drawing me. One is the movie La Bamba with Lou Diamond Phillips as fifties rock and roll phenom Ritchie Valens. Even though rock and roll was his basic style, Valens is also noted for a couple of romantic ballads.
One is Donna, a song he wrote for his high school sweetheart whose real name was Donna. The second is one of my all time favorites, We Belong Together. I still remember a couple of lines:
You're mine and we belong together
Yes, we belong together for eternity.
Tonight as I listened to it once again, I could feel the goose bumps rising. This has got to be one of the really all-time romantic ballads. I first heart the song in 1986 when the movie La Bamba was released. My wife and I saw it in a Kahala Shopping Center movie theater in Honolulu. We both loved it, and when I hear it, I think of her. If you've never heard the song, get it and listen. I think you'll like it.
The other program is a PBS Special about Italian-American singers and their music. Most of the songs are from the fifties, and oddly, most of the Italian Singers have Anglicized names. It seems that back in those days, the custom for anyone without a good old Americanized name was to adopt one for business purposes.
You may or may not know the following names, but all of them belong to Italian-Americans: Bobby Darin, Frankie Laine, Bobby Rydell, Connie Francis, Tony Bennett, Jerry Vale, Dean Martin, the list goes on.
Not all of the singers succumbed to Americanization, at least as far as names go. Some of the more popular singers retained their birth names in whole or in part. These included Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Vic Damone, Juliis La Rosa, and a host of others.
But one thing is clear. Whether the Italian-American entertainers changed their names or not, they were universally top flight singers who produced some of the most romantic music ever. We'll never roll back the nusical clock. Music evolves, and each generation has its own version of romance and romantic music.
Still, you just can't beat the sentiments in We Belong Together. Let your mind and memories drift away for a moment and imagine you're in another era.
You're mine and we belong together
Yes, we belong together for eternity
You're mine, your lips belong to me
Yes, they belong to only me for eternity
I'm willing to bet you have a special person in your past or present who is that one special love you want to spend an eternity with. Am I right?
Thursday, June 25, 2009
A Different Kind of Romance
Or is it?
You'll pardon me, I hope, if I descend into the murky depths of illicit affairs, which I take in this instance to mean sexual relations outside of marriage.
I'm thinking right now of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and his Argentine inamorata. Reports from Argentina have referred to her as a 43-year old professional woman of uncommon beauty. Sanford is 49, so the age range is in line with general expectations.
The element in this romance that strikes me as interesting is the appearance of the two. Given that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we are, nonetheless, prone to accept reports that the woman is pretty darned good looking.
Sanford, on the other hand, altghough tall and with a commanding presence by virtue of that alone, doesn't have the face of a Hollywood idol. He has close-set eyes that some may describe as beady. And a long, narrow nose reminiscent of the noses of some species of lower primates.
As your typical generic Anglo-Saxon male, I am naturally prone to ask, "What does she see in that guy?"
In fact, when I look at Sanford's face, I am reminded of an old Mickey Gilley honky-tonk song, "The Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time."
The song clearly suggests that a woman's attractiveness increases in proportion with the amount of alcohol consumed by the male. I hold that the rule also applies to women. The more booze a woman consumes, the handsomer a generic will appear to be.
I am not suggesting that Sanford's inamorata has to get loaded to engage in an affair with him. But Sanford surely must possess some sort of characteristic that transforms him into a desirabke male, a characteristic that acts on the female brain much in the manner of booze, a characteristic that casts a soft glow on his entire being.
In my judgement, power is that characteristic. As pudgy Henry Kissinger once said, "Power is an aphrodisiac." This once-Secretary of State ought to know. He used to squire some of Hollywood's most beautiful women around town.
And now, it seems, generic Sanford is the beneficiary of Kissinger's homily. If only the rest of us plain folks were as fortunate. Sigh.
You'll pardon me, I hope, if I descend into the murky depths of illicit affairs, which I take in this instance to mean sexual relations outside of marriage.
I'm thinking right now of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and his Argentine inamorata. Reports from Argentina have referred to her as a 43-year old professional woman of uncommon beauty. Sanford is 49, so the age range is in line with general expectations.
The element in this romance that strikes me as interesting is the appearance of the two. Given that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we are, nonetheless, prone to accept reports that the woman is pretty darned good looking.
Sanford, on the other hand, altghough tall and with a commanding presence by virtue of that alone, doesn't have the face of a Hollywood idol. He has close-set eyes that some may describe as beady. And a long, narrow nose reminiscent of the noses of some species of lower primates.
As your typical generic Anglo-Saxon male, I am naturally prone to ask, "What does she see in that guy?"
In fact, when I look at Sanford's face, I am reminded of an old Mickey Gilley honky-tonk song, "The Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time."
The song clearly suggests that a woman's attractiveness increases in proportion with the amount of alcohol consumed by the male. I hold that the rule also applies to women. The more booze a woman consumes, the handsomer a generic will appear to be.
I am not suggesting that Sanford's inamorata has to get loaded to engage in an affair with him. But Sanford surely must possess some sort of characteristic that transforms him into a desirabke male, a characteristic that acts on the female brain much in the manner of booze, a characteristic that casts a soft glow on his entire being.
In my judgement, power is that characteristic. As pudgy Henry Kissinger once said, "Power is an aphrodisiac." This once-Secretary of State ought to know. He used to squire some of Hollywood's most beautiful women around town.
And now, it seems, generic Sanford is the beneficiary of Kissinger's homily. If only the rest of us plain folks were as fortunate. Sigh.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Sex Scandals and Romance
I once read that people who have illicit affairs often look back on their affair partner with fond memories and a sense of romanticism even years after the affair has ended.
There's undoubtedly a grain of truth in this, but I wonder if individuals who suddenly become notorious when their affair with a public figure become public will look back years later and say, "Boy, that was the best sex of my life."
Somehow, I kind of doubt this little scenario. The glare of publicity can often create enemies out of lovers, as each participant in an affair attempts to distance him or herself from the other. This is especially so when one or both of the participants is a politician. And if the affair began as a romantic attachment rather a mere roll in the hay, the public figure is even more likely to disclaim his or her partner just to assure political survival.
These thoughts came to mind today after I read an on-line article about "San Francisco's Top 10 Sex Scandals."
Among others, the list included liaisons from as far back as the 1870's, but one from 1983 caught my attention. I vaguely remembered reading about it but had totally forgotten until today. In a nutshell, a man and a woman, both apparently employees of a club, decided to have a little after-hours sex. Not unusual, but they opted to hop on the top of a piano. Apparently, without conscious awareness, one or the other tripped a hydraulic lift, and as they rode their heavenly vehicle to Nirvana, the piano crushed the man against the ceiling, killing him and leaving his female partner somewhat the worse for wear. I would say that this incident proves men and women will rise to any height for romance.
More recently, the case of the Mayor of San Francisco shows that not even friendship can dampen a romantic attachment. The mayor engaged in an affair with the wife of his best friend, which probably isn't unusual. But in this case, the best friend was Newsom's deputy chief of staff and campaign manager, and the cuckold's wife was Newsom's appointments secretary. This case is filled with quirks, not the least of which is the attendance of all three at the same time at a sexual harassment training session. Many in San Francisco are convinced that this was a hot romance that was cut short because of Newsom's political ambitions. The story goes that Newsom would need a socially acceptable wife rather than his appointments secretary. Decide for yourself.
And in the matter of romance and sex scandals, can romance survive a public scandal? Maybe. Who knows.
There's undoubtedly a grain of truth in this, but I wonder if individuals who suddenly become notorious when their affair with a public figure become public will look back years later and say, "Boy, that was the best sex of my life."
Somehow, I kind of doubt this little scenario. The glare of publicity can often create enemies out of lovers, as each participant in an affair attempts to distance him or herself from the other. This is especially so when one or both of the participants is a politician. And if the affair began as a romantic attachment rather a mere roll in the hay, the public figure is even more likely to disclaim his or her partner just to assure political survival.
These thoughts came to mind today after I read an on-line article about "San Francisco's Top 10 Sex Scandals."
Among others, the list included liaisons from as far back as the 1870's, but one from 1983 caught my attention. I vaguely remembered reading about it but had totally forgotten until today. In a nutshell, a man and a woman, both apparently employees of a club, decided to have a little after-hours sex. Not unusual, but they opted to hop on the top of a piano. Apparently, without conscious awareness, one or the other tripped a hydraulic lift, and as they rode their heavenly vehicle to Nirvana, the piano crushed the man against the ceiling, killing him and leaving his female partner somewhat the worse for wear. I would say that this incident proves men and women will rise to any height for romance.
More recently, the case of the Mayor of San Francisco shows that not even friendship can dampen a romantic attachment. The mayor engaged in an affair with the wife of his best friend, which probably isn't unusual. But in this case, the best friend was Newsom's deputy chief of staff and campaign manager, and the cuckold's wife was Newsom's appointments secretary. This case is filled with quirks, not the least of which is the attendance of all three at the same time at a sexual harassment training session. Many in San Francisco are convinced that this was a hot romance that was cut short because of Newsom's political ambitions. The story goes that Newsom would need a socially acceptable wife rather than his appointments secretary. Decide for yourself.
And in the matter of romance and sex scandals, can romance survive a public scandal? Maybe. Who knows.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Surviving
I haven't quite been in the mood to write lately. My wife has been through a series of illnesses and mishaps, and we have spent a good deal of time in the hospital with her.
She's home now, but she still requires physical rehab to get her muscles back in shape, as well as our close attention to her needs. We are optimistic at this point.
I'm sure most of you have experienced the illness of a loved one, and during those trying times, thoughts of romance have been placed on hold. That's pretty much how I feel right now.
However, we'll eventually return to the frame of mind that generated thoughts of the way romance used to be. As I mentioned, we're optimistic.
'Til then (a Mills Brothers tune), our posts will be sporadic.
She's home now, but she still requires physical rehab to get her muscles back in shape, as well as our close attention to her needs. We are optimistic at this point.
I'm sure most of you have experienced the illness of a loved one, and during those trying times, thoughts of romance have been placed on hold. That's pretty much how I feel right now.
However, we'll eventually return to the frame of mind that generated thoughts of the way romance used to be. As I mentioned, we're optimistic.
'Til then (a Mills Brothers tune), our posts will be sporadic.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Is Romance Dying?
Of course not. But the overt signs of romance are declining along with the economy. Sales of cards, flowers, and candy are down. But the inner self, where romance really resides, is alive and well. Don't fret. Learn to live frugally, like the Amish. Romance is best encouraged by person-to0-person contact. Walk up to your loved one or maybe-loved one and just say, "I love you." You have nothing to lose, with the possible exception of your fear and embarrassment at revealing your feelings. Love means never feeling embarrassed!
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Romance in Hi Def
I watched Must Love Dogs starring Diane Lane last evening. I first saw her in Lonesome Dove in the role of a hooker with a heart of gold. That was 1989, twenty-one years ago when she was a youthful twenty-three. In Must Love Dogs, she was thirty-nine and still retained her basic beauty.
Only last night, on my 46-inch high definition television, a few lines and tiny sags were visible. And that set me to wondering if the advent of hi def will have an effect on romance on the tube. I mean, here we have these aging but still beautiful women and handsome men filling the room with every pore magnified. How will that play with an American audience that demands perfection, either natural or artificial?
The future is unpredictable, but one thought popped into my mind. Hollywood's make-up artists may have to develop new ways of hiding blemishes from those umpteen million pixels that record with accurate detail everything withing range. That may be a tall order.
But, then again, if we begin to see these icons of physical perfection as ordinary mortals like us, perhaps our standards of beauty will become more realistic. Is that possible? Can we accept two average-looking people engaged in hot romantic scenes?
I look for digital enhancement rather than makeup as a solution. Romance demands illusion, and I am sure Hollywood stands ready to honor our desires.
What are your thoughts?
Only last night, on my 46-inch high definition television, a few lines and tiny sags were visible. And that set me to wondering if the advent of hi def will have an effect on romance on the tube. I mean, here we have these aging but still beautiful women and handsome men filling the room with every pore magnified. How will that play with an American audience that demands perfection, either natural or artificial?
The future is unpredictable, but one thought popped into my mind. Hollywood's make-up artists may have to develop new ways of hiding blemishes from those umpteen million pixels that record with accurate detail everything withing range. That may be a tall order.
But, then again, if we begin to see these icons of physical perfection as ordinary mortals like us, perhaps our standards of beauty will become more realistic. Is that possible? Can we accept two average-looking people engaged in hot romantic scenes?
I look for digital enhancement rather than makeup as a solution. Romance demands illusion, and I am sure Hollywood stands ready to honor our desires.
What are your thoughts?
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