Calculating Romance
I wrote this in May of 2006 as a young woman living abroad for the first time romantically attracted to the notion of romance and foreign love affairs. The photo was taken as close the the day I wrote this as I had record of. (Germany)
TRAVELCREATIVESPHILOSPHY
Charmaine Begell
4/21/20251 min read
What is it about life that turns the simplest of things into a system of complex theories and equations? A simple hello becomes an uncomfortable good-bye. All the question marks go fluttering by and the exclamation points go bye. I am a complex creature that longs for simplicity and reason, only I know reason is an unreasonable summation. I let myself fall so quickly only to realize I fell right through. The momentary joy of weightlessness became the familiarity of loneliness.
We were two question marks with revolving responses. I became the supporting statement; trying to stay as separated as the colon. I thought my performance was very open as direct statements, only to realize that the open words were only cover for my question marked behavior.
I have a friend who lets a guy know exactly what she wants and expectations, where I hide behind witty banter and intellectual jokes. I am simply complex; a no nonsense girl who speaks nonsense! Ect, Ect, Ect.
Is there a way to make two question marks a match or are we destined to find the punctuation that grammatically fits? Period. Is it best to be the open-ended question that keeps life mysterious or be the exclamation point that makes emotions short and sweet? When the variables around the swirling lust of intimacy are two question marks trying to play at statements is there any answer that resolves to tie up the story? Can you go back and change the question once you already know the answer? Is the result of a mismatch really the end of the story or is it just preview of the exclamation points to come?