Tag Archives: Romance

Coming Across the Spitting Image of Your Long-Lost Love

Relationships, Social Networking, Writing, , , , , , ,

Yesterday, I was waiting for a friend to pick me up outside of where I work so we could drive to Zeeland for a work-related film shoot. Where I was standing and waiting, the shuttle bus for work stops every few minutes and drops off employees. I wasn’t paying much attention to the latest shuttle bus when it arrived and deposited a new slough of passengers off on their beginning of a new day of work. But then I looked up, and one of the women getting off the bus was the spitting image of a woman who is still imprinted deep on my soul. Strangely enough, I hadn’t thought much about her in the last fifteen minutes (aside from the other 23 hours and 45 minutes of the day when I think about her constantly) but at that moment, I was thrown back over a decade to a time when seeing her walk off a bus in front of me would have sparked wonderful feelings of happiness and joy.

And for that instant I was there. I wasn’t in Grand Rapids in 2011, thinking about a movie shoot in Zeeland, but I was back in San Francisco, thinking about how all I cared about was this one woman to whom I pretty much pledged my entire being and future, thinking that there would be no other place in the world I would rather be than at her side. I was brought back to the times we’d walk around the lake in Oakland, talking about such mundane things but things that seemed so important at the moment because they were shared with her and no one else. And even more important, she was sharing those thoughts with me.

For that instant, I was back on my track towards medical school, thinking about how I was going to be the greatest research scientist in the world, almost completely because I knew how much that would have pleased her, being the wonderful person that she was (and wonderful people wanted you to help other people because they were just that wonderful). I had no other cares in the world, and the future looked so bright and open. I was in my 20s again, or was it my 30s? Either way, I was sure of the choices I was making in life, and I could stand up against anyone with the greatest of confidences because the woman at my side was the Goddess herself, or at least someone blessed by Her, and for me, that was more than good enough. It was perfect.

And then, instantly, I was brought back to 2011, standing in front of a woman who looked like the woman I once loved. She stared at me inquisitively and then somewhat suspiciously. I mean, this strange guy she never saw before was staring at her like she was her long-lost lover from years ago, which was exactly what was happening. So, she turned away, quickly, and rushed into the building.

I was left on the sidewalk, waiting for my ride to Zeeland. And then it arrived. And I went to Zeeland.

The memory then started to fade, and I was left with a sense of loss, realizing that I had seen her again, even though it wasn’t really her. And as we drove, I realized I would never see her again. And then the moment faded, and the conversation turned to other mundane topics.

Life can be like that sometimes. And there’s really nothing you can do about it.

Has Dating Turned Into Some Kind of Weird Non-Televised Reality Show?

News, Relationships, Social Networking, , , , , , , ,

 

There’s a story that’s been making its way across the Inter-tubes published on Business Insider, where a young woman indicates that dating made it possible for her to save a whole lot of money on daily living expenses, like food because men she was dating would pay for her meals. Now, while this sort of story isn’t all that new (women have been using men as potential mates as free meals for a long time now, about as long as commerce and dating has been around), the story makes the point that she did most of this in Manhattan, and she and her roommates specifically used Match.com in order to do it.

Since then, I’ve been reading a whole bunch of different articles on different sites where readers have chimed in, and basically everyone pretty much admits that this is nothing new, and that using various men on dates to get free food and tickets to movies (or the theater) has been a commonality for quite some time. On some of the sites, the commentary gets so crass as to project that certain “benefits” are expected after a certain amount of money spent, or a certain number of dates have been attended. The woman in the article indicates that she only dated men 5 times before dumping them (or moving on), so I’m not exactly sure where that fits into the calculations, but something tells me that that number has a LOT to do with that specific calculation, so I’ll just leave it at that and let you fill in the rest without having to say more.

What I do find intriguing is that dating has gotten into this whole “who pays for what” situation while in 21st century gender politics there has been a huge move towards equality of the sexes. As a commentary example, let me just mention that recently I finished off my schooling in which I did a Ph.d and a couple of MAs, and when I was dating in that pool of individuals, I found it quite intriguing that the women were demanding of equality at all times (whenever discussing rights, politics and academic rigor) but when an actual date occurred, there was an expectation that regardless of education, current state of gender politics or anything else, the guy was still expected to pick up the check for dinner. That included movies, or any other shared experience as well.

Now, keep in mind, when it came to “between friends” that changes a lot as in most cases a guy rarely ever has to shell out any money for a “date” when the “date” is being shared between friends, not two people thinking they are on a romantic date. So that’s a whole different dichotomy completely.

Now, I should also point out that way too often I’ll pick up the check regardless of the mindset of the adventure (be it romantic or friendship), but that’s just me. But what really gets me thinking more than I should is how many women actually walk into such an experience “expecting” certain things paid for. That includes drinks at a bar. I was at a group outing one night not too long ago when a young woman I casually knew sauntered up to where I was sitting and joined me. Within a short bit of time, there was an expectation that I was going to pay for her next drink. And I started to think to myself: “I’m not dating this young woman, nor am I probably ever going to be dating her, yet she has every expectation that the next set of drinks will be paid for by me, just because our genders are different.” At that moment, I was amazed at the brazen expectations people have, based off of ancient customs that have carried over into dynamics where they generally don’t fit any longer.

The whole dating scheme has gotten so that it’s very difficult for someone who is tired of playing a lot of the games that get played in this atmosphere. As one who abhors bars and drunk people, I avoid those places or people who frequent those kinds of places. Therefore, that leaves me with very few choices to find someone, other than venues like Match.com or Okcupid.com. As this article has shown me, and a lot of conversations with others have revealed to me, a lot of the women a guy is likely to find on Match.com or Okcupid.com are going to be very much like the entrepreneur in the original article, who sees any date with me as a chance to save money on her dinner bills. Whenever I go through the rankings of people advertising in my area on Okcupid, I’m left thinking that they’re really not looking for me, but for some weird fantasy of a guy who only exists on episodes of Gossip Girl or as a creature of the night in the Twilight movies. Recently, I found one woman who looked exactly like the down-to-Earth girl I was looking for when I read the last line of her profile, indicating that if the reader of her ad was someone who has EVER played World of Warcraft, she wasn’t interested. As those who know me know I’d be lying to say otherwise, I hid her picture and continued searching for that elusive someone who I began to realize probably didn’t exist.

Which is probably why I don’t date any more. I’d like to say that as a writer, I spend a lot of time alone on purpose, but sometimes it goes a little further than that. Somewhere down the line, I really got tired of the dating atmosphere and probably should have married years ago, but I never found the right person, so I realized at some point that I would have to go through a lot of the wrong people in order to finally find the right person, and just writing that is tiring enough. So, I tend to find solace in writing, reading a newspaper, and maybe a bout of magecrafting in World of Warcraft.

The Problem of Writing a Romance When There’s No Romance in Your Life

Relationships, Writing, , , , ,

 I found myself thinking back on one of those great romance stories, specifically the one that plays out really well in Romancing the Stone, with Kathleen Turner. In this movie, Turner plays a romance writer who stumbles while realizing she doesn’t know what her romantic hero would look like, but has a basic idea of his characterizations only, and then goes on her whirlwind romance where she finds the “hero” to become her shining knight (as that kind of story generally requires). Well, recently, while working on my novel in progress, I’m come to a similar situation.

Okay, not exactly like the movie, in that I’m some romantic novelist looking for my knight in shining armor, or even my knightess in shining armor. But as I put together the basic framework of the novel and built the edges of what would need to be filled in, I’ve come to a horrible conclusion that is making this novel very difficult to write. You see, romance has never really been a part of my life.

Adventure? Yes, there’s been a lot of that. Intrigue, conspiracies, espionage, and action? Yes, those have all been a part of my life at one time or another. And I’ve written extensively about those sorts of subjects. I’ve even used the elements of adventure and crafted science fiction and fantasy tales of great imagination.

But romance? Well, that’s really never been a part of my life.

Sure, I’ve been involved in relationships, but to be honest, most of my relationships have been a lot more Woody Allen-ish than Jame Bond-ish. To be even more honest, the kinds of romances I’ve lived in my life would fill a bunch of comedy novels and screenplays, and that’s fine, but that isn’t what I set out to write this time around. I was trying to write what would end up being a powerful romance of a completely tragic nature. There’s very little comedy in that area of what I’ve been trying to capture.

Which leaves me with the dilemma that hits a lot of writers, in that it is often very difficult to write about what one wants to write rather than what one knows. People who know a little bit about writing (and quite often those who know very little bit about it) constantly harangue writers about “write what you know”. And that can be very good advice for when you’re starting out. The usual journey of a writer goes like this:

Novel 1: Write out that unique idea you’ve been thinking about for ages.

Novel 2: Write about killing off your family/parents/friends (either physically or metaphorically).

Novel 3: Rehash an idea that’s been bothering you for awhile (and complete the requirements of Novel 2 if not already done so in Novel 1 or 2).

Novel 4: Reinvent Yourself as a Writer

And every novel after that serves as a reawakening as a writer, in which you learn new techniques to try to build upon the skills you already have, so that each new novel becomes the reinvention of you as a writer, writing something you could never have achieved in a previous novel because you just weren’t ready.

Working on my 13th or 14th novel (one of them is always hard to quantify), I’m way past the stage of killing off one’s parents. In each new novel, I find myself trying to reinvent the very idea of writing, tackling new techniques I never would have attempted before but now feel ready to attempt.

This one has been no different, in that the chronology of the novel serves as a mechanism for revelation and storytelling, to the point where it’s not a gimmick, but a necessity. However, with that in place, I now find myself in the earlier period of the courting stage of two of the main characters, and I realize how little experience I have in this area. Sadly enough, I even had to delete a few chapters because I found myself mimmicking old movies that had dating scenes in them because it was easier to fall back on past remembrances that weren’t mine than to orchestrate them myself from a fabrication that is completely unfamiliar to me.

It would be different if I had participated in dating rituals when I was younger, but I never did. Going to a club or something like that was never my thing, and my first experiences along this line didn’t happen until I got to the Academy. But that was so different an experience from what an average person would experience, as young cadets dating in a club environment does not equal what happens when college students meet each other in that same kind of environment that occurs around a university setting (not an Academy setting). The rituals of dating were never really something I participated in either as I tended to date very unique women over the years who definitely did not fall into the “normal” categories of dating. To explain the quandary further, let’s just say that when I find myself trying to describe a dating ritual for my main characters, I find those types of encounters somewhat simple and almost cliche, in that nothing I ever went through fell into such normal parameters. But to try to integrate the kinds of relationships I’ve had over the years into a story that requires a solid, normal foundation is somewhat bewildering.

But I did go into this project hoping to stretch myself as a writer. I guess it’s doing just that.

My Adventures of Gardening in the Concete City

Memoirs, Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

 

One day in the Spring, I sat in the garden and looked at a wilting plant that was supposed to be a thriving abundance of vegetables I had planted earlier in the season. But there was no life, just a drooping, dying plant that had been picked clean by aphids and predatory insects. My months of nurturing this garden amounted to a complete and dismal failure. On this day, I sat down next to this dying plant and pretty much gave up. Not just on gardening, but on pretty much everything.

It’s not just you. It’s me.

Those were her last words to me. Not good-bye, not a fight, and not anything of any substance. Just an apology and then she cut the string on the two cans we used to communicate between us.

You see, this garden was to be my refuge from a life that wasn’t going as I had planned. I had such high ideals and plans for myself that should have put me in a much different place than where I ended up. My bestselling novels didn’t amount to the selling of any books, my occupation had stalled and sort of retreated because my desires were loftier than my accomplishments, and the relationship I had cultivated with the girl of my dreams had failed, miserably. The only thing that could have made this moment worse was rain.

It’s not just you. It’s me.

And then it rained. And then it poured. And then it thundered and lightning’d all over the place, as if to not only remind me that sometimes life sucks, but that sometimes life sucks times a million. Then the storm destroyed what was left of my garden. And all metaphors for a sucky life just sort of laughed at me. And I sat in the rain and got drenched.

The garden was supposed to be my way to forget about it all. Things hadn’t been working out (see above), so I lived in this house that had a really nice area for a garden. There wasn’t one there before, so I thought what a cool idea it would be to expend all of my energy trying to breathe life into some plants. I went to the store, bought a bunch of vegetables I thought might be tasty to munch on one day, and I toiled the soil, or so they say, or at least I think that’s what farmers say. I mean, I had no experience in farming. None. I might have watched Little House on the Prairie once, but that was about as close as it came. And I didn’t really pay all that much attention to the farming on that show when I did watch it, so I didn’t really have a lot of usable experience here. But I was going to garden.

And garden I did.

I hoed and hoed and planted and planted and watered and talked to the plants, and then I waited. Meanwhile, I hoed some more and watered and talked and all that sort of stuff.

You see, I didn’t want to deal with my life. I fell into a depression that was just getting worse each day. The logical thing would have been to get back out there and start regaining back some of what I had lost, but I sort of gave up. All that I really had was my gardening. And I figured if that was all I could do, then that was all I was going to do.

But it never grew. The garden died almost as soon as it started to grow. It was like nature was waiting for it to sprout and then pounced on it almost immediately. It didn’t stand a chance.

I was never going to be a gardener.

During that storm, I sat in the rain and just let the world pound down on me. I figured it was doing what the universe wanted to do to me any way. At some point, I went back into the house, tossed the gardening stuff I had with me into the trash and then went to bed. That night, I figured I had nothing left worth working for, and probably nothing left worth living for. The storm had washed away anything worth continuing.

The next morning, I puttered around the kitchen for a bit and then wandered out into the backyard to see what damage the storm had done to my obliterated garden. Hopping through the defunct garden was a little brown bunny, sniffing away, looking for something to eat.

“You’re too late,” I said. “The storm already killed it.”

The bunny just stared at me for a second, probably wondering if I was a threat, and then it hopped away, never to be seen again.

It’s not just you. It’s me.

I went back into the house and made some breakfast for myself. Somehow, it didn’t seem as bad right then as it did the night before.

I Want a Hollywood Romance…or an East Berlin one at least

Movies, , ,

Every now and then I put a movie into my Netflix queue that leaves me wondering months later, what was I thinking? That happened last night when I finally got around to watching a movie that was in my queue called Wings of Desire. To be honest, I don’t know how that movie got into my queue because it certainly doesn’t match any criteria I attribute to movies I tend to add. Going down my checklist, there were no hot Asian women in leather jumpsuits who do Kung Fu, Arnold wasn’t seen once carrying a huge bazooka and chomping on a cigar, not a single Starfleet communicator chirped once during the movie, and even more important, not a single French clown cried at all during the two hours and seven minutes this movie aired (although it was one of those movies where it could have happened at any moment).

The movie was a several hour poetic metaphor on the meaninglessness of life. The two main characters were male angels who seemed to spend the entire movie walking around 1987 East Berlin listening to the mindless rantings of humans who lived in a state of black and white despair. During their wanderings, they seemed to latch onto a huge library that resembled the one from The Breakfast Club, where they went person to person and listened to their inner thoughts. One of their focuses was an old man who supposedly was writing the great American novel in East Berlin, so I guess it was the great German novel. The old man kept talking about how he was the only one who could write down the story, and that without him all of humanity was doomed. And I thought I took myself seriously as a writer!

There are two other main characters that the angels attach themselves to. One of them is a beautiful woman who happens to be a trapeze artist for a circus that is going out of business. This is where I kept waiting for the inevitable crying French clown, but he never showed up. The other character was Peter Falk (of Columbo fame) who was playing none other than Peter Falk who happened to be in East Berlin filming a movie that seemed to be about a couple of guys who have a fist fight in a beat up building that has no roof. I was reminded of the great operatic, Tempest like story that was mentioned by Danny Devito in Throw Mama From the Train, which he describes as “a man with a hat kills another man with a hat.” But I digress. Without getting too far into a plot I still don’t understand (my understanding is that you need a Ph.d in this particular movie to actually understand more than 5 percent of it), let’s just say that Peter Falk plays himself and just so happens to be a fallen angel himself who guides one of the angels after he decides to become human.

And the reason the angel decides to become human is because he falls in love with the trapeze artist. And that’s what I wanted to talk about with this post. You see, when he finally becomes human and can experience love, he goes into this punk rock music hall she goes to every night and sits at the bar while the “concert” is going on. I won’t describe the music, other than it was the most bizarre music rendition of punk I’ve ever seen, and all I can say is that I believe the director had to be a fan, or the lead singer was his son, or something like that, because I spent more time trying to figure out how the lead guitarist was actually producing the sounds that were coming from his musical device. Anyway, the beautiful trapeze artist leaves the music area and goes into the bar where the angel is sitting, plops down on the seat next to him, and then begins to explain for the next twenty minutes why she is empty inside and needs to find the solution to pi or something like that. To be honest, I had trouble following what she was saying because it had to be the longest data dump I’ve ever experienced from one individual. The angel said nothing, and when it was done, he kissed her, and somehow they managed to live their entire lives metaphorically forever together.

And this got me thinking, how come East Berlin women don’t sit down next to me in bars, pour their heart out to me for about twenty minutes without me having to say anything, and then we live happily ever after? Is it because I don’t know Peter Falk? Do you have to be an angel to make this happen? Or am I missing something here. How come when a woman like that sits down next to me, and I say, “hi, I’m Duane” it’s usually followed up with: “Oh, I have a boyfriend.”?

Movies like this keep making me think that somehow I just haven’t got it all figured out, and that bothers me. Is something this epic only possible if you happen to live in some Communist country that is about to transition to democracy and future unification? Where are all the unemployed trapeze artists that I seem to be seeking?

Anyway, interesting movie. I’d recommend it if there had been a crying French clown involved. Not surprisingly, there are too few movies being made these days with crying French clowns. And that’s just sad.