literature

what I know about love (a braided essay)

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(Ilùvatar and the Void)

I have always loved The Lord of the Rings, and all things that are connected to the lore of Middle Earth. I read The Hobbit years ago, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy I devoured within a few months of each other. It's been a long gap of years since I last set down the beautiful green cover of my copy of The Return of the King and the present, where I have recently opened the soothing purple cover of The Silmarillion. It reads like a Bible, like a religious text that speaks the truth, and I can't help but fall into its lore with more love than I intended. 

I'm learning so much more about this world that I only had limited knowledge of before now. I am learning about Eru, or Ilùvatar, as the Elves call him, and his creation of the Ainur. I'm learning about how some of the Ainur left the comfort of their life by Eru's side to follow the Imperishable Flame and create Arda for Eru's Children, the Firstborn and the Followers. I'm learning about Eru's love for his Children, and his Ainur: and I'm learning about Yavanna and her love for her creations, the life that she breathed into Arda: and Ulmo and his love for water, be it rivers, rain, ponds or oceans. I'm learning that love is a multifaceted thing, with Tulkas, his love for his lovely wife, and his love for feats of strength, and Aulë and his love for his Dwarves, his wife Yavanna, and his other creations. I'm learning that love is a great thing, much bigger than anything I have ever comprehended, and I'm learning it from a fictional universe, of all places.

(Comedic Relief IV: Renewed Hope)

While I'm not much of a fan of television, my mother and stepfather are, and when I eventually wander downstairs from my silly little hobbit hole (named as much because of the size of the door), I usually hear the sound of the television before I can hear the sound of their voices. Mom and Pop don't have much in common in terms of shows they like to watch, though they both seem to be equally fond of Psych and M*A*S*H, which is alright with me. There's one show, however, that they've been watching a lot as of late, and that's The Big Bang Theory, a show that has since lost its novelty to much of the community I am a part of and which they regard now with scorn.

Of course, I have to admit (anonymously, through the internet, of course) that I still kind of enjoy it. While I don't care much for their establishment of "nerd" culture being taboo in a world where "nerd" culture has simply become culture, I enjoy watching the characters grow, and there are a few gems to look out for in there.

I'm particularly fond of how they turned Howard Wolowitz's character from a sexually-aggressive creeper who would do anything to get a girl to a married man who is more than intent on making his wife happy and is a pretty level-headed person, so long as the problems he's working on aren't his own. I'm also happy about how Rajesh Koothrappali's character went from a sex-desperate tag-along of Howard's to a genuinely nice guy who occasionally makes social mistakes (as we all do), isn't all that obsessed with sex anymore, and good friend to one of the series's most-crapped-on character: Stewart, the Comic Book Store Owner.

And in the case of the girls, it only gets better. Penny's no longer a stereotypical blonde ditz; she's a community college student working a job (admirable!) and she seems to be growing more comfortable with herself being around the guys now, instead of feeling stupid because of them. Amy Fowler isn't boy-crazy anymore, though she enjoys the bubbly conversation about boys now and then; she's got a relatively complex relationship with Sheldon Cooper, and she enjoys her work as a neurobiologist. I also enjoy the scientific tidbits they randomly spout; I'm in the habit of keeping random information tucked away in my noggin, and so the facts that they put out there are usually absorbed quite enthusiastically by yours truly (I was once described by a guidance councilor at a high school I went to as "an information sponge"). 

So, as you can see, I still see the merits of the show even into it's millionth season or so, and enjoying it with my parents is something I really like. I like watching them laugh, and they genuinely find the Nerds (as we call them in my household) pretty funny. So yeah, I can't shit on the show as a whole because shitting on it is something cool to do now, because in all actuality, it's only starting to get really good.

(Deep Sea Divers)

I have this obsession with Darwin Deez that started fairly recently, ever since one of my best friends (who I've become very close with over the course of one semester at college) introduced me to "The Bomb Song" while I happened to be in the very bad habit of playing Fallout 3 over the course of three nights or so. Running across bomb-scarred New England listening to Darwin Deez croon about how his hair is falling out was just A+ atmosphere setting for me, and I don't regret playing that song on repeat to this very day.

Of course, listening to that song got me wondering about the rest of that album, and eventually the rest of his works, and next thing you know I'm feeling a very strong connection to Darwin Deez and his music. I get the weird metaphors he likes to make; I feel "Redshift" as if it was written between our brains, though of course it wasn't. I am especially in love with his self-titled album, the first song of which is "Constellations" and will always make me sing along and dance. 

There's one song, however--and we all have this one song, don't we?--that reminds me of an ex-girlfriend of mine. It describes her perfectly, completely, to a T, and I've never had this happen to me. 

"You and I are deep-sea divers on a task/Little bubbles rising from your scuba mask/I can see your empty eyes are not alive, but shouldn't they be?"

Oh, yeah. This is the song that makes me think of her.

"You and I are sitting on the ocean floor/You were tired of swimming and you're so bored/Little yellow fish go past your sullen face, but shouldn't you smile once in a while?"

It wouldn't really make sense, would it? Why would this song make me think of her? (Or maybe it does make sense, and I'm just making a spectacle of the fact that this song is something special to me for this reason.)

She had this nasty habit of being cute and hard-working but oh, she was so mean. She constantly brought me down.

"You're bringin me down/You're bringin me down, and now I'm blue/Now I'm in deeper too."

Here's a select few memories I have of my time with her:

She caught me crying once and bought me flowers. Nice.

She told me she ignored my poetry because I just had too much of it. Bad, all things considered.

She geeked out over a friend of mine in a tank top and then claimed that my body wasn't feminine enough for her to geek out about. Very bad, especially considering my gender-confusion at the time.

She generally had this thing that she did where I was not a beautiful thing to her, and I'm not saying I am, but I don't need to be told that I'm not. I know that well enough for myself, thanks. Awkward years of high school have taught me, "dude, you're not what they'd call a looker." And I wasn't smart enough either, or a good enough person, or whatever she felt like criticizing at the time. I guess I'm hung up over the whole "body" thing because it's something I still struggle with. Dysphoria's a bitch, man, and I don't use heinous words like that about people, but man, she was close to being one too.

And I'm not saying I'm a perfect human being. Hell no; I'm notoriously hard to get along with, even with friends. It's easy for me to make friends, but I have such a propensity to change my mind or get pissed off about things that I am generally hard to keep a hold of. I'm callous, mean, very self-centered and absent-minded--one time my friend locked me out of my phone and changed my background to the only picture I had of my ex-girlfriend, and I couldn't guess that the password was the ex-girlfriend's name. I'm no Prince Charming, I'll tell you that much. But the ex herself?

Man, even to this day I can't get a read on her. Judging by how I flinch when I'm near her and guarded as hell, I can say with certainty that I could only catch one thing that's stuck with me all this time: she fucking brought me down, man. She said she loved me, but in all that time I spent with her, I wasn't sure that love was what we had.

(The Last of the Third Age, by Shire Reckoning)

Let me tell you a few things I learned about what happened after the War of the One Ring came to an end and Sauron was destroyed once and for all (and good riddance; he was one of the worst of the Maiar, and a remnant of Melkor's malice).

Sauron was destroyed while Erebor was being attacked by Easterlings while the final battle was occurring, and King Bard II and King Thorin III Stonehelm (the sons of King Brand and King Daín II, or Ironfoot) drove the enemy away from Dale after Sauron was defeated. His defeat left the Easterlings less confident, and so they were driven back with ease. Meanwhile, King Thranduil emerged victorious from a long struggle over the Mirkwood in which much was destroyed. East of the Ered Luin, everything was coming up roses.

Saruman was released by Treebeard, and made his way to the Shire for one last throwdown. He was overrun, however, and defeated, and that was the end of Saruman's tyranny. Frodo took ill very often and eventually departed to the Grey Havens. Samwise, Pippin, and Merry each came into different offices of importance in the Shire, and Samwise, after his ninth term in office as Mayor, retired, left the red book with his daughter and her husband, and set sail himself.

Merry was invited to be with Eomer in his last days, as he had grown old and sensed his time was near, and he acquiesced, taking Pippin with him. In August of that year, three months after they arrived in Edoras, Eomer died, and Pippin and Merry retired to Gondor, where they stayed with King Elessar until they died. They were buried in the royal halls as heroes would be.

And where, you must be wondering (if you even know who the hell is who and what the hell is what, and if not, I'm terribly sorry) where Gimli and Legolas are. The answer is quite simple; they spent these many years wandering Middle Earth, taking in all the sights and showing one another all the things they thought were great about Middle Earth. They spent actual centuries wandering Middle Earth together. When Elessar finally came to rest in the early 1500s of the Third Age (by Shire Reckoning), Legolas built a boat and he and Gimli together sailed to the Undying Lands.

I always found their relationship to be the strongest to me; while Samwise and Frodo had a very close bond due to their troubles, and Aragorn and Arwen had a sweet romantic relationship that consisted entirely of them being concerned for each other and understanding one another, and Celeborn and Galadriel had a great respect for one another as the Eldar, it was Legolas and Gimli that stuck very close with me. They became friends through a blindfold due to Gimli being left to wander alone in Lorién with a blindfold on (because he was not yet Elf-Friend). Legolas took pity on him and took his hand, leading him along, eating lunch and dinner with him, going exploring together, and over the few months they spent recuperating in Lothlorién, they grew very close. Their friendship lasted through the Fellowship and beyond, and until Gimli's death (for unlike Legolas, he would not live forever), they were close.

This was a love taught to me by Tolkien that, unlike all the others, gave me a hope for myself; for if Legolas and Gimli could find a lifelong companionship in one another (their families enemies and their races no better), then surely I could find my own version of such happiness somewhere, right?

(Comedic Relief V: The Comedy Strikes Back)

Guess who my favorite character from The Big Bang Theory is. Go on. Guess.

It's Sheldon Cooper. And a lot of you out there may be going, wait, what the fuck? Sheldon Cooper? He's weird, and finicky, and particular, and annoying, and pedantic, and tiresome, and--

And yeah, yeah, I know. But I see a lot of myself in Sheldon Cooper. Yes, even the fact that he's pedantic: yes, even the fact that he's annoying: yes, even the fact that he's finicky, and weird, and particular, and tiresome. I am all of these things and more, to be honest. I am Sheldon Cooper at his worst.

But, most importantly, I am a kindred spirit to Sheldon Cooper because of his inclinations toward friendship.

When you look at it from up top, you probably wonder, "why does this asshole even have friends anyway? He clearly doesn't want them," and that! That is where you are wrong!

If you look at Sheldon's relationships with others, you could indeed make the assumption that yes, Sheldon doesn't like anyone at all, and you're partially right; Sheldon doesn't like most people, and that actually doesn't include the ones he's got. If you strip down his relationships and look at their bare bones, you can see that Sheldon knows two things for certain: he loves his friends very very much, and he knows that he's weird.

You may be asking what that second point has anything to do with anything. I'll tell you what it has to do with this; Sheldon Cooper is a man who is very conscious of who he is, and many of the things he does are ways of making himself comfortable, something that is oft encouraged in society (except when it comes to the weirdos who are particular; then they're just annoying, right?). One thing that people need in order to be comfortable, no matter how much they deny it, is companionship, and Sheldon Cooper is no exception. His friends are all he has, and the fact that they're all his is something great to him. He really loves his friends, he does, and sometimes he lets that show, but, like me, displays of affection make him uncomfortable. He doesn't like to have heart-to-hearts, and it's hard for him to get into that mindset. Gushy affectionate talk is discomfiting, and I can see why; I get really uncomfortable when people pay me compliments, which isn't something Sheldon has a problem with, seeing as he believes he himself hung the moon (figuratively; in reality he'd probably call me ridiculous for using that metaphor), but like Sheldon, I also have a problem in situations where people are in earnest about something about me.

Which brings us to another thing that makes him (us, I should start saying us) uncomfortable: romance and sex. Romance is, to me, an uncomfortable affair. I've had my fair share of trysts in my youth which really just amounted to me getting jittery, depressed, and angry all at once, a clear sign of anxiety if there ever was once. I've since determined that romantic relationships and sexual relationships are alright for other people. I don't openly despise it, and neither does Sheldon, actually; while it may seem the things that he says are offensive (talking about Penny's "ravenous sexual appetite" or Leonard's "sexual urges"), if you look at them from our standpoint, we aren't trying to be mean about it. We just don't get why people want it, since we ourselves don't want it. It makes us uncomfortable to be put in situations like that, and while Sheldon isn't out as an aromantic asexual like myself, I still think that we're the same side of the same coin. 

So from this vantage point, it might seem like Sheldon doesn't love anything, right? Well, that's wrong, because remember what I said earlier: Sheldon loves his friends. And it may not be the way people usually love their friends, like the obvious attachment between Raj and Howard, or the friendly rapport among Amy, Bernadette and Penny, but it's still a love, and it's still there. Sheldon has a need for companionship; everyone gets lonely, even those who like to be alone. And judging by the hoops they jump through to make him feel at home with them, I think it's safe to say his friends love him too, even if they do sometimes tire of him.

(Bad Day)

I don't claim to know much about love, but I do know this; of all the things I've learned over the years, I have learned what love could be, and I know that the things that ex-girlfriend gave me weren't love. There was adoration, sure, and friendship, absolutely, but these are only parts of the whole, and in the end, if someone feels like shit when they're near you, because you've proclaimed "YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO ME" in bright, bold letters that flash like neon stripper signs, then there's a serious lack of love there.

I have learned that love is about trust, and love is about harmony, and love is about friendship, romance, making each other feel good, talking shit out, jumping through hoops, putting up with bullshit, and at the end of the day falling in love all over again. Love is about wanting to be near somebody, and love is wondering what they're up to, thinking about them when you see their favorite movie on the marquee, or their favorite snack on the grocery store shelf, or even something random that makes you think of the times you've had with them. Love is buying random things for them and kicking at the dirt as your mind wanders inexplicably to them, and love is also soft touches and good food eaten together, adoring the way your loved one has their little quirks, like humming under their breath because their sandwich is good, or what their face looks like when they watch movies. Love is little things, not just big grand gestures, and it's a healthy mixture of both that makes love what it is, and makes love something everybody wants. Love is laughing when the other passes gas and not caring if it smells, love is letting your weirdo loved one experiment some crazy shit on you, and love is getting mad at board games and laughing to death while you're making cookie dough. Love is watching the other cry and pulling them into a hug, and love is forgiving their insecurities, and love is letting them crack open the window when they're hot and angry and pissed off and just bundling in the blankets and waiting for it to pass, and love is looking them in the eye and loving the hot sticky mess that they are because love isn't about what they say it is in movies; there are many different types of love, and even those loves come in different forms, and all are valid, and none are false.

I have a song I'd like to dedicate to that ex-girlfriend of mine from that brilliant Darwin Deez called "Bad Day." I'll quote it here, but first I want to say this: I have found a new life for myself, and it has been offered to me by the two people I love most in this world, and I am taking it. I am taking my train to happiness. I hope you find yours, one day, but I hope you realize along the way that you didn't really love me, and I know I didn't love you, and neither of us loved each other the way we ought to. As long as we both learn love the way it's written for us, and find someone hip to our jive the way they're meant to be, then we aren't lost causes. But because of the shit you said to me, the way you made me feel...

"
I hope that the last page of your 800 page novel is missing.
I hope that it rains of you leave the window down on your red Mustang.
Cuz everyday ought to be a bad day for you.
Yeah everyday ought to be a bad day for you...
But I'm sorry if it ever is."
-"Bad Day," by Darwin Deez (Album Title "Darwin Deez")
This is not a lyric essay, though I wanted it to be, because it's got a definite conclusion; so it's just braided, really, and kind of introspective. Still new to this game, so I'm not sure what to call everything.

I hope you enjoy it, though. I wrote this in two hours, and now my arse is numb.
© 2015 - 2024 Masukee
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cdubthesadist's avatar
I really like your idea of love. It's pleasant and its hard to argue with.

This essay was very stream of consciousness, which is something I think you're good at. Also, very informational!