Bette Noir to the Romantic Heart #1

There is a great black beast that mauls, to death, the romantic heart. I think it is called reality. From the cries of "Chivalry is Dead" in the 70's to "Love Ain't A Love Song" in 2015, the hopeless romantic has been disappearing as the world realizes that real life has no end like the movies or our favorite love song. There is no Hallmark ending...perhaps there is no ending at all; perhaps life goes on in a singular, painful straight line, punctuated by the occasional euphoria of the hope of a happy ending. Maybe, just maybe, my heart is just broken and I will soon get over it. Maybe I am so happy I feel sad. Maybe, after all of this, it's just indigestion.


This is a new series of posts called Bette Noir (Black Beast) to the Romantic Heart - it is sad. Sorry.

Home Didn't Change While I Was Gone; I Changed Before I Came Back

Going Home

"You can't go home again?" Why? I've often pondered this question, usually, shortly after trying to go home again. I usually end up assuming that home had changed. "Why can't it all just be as it was?" After talking to a good friend, I've had a change of mind. He said, "Home isn't where you were, it's where you are and home changes with you. When you go back home you find that it has changed because you have changed because you've carried it with you the whole time."


I think he was right. The home I see and touch and hear and feel changes because I change. The drift between what I remember home to be and what it now, is because of the changing perspective I have during my absence. I can "see" home from the outside. But I can't "see" the "me" from the inside. As I drift on the inside, by degrees, it goes unnoticed by me and I assume I am standing still. I also expect Home to be standing still with me. But I am not standing still. I am drifting. Now separate yourself from home, for a year, two years, or more and come back. You've drifted. Home has not. Home now seems foreign and we ask why it did not stay as it was? It did.  It's me that has changed.


Life, if I recall my favorite but all too often forgotten philosophy, is meant to be lived in a straight line. Circling back is wasted motion.


"There is no such thing as a decision. There never was. There's whether you've had a good day or a bad day, there's going forward because there is nothing behind. And running forward- because if you stand still any longer you'll fall over. There's movement or there's stagnation, there's the past that drives you..."- John le Carre, The Night Manager