A Dialogue: Romance as Pseudo Affection

So she said....

This image doesn't quite do what I want it to do...it's actually quite nice, and I find it attractive but what I want to talk about is more sickly than this and lacks a certain charm. You ask me about romance, and whether I ever do this, or that, and before you'd stepped a foot near my door I'd already told you that I hated plastic gestures...or what commonly passes for romance, out there, among the masses...

So we're sat watching a film and I offer to break one of your fingers and splint it for you afterwards...I grabbed your hand, and instead of letting me do it you started laughing and said...

"Just let me write it down first"

And you did exactly that. You took back your hand and started typing whatever I'd just said.....

Tony ~ Yes. I was being practical. You also told me, "I'm going to pull your underwear up so hard that its going to ram your testicles up your ass." 

But I did take that for sweet talk at the same time. It certainly may not have been. I am beginning to understand. It's one thing to hear it over the phone from 3000 miles away, or read it in an email or text, it's another to experience it, which includes looking into your eyes. They may or may not convey the same temperature excursions that mine do, flickering like a candle, precarious, almost ready to be extinguished, that trust, or lack of, also the look in someone's eyes right before a bar fight.

I am not so sure where your truth lies. between an icicle and girlishly plucking the petals from a daisy "he loves me, loves me not." Is it a matter of not taking a chance? Is there something to one's upbringing and past experience which colors the response to "romance," in a world of  disappointments, and broken promises. This in turn relates to the word hope, which you have philosophically shunned.  . .

Incidentally, you questioned whether or not I had sent you a romantic image in this photograph by David Carol "Joe and the Fish on Baffin Island." I wished to post it publicly on Absurdist Arts but it inadvertently became a personal posting to you. Maybe it was.

Rowan ~ Regarding the fish, I did think it was more likely to be accidentally private but knowing how sensitive you can be to anything relating to computers, I felt it best to wrap it in cotton wool in an attempt to minimize any possibility of a fuck-this-shit outburst....The more level we are, the more we get done, and then the workload goes down...maybe...and then there's more time for you and I, and us.

But back to the fish; if it HAD been an instinctive offering, then it would've had to come from a primal place. And I do remember (mostly) something you wrote about having buried a kill a while back......

But romance as pseudo affection....I question whether most 'acts' are even romantic to begin with. Romance is generally seen to be hearts and flowers, it's gift giving and meals in restaurants that force one into clothing one wouldn't normally wear. It's visiting landmarks which are 'seen' to already have some kind of 'romantic association'. Romance is usually the stuff done to woo the 'heart' of the other, it's a fleeting moment, a gesture, but it has little to do with the long-haul.

Kindness, on the other hand.....

I went to my trusty friend Google and came back with ~

romance

rə(ʊ)ˈmans,ˈrəʊmans/

noun

1.

a feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love.

"I had a thirst for romance"

2.

a quality or feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life.

"the romance of the sea"

synonyms: mystery, glamour, excitement, colourfulness, colour, exoticism,mystique; More

verb

1.

dated

try to gain the love of; court.

"the wealthy estate owner romanced her"

2.

another term for romanticize.

"to a certain degree I am romancing the past"

And I WONDERED, if I see it as a verb, and you see it as a noun....????

Tony ~ 
I was going to stop there but you asked me to answer the question. My brain can only manage little helpings of truth. Or else, it gives itself a wedgie, right? But you were looking, I think, for a definition of "true romance."

But come to think of it, this image might be a good example in itself, this act of giving a wedgie, or whatever they are doing, wrastling, eye clawin' , as opposed to the objects, contrivances or rituals which might hinder rather than aid true interchange: the uncomfortable clothing, the inanimate gifts.

You might look at the body or the hair or the shoes or the dress.

  
Or the hat. You might just see the hat and not the person wearing it, not even know who that person is.