falling in love

Despite all my current (well-deserved) cynicism about love, I must still be a true romantic at heart, that I couch a lot of my passions in the vocabulary of romantic love.  I honestly really feel that way about many things.  I don't just like things -- I fall madly, romantically in love, with foods, with places, with pieces of art, with music.  I obsess.  I put songs on repeat ad nauseum (really ad nauseum, because I do it until I'm sick of them -- please no one sing Let It Go any more to me, unless you are a cute Deck child -- then I will smile and be happy with you and belt it out again and again).   I read and reread poetry and books and articles and blogs.  I really do get the same rush of feeling that I do when I'm actually in love with a person.  I moon and swoon.

For instance, I have had a long standing love affair with this work of art:

I met my lady at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston when I was studying there '94-'98.  She's Lady in Yellow by Thomas Wilmer Dewing, 1888.  I was just so haunted by her pensive look, all dressed up as if ready to go to a ball but instead sitting dreamily in the dark, alone, musing.  I used to go to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum at least once a year to see her.  I haven't seen her since I graduated and left Boston for good.  But just last year I hunted down a print online -- my Black Friday buy at half price!  I was ecstatic when I got her -- but then I realized that I can't afford a frame worthy of her.  So my poor lady sits, furled up, in an old poster tube until my thrift store visits produce something large and gaudy enough to host her.  (I'm thinking something ornate and gold, to put in my "yellow room" along with my "Mirror Mirror on the Wall" mirror.)  I loooooove her.  I really do.  When I was measuring her for the frame, I would take her out, smooth her out on the floor, and caress the print.

I know, kind of creepy, right?

I'm still on an earnest search for this work of art --

It's A Lua ('The Moon'), by awesome Brazilian artist Tarsila do Amaral, 1928.  I love love love this piece and want to have it hanging, huge, in my living room.  I would move that mirror everyone loves for this.  The problem is that it looks like the only place one can buy this in print form is Brazil.  I've looked for it online and just can't find it.  I've begged Brazilians in the U.S. to bring this back for me, and they make heartfelt promises but…they're Latin.  It's never materialized.  I loved this work so much I evangelized about it to my whole school where I taught in '98-'00 and the first grade ended up doing a whole unit on Tarsila and copying this painting.

It's funny, because I'm not really the kind of person who is into all kinds of art.  I'm not artsy at all.  (Ask my talented friend Debbie, who hates when I call her 'crafty.'  "It's craftsmanship," she protests.)  I just like what I like…and when I like it, I really really like it.  I think I'm like that about people too.

Another case in point is the countries where I've lived.  I talk about them like old lovers.  Actually, I love them better than old lovers, because there's no pain, shame, anger, blame, regret in these love affairs.  No embarrassment at reconnecting, no jealousy at others who have lived to love my loves.  Only pleasure at the memories.

Here are all the significant notches in my belt :)  :

Spain was my childhood crush -- a short and sweet affair, all innocence and fun, with little depth or memories, which launched me into my life of falling in love with other countries.   Brazil was undoubtedly my first love -- a rich, heady fling, sensual with flavors, colors, and fun -- who made me a real woman.  China was the one I looked longingly at from a distance but didn't have more than the most fleeting of contact with.  Indonesia was that desirable but difficult relationship of my twenties that I tried really, really hard to make work for the long term.  Like most difficult relationships, it didn't work out, but taught me so much.  Afghanistan -- now I can say its name -- was the one I decided to commit to, til death do us part, forever and ever, but then had my heart horribly broken.

And Italy -- well, Italy's my rebound.  A fling.  I'm kind of using Italy -- sexy, compelling, temporary Italy -- to get over Afghanistan.  I hope it works.  (Do rebounds work?)

I was talking about this with one of my friends and she pointed out that I hadn't mentioned Korea.  Hmm…no romance there.  That's my family culture, so of course I'm attached to it, fond of it, but no romance.  Korea and I are like the Shim-pua marriage customs in which Chinese families purchased girls for their sons to marry when they grew up.  Unanticipated by the parents who thought they were getting a great deal on a child servant / future bride, growing up together evoked the Westermarck effect (basically an internal incest taboo), and the boy and girl would resist marrying once they were of age, since they were basically brother and sister at heart.  (Thank you, Dr. James Watson who taught  the anthro class "Chinese Family, Marriage and Kinship," or as we called it, "Chinese Mating & Dating" in college).

So when I hear things about the countries I once loved, or meet other people who love them, or get to go to a restaurant and have some of their food -- it's like reconnecting (in a nice way) with an old flame.  Reading about these places on CNN feels like Facebook stalking an ex, but without any rancor -- a genuine curiosity about what's going on with your former love, but with a little detachment, since it's not the relationship you're in at the moment.  Except Afghanistan.  I'm still heartbroken there; can hardly bear to read those articles, and never without a pang.

And it's weird that currently I'm basically unattached (because Italy is just a fling), and could reconsider going back to any of these old loves, or try to find a new one.  I wonder which it will be.