Episode 20: The Greatest Love Stories of All Time & Dismantling Romantic Idealism

I OFFER YOU EVERY CONSIDERATION OF… oyster fisherman love stories, COMCASTSUCKS52, limiting beliefs, YOU CAN’T DATE HIM BECAUSE YOU WILL DESTROY HIM! MAGICAL ROMANTIC OPTIMISM! Sunday nights are for sucking it up and dealing with the present…  BARING MY SOUL TO THE WORLD!

EXERPT:

…And so, as these things often go, my trip ended up being a whole blessing in disguise. And I borrowed sheets from my friend and her family, and I cleaned up the rental cabin. And it turned out that no one cared where I was, or what I was doing, in this little cabin in the woods. Which turned out to be a relief. I’m not the biggest fan of hotels, or being around a lot of people when I’m trying to get away. And there I was with the peace and quiet I was looking for, and a gas fireplace to boot. And while typing COMCASTSUCKS53 (the WiFi password), into the computer for the 12th time, I realized that, while Comcast might suck, this really didn’t. It turned out I don’t mind my own company after all. And I took myself out to a beautiful restaurant in Provincetown, and I sat and wrote alone at a table overlooking the moonrise and the water. And the whole restaurant waited on me, and the host brought me flowers. And one of the servers told me I looked like the woman who plays Wonder Woman - which lit up my soul. And I ate copious amounts of delicious food, and drank a delicious mocktail. And this is what I wrote. 

“And now Georgia on my mind is playing, while I’m drinking mocktail, as my best friend yells at Vacasa about my rental, while all the time calling herself my secretary… so I don’t have to send the whole trip trying to get clean sheets and a refund. Bless that woman to the ends of the earth. And the host of the restaurant just brought me a glass full of flowers and put them on the window sill next to me, and said nothing and smiled. And I remembered, a phrase, that your a boundary need not be a fiery protection, it can be a glow, that says, I will be treated sacredly. And the moon is rising like a blood orange over the horizon - shining out over the water - as I gulp down oysters as gracefully as someone can. And somehow, here, the lonely doesn’t seem so loud, the waiter calling me angel, the moon shimmering. I can hear the sound of the waves lapping to the shore even above the din of the restaurant. 

The moon is full on the horizon now, and the light shines like a cross vertically and horizontally. 

Really I am just here to make love to the moon, I remind myself. 

And that doesn’t mean that I don’t wish I had someone to share it with. But I have everything I need. It’s all perfectly already here. There will be the time for that someday in the future. A hurricane, children running, love everywhere. For now, I am all the love I need. Here, skin flickering under the candlelight, reading “The Book Of Love” by Roger Rosenblatt. It’s dark now, and the tides risen up to the edge of the restaurant lapping at the side of the inn as Amy Winehouse sings “Valarie”

“Well, sometimes I go out by myself

And I look across the water

And I think of all the things of what you're doing

In my head I paint a picture”

And in my head I paint a picture. I say to myself, that someday, I will find a person, I want to share all of this love with. And I’ll bring them here. And I’ll tell them that I knew, that someday we would find ourselves back at this table. Watching the full moon rise over the water. And the story will be complete, and yet somehow never ending. 

And then a flourless chocolate torte came that I hadn’t ordered, from some unknown person. And I sat there, and relished every bite of it, truly and madly and deeply. While reading and laughing, and remembering loving doesn’t have to be all that serious. But sometimes it is. 

Roger Rosenblatt writes:

“In eighteenth-century Tunisia, couples were not permitted to speak a word to each other during their first year of marriage. The theory was that after a year passed, when the couple finally spoke, they would have been so conscious of the truth in every situation, that they would speak only the truth from then on. There are no formal records of the failures and successes of Tunisian marriages in the eighteenth century, thus no hard evidence of whether or not the theory was sound.

Only one pertinent document is extant (of course, I’m making this all up), but it is telling in regard to the silent-year law just mentioned. In a diary kept by a young Tunisian woman, she wrote about the day after she and her husband had been married one year. When he finally spoke to her, he kissed her forehead, took her hand, and said, “You’re not alone.”

I OFFER YOU EVERY CONSIDERATION of gray waves breaking on stones, and a sanctuary of seabirds, glowing like a silk skirt, which I offer you as well, to be employed at grand balls in the springtime, or as a tourniquet for such wounds as you may “suffer in battle. I offer several sprigs of berries, red and yellow, a bowl of milk, three George Gershwin and Cole Porter songs, a Mark Helprin novel, stalactites of sun rays, tribal names, an illustrated history of horses, the wreck of an old man’s hair, blessings spread out at appropriate intervals, chocolates. You I also offer a battered desk, a stack of unfinished poems written in the high style, to be worked on in the early hours of a winter’s day, prints of the American frontier, a deliberately slow Linda Ronstadt version of “Am I Blue?”, the aplomb of terns, the virginal light of an early summer evening, a paper plane gliding inches from the floor, then soaring in a loop-de-loop, letters tied in a ribbon, the stillness of a hedge, the stillness of a cord of wood, the stillness of my breath.

From you, in return, I should like a lighthouse beam crossing the path of the moon on a creek, a metropolis of ants in the hollow of an oak tree, a drugstore of the 1940s, a black-and-white soda to go with it, three more Gershwin and “Porter tunes, the touch of your naked shoulder, a hunting lodge in the depth of the Northern California forests, a circus of winds on a stormy August afternoon, the slow ascent of the Atlantic. I should also like a patch of ice, a patch of snow, a patch of clarity, my white shirts flapping swanlike on a clothesline, a scythe of light on the roof of a shed, a stone wall in New Hampshire, sudden hills on a long drive in the country, confrontations of hummingbirds, collaborations of green leaves, constellations of ducks, your naked thigh, your patience as I tell my jokes about County Kerry and about the rabbi who walks into a bar, oars at rest in their locks, the tremor of your heart beneath my own.

Stature of ideas is precision of ideas, so let me be precise. You are the earth, to be precise.”

Excerpt From: Roger Rosenblatt. “The Book of Love.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-book-of-love/id862641658

And then the check came. And it was just a card. 

And I looked up at the waiter, confused. It just said my name: 

Olivia.

I opened it. 

The card read as follows: 

Olivia,

The ocean loves you,

Signed,

Madam secretary. 

And so I sat, alone in a restaurant full of strangers. Crying tears full of gratitude. For the incredible love I already have in my life. And I thought to myself, “I am never settling, EVER.” Just the way she had said it when I told her about the forgery, and the whole hidden story behind it. And that’s what true friendship does. It reminds you that you should never settle for anything less than white hot love. And also, perfect, simple, beautiful gestures of love that knows you like it knows your soul. And the waiter came by and said, “You know who that is right?” And I choked out the words, “yes” and “thank you so much.” And, as with most places I go, I left the whole staff of the restaurant wondering who that strange sweet tall dark haired woman was. That’s not just conjecture… they asked me. Something I get a lot, is that most people who are not American also think I am not American. It’s very sweet. They always get confused when I’m just from a small town in Massachusetts. I guess people don’t sit alone at restaurants and eat 4 course meals while writing and staring at the moon very often. I take it as a complement every time. 

And if nothing else. For a night. We showed a whole staff of people that even when you are alone, if you are love, love follows you wherever you go. And that presence and kindness are contagious. 

And I walked down the street to my car - in awe, of the world once again…