A former lover, who stumbled across this, my new venture, questioned my credentials for pontificating on the subject of 'romance'. There was precious little of that when we were together, she wryly noted.
Maybe I need to set the record straight, and define more clearly what I'm talking about here. I'm not talking about 'love' in itself (whatever that might be), so much as those rarefied relics that beguile us into believing it might just be possible. Most of these things make little sense in the real world, and many of them are impossible. Hence their enduring potency and allure. I'm quite certain that she would have given me short shrift had I showered her in red roses and other cliches of commodified desire at the time. Chocolates maybe, but chocolate boxes are not her style. Yet I gave her something more enduringly romantic - I said goodbye.
Does imagination dwell the most on a woman won or woman lost?
Silly question Billy. By ending the relationship I bestowed upon it what she claims it lacked - romance. What Might Have Been and the Impossible are the cornerstones of this concept. And the so relationship, alchemised by regret and the passing years, now glows in the imagination. More enduringly than faded roses, or snuffed candlelight. We should not, when talsking of romance (to quote Billy Boy Yeats again), 'mistake the brightness of the moon for the prosaic light of day'.
I dedicated my last book - Sunshine - to 'lost love'. It had been dedicated 'to _______', but _______ and I finished the day before the book went to press. I feel the loss of the relationship terribly, but am rather pleased with the dedication. I once heard of an author dedicating a book 'To whoever I'm with now' (nicer than the other one I heard about, 'To Bitch', but formed from the same logic). 'To lost love' means mine is perennially dedicated to Whoever I'm no longer with now. Given I appear to have a season ticket on the whirligig of love, that was a shrewd investment on my part. I just hope it stays in print long enough...
