Sunday, August 7, 2011

MOST LIKELY you are in love…

[1] When you tend to be eerily forgetful and AWFULLY ABSENT-MINDED. Before you get enraptured by her lost-girl Zooey Dechanel stare or sneaky George Clooney wink, you never once missed an episode of “America’s Got Talent,” NY Times’ Sunday crossword, return an important errand call from your boss, or mow the front lawn. The first level of the love/infatuation madness revolves around starry-eyed indolence, prolonged moments by a rain-soaked windowpane, non-stop adherence to 70s sentimental radio, and paranoid gazes at your cellphone or inbox for a message or two. Not good… so before you get fired for missed deadlines and run over a pile up of unattended dirty dishes on the sink, deal with it right here right now: If you feel you are in love, go tell her/him—and demand an instant response. If you don’t get a yes answer, then—invoke Cher in “Moonstruck” (to Nicolas Cage): “SNAP OUT OF IT!”

[2] When you begin SAYING YES to a lot of stuff and things that you rejected, dismissed, or didn’t agree with before. It’s because, at this moment, you see the world as a positive wheel of possibilities, not probabilities; certainties, not doubts; promises, not fears. It’s because you’d like to exert more tolerance and instill more patience at knowing and understanding issues and matters that you didn’t give a chance to flourish or bloom when you first tried them. Everything seems a doorway to anything good and pleasurable… Love doesn’t question, it just keeps on understanding. It could be a bit silly to some, but then—if love isn’t a silly, beautiful gift of humanity, then we will all be single people watching waves come and go by a lonesome shore. And the closest touch of intimacy that we can grasp is an overnight of hot, fleeting sex.

[3] When you start wearing dresses and clothes with loud colors and gaudy designs. The planet becomes a psychedelic discotheque—and LIFE WHIRLS AND TWIRLS like a hula hoop. It has become hip, cool and fashionable to be wearing a tangerine and purple Big Bird gown and straw hat adorned with summertime flowers—although it’s winter or whatever unseasonal instance this could be. Who cares what you’re up to these days, no more greys and blacks and whites. You may even dress your pug or poodle with a Lady Gaga chemise whatever, as long as you don’t dye her fur orange…

[4] When suddenly you are freakin’ CORNY AS HELL. You become surprisingly cheesy, and have chucked your acerbic, holier-than-thou political rants in favor of elementary Adam Sandler gags. Suddenly, who cares about Obama’s take on debt relief and GOPs’ tact on health care; all you talk about are some recycled SNL sitcom gawks and silly high school jokes. You are now spending more time checkin’ out Hallmark card shelves at Target and have been watching The Food Network more than ever, and has been squeezing your beer budget to save some on flowers and chocolates… Well, I am telling you: IT IS FREAKIN’ CORNY! But love has this magical power to melt hearts like marshmallows, feel young like a squeaking piglet, and frivolous as in a 3-year old kid throwing snowballs at your neighbors VW… But that childish reverie shouldn’t last longer than a few weeks, otherwise—you need to see a shrink.

[5] When you FEEL LIKE DANCING whenever you cook, gardening, doing the laundry. You are just happy and lively and on constant celebratory mood. It’s like—although all you get on primetime TV are those whiny housewives, it’s like they’re all Mother Teresas and Marge Simpsons. Your ramen noodles taste like salmon on white cheese, gardening is like ice skating, and laundry work is like chill-out time on a hammock by a Pacific isle beach-front.

[6] When you desire more KISSING AND HOLDING than actual intercourse. Love is derived from mutual intimacy—and kissing and holding make it more real and achievable. So if you happen to postpone or cancel meeting up and spending time together just because it’s her monthly period, that means—you are not in love at all. There are a lot of beautiful things to do together that articulate what you two mutually feel—in the absence of nakedness.Moreover, most of these blessings of romantic relationships are muddled or ruined by sexual politics that pervade in the current generation… If a relationship suddenly becomes a witch-hunt for faults (because he is “such a man, and she acts like a woman”), and interactions turn into a boot camp for gender wars, then kissing is trivial and nonsense. Better quit altogether.

[7] When your INSECURITY AND SENTIMENTALISM torture you like razor blade on melting butter. This is one of the baddest parts of being madly in love—the fear of losing her/him, because you might not come up to her/his standard or she/he might be a player. You are unreasonably, unbelievable insecure if you start worrying that maybe she found a better dude on the hallway—after she excused herself to go to a bathroom while dining at a downtown bar-restaurant… just because she spent time in there for more than 2 minutes and 17 seconds. Or when a random woman greets him with, “How are you doing, Bret Michaels?” on Facebook Wall, you start nagging him that maybe he’s secretly sleeping with Heather Locklear or Khloe Kardashian? Or maybe you are scared that she’ll discover that you are a huge fan of Barry Manilow, or he will find out sooner or later that your high school crush was Rick Astley? Come on, deal with it! Love is love and it doesn’t measure whatever or quantify whichever…

[8] When you again wants to watch “Sleepless in Seattle” and “Love Story” in one night. Love makes humans feel DREAMY… fantasizing of those little, sweet moments smooching on a gondola in Venice, hugging tightly by Bellagio’s dancing fountain in Las Vegas, or shrieking I-love-you’s as you bungee jump down Grand Canyon—to profess your neverending je t’aime. It’s okay to dream and fantasize, you know—but keep your feet planted on reality ground. Maybe you two can only afford an afternoon walk by a Blue Ridge Mountains trail, hand in hand, sharing a PBR on a brown bag… or a quiet hummus/kale broth dinner at Rosetta’s at 2 in the morning. That’s okay, really. It’s perfectly normal to engage in a crazy dream segment or two once in a while—in some Shangri-la situation—because that also proves that you are in love.

[9] When you start getting SCARED OF BEING ALONE again. Yes, her/his presence is the most important ever in life and living… It has become so cold in bed without that other body warming yours up, dinner has become a freezing prison cell chow, shopping isn’t so exciting anymore without him pushing the cart or her taking too much time on the cosmetics section, and driving alone feels like a solitary journey in a space capsule in milky way. You miss his noisy ravings as he pores over Yahoo news, her whiny chats with her mom on the phone, his muddy loafers on the front door, her boring meditation CDs in the bathroom boombox, his old toothbrush in the sink, her hair on the pillow… Without him/her, loneliness has become so unbearable.

[10] When the words “I LOVE YOU” is said at least four times a day (before you part ways for work in the morning, amidst job breaks via cellphone calls or email message, as you kiss each other when both gets home, and a goodnight kiss)—is enough to assure you that you are together. This time, trust and believe—too much digging on the why’s and wherefore’s of love and “I love you” in terms of justifying/rationalizing words—is not good. Just take it easy—live good, love good, and eat good food—together.