above all, love

Freedom, Truth, Beauty and Love. Above all, Love.

Yeah. I’m watching Moulin Rouge again. And it tears through me each time. Moments storm through me like velvet thunderbolts. I get all melodramatic like this and I want more than anything to lose myself in love.

That scene where Satine and Christian are alone for the first time in the elephant, and she’s mistaken him for The Duke- that first line he sings just stops the world, and you can see it in her eyes too. I’ve had that. I’ve been in that moment, where you can’t tell if it’s fantasy or reality that suddenly becomes larger than life, but it’s shelled you hollow and filled you up with someone that wants to scream with joy and cower in awe. All the rules change. A priceless newness that you know only you two can ever share. Everything else is gone like it never was.

Sorcery.

The first time I saw Moulin Rouge I was living in Vancouver, very single and very tired of the jaded predictability of the world. I went to see it by myself on a whim, because Nicole’s in it and we all know I’m a fan. I was a prime target for the flick. I was scraped clean with razors of fantasy and memory. I came out into the same day I’d left only two hours before, but it was like my soul had been reset. Scrubbed and clean and raw and vulnerable.

I didn’t fall in love and I didn’t live happily ever after. I spent two weeks more miserable than ever, having lost my protective shield of jade. The rest of the world had missed its cue and utterly failed to keep up with me.

So I keep waiting and wondering if it ever happens again: that love that cores you out and fills you up with someone new. Some people claim never to have had it, so maybe only some of us more passionate types ever get caught up in it. But you have to wonder if it’s an affliction of the young. Or naive. Maybe once you’ve been through it your soul just isn’t up for the trial. It’s not that I don’t feel. Every once in a while someone comes along who makes me raise my eyebrow in consideration, but there’s always a train wreck. I find out too much about her or she just doesn’t feel the same way (or my outrageous sense of romance turns/scares her off).

But what if I want it to happen again? Can’t I work though the layers and walls and let myself be open for that again? Can’t I reset my soul?

It’s kinda funny, I guess. You really can’t know. Even when you’re absolutely sure you’re wide open and willing to receive you might get there and discover you’re still deathly afraid of all that hurt again. You might blow it just because you’re too afraid, in the final test, to let it all happen again. Or maybe it won’t come along.

And where am I at now? All the thinking I’ve poured into it says I’m ready for a real, true and lasting reciprocated love between two equals. There’s even enough love in here for a couple of junior mischiffs. *grin* or mischiffesses.

So when does that girl come along who says, “Fuck it, I’m going to risk it all, baby. It’s worth it for this one.” And says it at the same time I do?

And how the hell do you be ready for that? You’re never going to know in advance if it’s right. You just have to trust. And that’s what got you messed up in the first place.

Which brings us back to square one. Being ready, willing, and able. I think. *sigh* Your move, lady.

This would be so much easier if Jennifer Connelly would just return my phone calls.

Heh.