Now this is called autumn. An autumn that sees tans and spates in the eye. For a heretic hermit that I am, it is an utter pain-in-the-you-know-where to pore into texts and have nightmares guised in blazers. And so to anoint the pain, I embarked on a crash course of F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
The show is miraculous (not that I am the newest addition to the already bursting sack of American Television enthusiasts, but it made me think in an antithesis of maudlin characteristics that I posses).
It is magical how none of them are, as Obelix would say, "well covered". Though Chandler vacillates between bloating up and shrinking down, every 10 episodes...and this isn't the primary objective of me going tap tap tap here.Tsk tsk.
Anyway, getting back to what I have always wondered about, since I started watching the harmless Different Strokes, and eventually graduated to the more bawdy, The Nanny. Is that forbidden Americanized sense of "love" catching up? What is all about, afterall? As I spend the autumn of my quarter-life crisis I am tempted, if not forced, to question how do these semi-adult relationships work?
Do they really stand on the cliched postulates of passion, honesty, equality, sharing and what-nots? Or are these the slagged after-math of the bygone era? As an eighteen year old, I would be stumped watching celluloid men and women flinching out of weddings at the last moment. It never occurred to me what the big deal about getting married was. When one can be in a relationship for a long time, or cohabit, what deters one from taking the vows?
Perhaps because, however dishonest or brazen man has become today, the vows still remain sacrosanct to a few of us.
For most of us wont be there to have and to hold from that moment forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from that moment forward until death do us part.
After all the raving and ranting about the sanctity of vows, what pricks me is the volatility of modern day relationships. All we do is go round and round in big-small circles, where do we reach at the end of a cut-throat day at the desk? People freaking out a few hours before the wedding doesn't surprise me anymore. The truth is distressing to the core. The first kiss can't last forever. And today when entertainment is all about "reality shows" where the contestants are crying, throwing up, biting bottoms on-screen for fifteen-seconds of fame, everybody needs a breather.
Juliet was the luckiest. Her era had ballrooms, dovey-eyed suitors, swords, confidant(e)s, pigeons and gardens of lillies and roses. Also, her time did not see mobile phones, instant messengers and emails. She loved and died at fourteen, while the fire of being "Romeo and Juliet" was still kindling.
What do we have today? Sex? Distrust? Insecurity? Side-drinks of flings while the long drink of a "relationship" ferments in crystal?
The worst analogy that I can draw at the moment is that love is like curd. (Now nobody throws the shoe at me for this). Take it off the heat and consume at the right hour. Keep it a little longer and fermentation goes awry.
So much so for anti-climax!
