What is love?
No really. What is love?
Is it the one power that rules us all like the one ring? (I need to get off this facetious kick).
Is it blind? Is it rational?
Do we choose it?
Like Kylie, I too believe that we choose to accept love rather than choose to be in love. I don't think that we all have this switch inside of us that we turn off and on depending on if we want to love someone or not. It takes time to grow and takes more than just willpower to manifest. We choose to allow ourselves to love another just as we choose to accept love from another person. It is all about choice even though sometimes, one cannot help but have feelings for another person. I've been there. I liked the same guy for more than five years even though I didn't want to like him for I knew the relationship would never happen. However, deep down inside, I know I chose to continue to like him and go along with my friends' encouragements. Just as now, I am choosing to let go of the feelings I had for him; the why part of that is a long story.
I also believe that there are different kinds of love like romantic love, platonic love, familial love...destructive love, enriching love. I also believe that there is a huge difference between lust and love which is why I have such a hard time with Romeo and Juliette because I cannot for the life of me decide whether or not I think they are in love or in lust with each other. But that is beside the point. The point is that there are many different kinds of love which makes it a complicated thing indeed. When one adds soulmates into the mix, that just makes it even more complicated because that adds an entirely new set of beliefs and opinions. Alison believes that everyone has more than one soulmate and that there are different kinds such as intellectual soulmates v. romantic ones. I'm inclined to believe that as well. Though a part of me also believes in the soulmate mythology of the Japanese and Chinese. An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstances. The thread may stretch or tangle but will never break. The Chinese believe that around the ankles of men and women are tied red strings of fate that attach to their soulmates; the Japanese believe it attaches to the pinky. According to Laurie Sue Brockway in Your Interfaith Wedding, "The red string of fate celebrates the legend that soulmates are tied together at the ankle at birth to ensure they will find each other someday, " (75). Don't ask me why I am so fond of this concept, I think it's the romantic in me. However, like I said, I do also believe that there is more than one soulmate out there for us, just different kinds and in different forms.
This makes me wonder about both the relationships of the main couples in the books/stories we read in class this past week, Ligeia and The Shining, for they are truly puzzling ones.
In Ligeia, Poe's narrator practically festishizes Ligeia to the point where he can't escape either her eyes or her intelligence. “Those eyes! those large, those shining, those divine orbs! they became to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers.” On page twenty-nine, all he does is describe her eyes; why is he so obsessed with them? By describing her eyes are the twin stars of Leda, he is also telling us that she and her eyes became his moon and his sun, his night and day. How and why? Because the twins Leda bore from Zeus are Artemis and Apollo: the moon goddess and the sun god. His whole being revolves around his obsession with her eyes to the point where he forgets her last name and how they met and all he remembers is her strange beauty. Who do her eyes really belong to in this case? Was he really in love with her? I am puzzled about the latter especially. Regardless of whether or not their love was real though, I believe that their relationship was highly unhealthy. It was parasitic. He kept feeding off of her identity, off her appearance, and off her soul until she slowly wasted away to nothing from her lack of selfhood and died.
Even when Ligeia is gone, she is still all he can see, all he can compare life to. Just as he took over her in life, she takes over him in death.
Another interesting relationship that we talked about this week was the relationship between Jack and Wendy Torrrance in The Shining. Unlike Poe’s narrator and Ligeia, there is no obsession between these two characters. They are simply…Jack and Wendy. Their marriage is going to pot; Danny even knows this due to his shine. On pages forty and forty-one, we see how haunted by his parents wanting a divorce. It’s his living nightmare that sparks his shinings to get worse and his reality will twist into hell when they get to The Overlook. His parents never touch affectionately and grow ever more distant from each other. Jack is unstable and standing on the precipice of insanity even before they arrive at The Overlook from the isolation he feels from his family and from his past relationship with his father. You see, Jack was abused by his father when he was young and Jack is trying to fight becoming that. However, he does injure Danny a few times…though those few times are severe. He breaks Danny’s arm and he slaps him. The breaking of the arm sparked Wendy to go into protective mode…but she still is hesitant to leave Jack because she doesn’t want to go back to her mother’s house where Wendy is not living up to her mother’s expectations. She doesn’t want to leave the man she loves even though he is verbally abusive to her—he threatens to break her ankle and even has malicious thoughts when they are having sex—and physically so with her son.
As said, Jack is also considering divorce and as evidenced on page forty, thinks that he’d be better off that way. However, there is still something there connecting him to Wendy just as there is still something connecting her to him. She knows it’s wrong, she knows he’s rough, she doesn’t know what to do but they’ve been through enough. She is caught in an endless, spiraling cycle of abuse until she finally breaks free with Danny at the end after suffering tremendous injuries from the battle with Jack (who dies at the end of the novel). This is like Poe's narrator's relationship with Ligeia: it is unhealthy for both of them and the only way to escape is through death. "Til death do us part," indeed.
(First Video is for Wendy about Jack. The second is for Jack about Wendy. Ignore the part where he talks about another man)
Brockway, Laurie Sue. Your Interfaith Wedding: A Guide to Blending Faiths, Cultures, and Personal Values into One Beautiful Wedding Ceremony. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2010. 75. eBook.
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