Richard Burton called Elizabeth Taylor his “eternal one night stand.” I croon at the tenor of the mere idea of that. An emotional reverence of prodigious proportions hardly containable in thought. Conversely as reality stands still for no one he played George to her Martha in Edward Albee’s- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe? They were married and divorced twice, although their fascination for one another lingered on. The intermix of hindsight and reality defines “the serpent in envy paradise theory.”

We all have an emotional fingerprint that comes to full expression when it is stamped and recognized by that “special someone.” The state of limerence (infatuated love) is fleeting. It serves as the gestation period waiting to convert impassioned into permanence. If Jack is in love with Jill he is no judge of her beauty. With a fortuitous, a skewed eye we hope that our veneration for our beloved evolves into a ” happily ever after” place. Can waxing poetic last and last again? 

Calvin Trillin wrote a terrific short read called “About Alice.” He eulogized his wife in beautiful detail. He tried his best to make her feel real in spite of it’s hyperbolic style. My take away was reminiscent of “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.” Michel Legrand wrote the music under the direction of Jacques Demy. The movie plays out in song. The music adds breathless enchantment to the character’s dialogue. I am always left wondering how this would have played out outside of song. I imagine this is one reason we can’t get enough of any media that has a beat and a tune. Tickets to coveted Broadway Musicals – a veritable waiting game. Nothing like a good American Songbook excerpt to get the hoof beating and the heart racing. The fantasy and sighs as we sway back and forth completes the experience of wonder. Yes, Calvin Trillin loved Alice, his muse, that he is quoted as saying “all his writing was for her.” She was described by friends as ” someone who managed to navigate the tricky waters between living a life you could be proud of and still delighting in the many things there are to take pleasure in.”

So “hello young lovers wherever you are.” Getting it close to center in the quadrants of your life is the journey. Destinations perhaps overrated. Let’s do Saturday tra-la tra la!