2013-04-24

a conversation that never took place #3

"Do you think there can be something like intelligent romance?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Well, mainly because of a Hemingway quote I love: 'Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.' And romance is some type of happiness, or rather a belief in having achieved something good, having two people together that should be together... or something. I don't know, I just think that if you think a lot and if you're smart you sooner or later come to the conclusion that things are bad, and everything that isn't bad is invented, is false..."

"Woah, that's a fatal thought to have...do you always think like that?"

"Not always, if I did I would have killed myself a long time ago... but I just wondered, is there anything left of romance if you know that love is invented, that it's nothing but hormones and drives?"

"Let me put it this way: you probably wouldn't be impressed if I invited you to an expensive restaurant where we'd eat spaghetti off one dish while an old frenchman would be playing the accordion in a corner. But I'm sure you couldn't resist if I took you away with me, to show you places and things you've never seen? If I made you climb over fences and walls to get to a rooftop where you can look all over the city, like a young Charles Balanda? If I led you out into a field and you'd ask me why I did it and I'd say I don't know?"

"Hm, that's still a bit cliché... alternative cliché, but it's much like in a Gavalda novel."

"But still you couldn't! Don't tell me you wouldn't fall for me if I did all that. You're human, after all."

"So you basically say that an intelligent human being can experience romance only if it forgets to be intelligent for a while?"

"You underestimate human stupidity, I'm afraid. You are hell of intelligent. Really, hell of. Most people don't even have 20 per cent of your perspective. They just live like people in reality tv shows. It's awful but that's the way it is, they know love from soap operas and firmly believe that this is the only, true way it is, that soap operas are romance. That love is something inexplicable, sudden. Pink hearts, red roses, diamond rings in glasses of champagne. And then there's people like you. People who'd fall for beauty. For people like you, beauty is romance- well, in your case it's probably gotta be hardcore beauty, I guess..."

"You mean that beauty, a sort of more complex romance, could trigger my instincts because it could trick my mind? Taint my judgement, so to say?"

"You're adorable in your awfulness, but yes, I guess so. You'd love me if I showed you the secret entrance to a museums basement and we'd get locked up in there over night, you'd love me if I took you to see a ruin that only I would know about... This whole conversation, it's nothing but romantic- you ask me things like 'can there be intelligent romance' and I do my best to give witty responses, and create fictional beauty for you. Don't tell me you're not convinced yet. You've got rosy cheeks."

"That's the sunshine. And your overly cute examples of 'beauty'. And choice of characters to, er, illustrate them."

"What's wrong with my choice of characters? I thought that as the intelligent individual that you are, you would have made an intelligent guess about their purpose."

3 comments:

  1. that's just great. i love this conversation, i asked myself the same questions as you did :) xx

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  2. great, simply great.
    I´ve asked me the same question so many many times...

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  3. I wish the world was full of people like you, who make up such wonderful conversations...oh I wish it was real!
    It's so sad, that there are so many people, who believe in reality-soap-romance :/

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