At the end of August, my girlfriend of three years broke up with me. The next morning, I woke up to a brand new world. A world that frightened me, a world no longer conquerable. My skin, as it often does when depression sets in, felt of crawling and irritation.
The world had changed. And I hadn’t changed with it.
My entire life has always revolved around the idea of romanticism. And romanticism now seems dead. We now have text messaging. We have Facebook. We have dating sites pawning us off for stints until we can be returned for something more fitting. We are human goods. The world changed abruptly from the chivalrous, into one largely connected-updated-status profile, trafficking one another for short term use.
No longer are the days of just walking up to a girl on the street and completely and totally sweeping her off her feet. Dead are the times we could realize dreams of loving someone at absolute first sight. Love at first sight, these days, exist in Fletcher Jones Mercedes. We are an imprisoned, unambitious society swept away in a world of material goods and computer driven matches. We have the technology to completely alleviate our compassionate responsibilities for one another. In Gone With The Wind, Scarlett realizes that her love for Ashley was that of yearning for the opulent social standards that disease each and every society. When she returns to Rhett, he leaves, hopelessly abandoned by the worlds he once knew to be close to heart. Romanticism is art. And art is passion. We’re a society far to self-involved to realize the dangers posed. Romanticism is rotting away, its decaying, its futile.
And that’s created attrition. Attrition, you know, just walking steadfastly away from it all, without looking backwards, into forever’s fog. Walking away, away from the world you thought you knew and cared for with everything you had. That kind of attrition. Leaving behind only other people’s regrets. Attrition.
Two weeks later, I began searching for destinations world-wide that offered aseptic beaches. There are few left. I began looking into the idea of just building a hut and living remotely and off the land. Never shaving. No iPhone. No Facebook. Just something to write with, some bananas and a breaking surf. My only daily routines would consist of building a hut. Surfing. Eating fruit. And writing. Writing a love story. Maybe even a social manifesto. I dreamed of just waiting for that day when the farthest of all reefs began to break with furious energies, when people from the inner-communities would gather on the beach to watch the majestic surf; magnificent surf so raw and so pure, it can’t be contained or denied by any social infections. And then paddling out. I would have to imagine that in this one desolate, chosen corner of the world, the language spoken between the peoples would be irrelevant, as they would just understand that it was one more sign that an entire world was dying off. I have to also imagine that once my body finds the trapping crevices harnessed by that lowly, unsuspecting reef, I wouldn’t be alone. Never, ever again, would I be alone.
This is the tale of a Modern Day Love Story. I hope you enjoy.
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