I have found something rare and wonderful, completely by accident, and I have absolutely no idea what to do with it.
As a matter of observation, things that are rare are not often simultaneously sturdy or robust. That’s not the sort of thing you can really test, either: someone hands you a Faberge egg, you are not likely to assess first-hand how well it bounces. You believe, through some instinct or education, that this thing in your hand is rare because it is frail—uncommon and valued because of its proclivity to be broken.
Approaching the matter scientifically, Darwin might have you believe that something rare is doomed—fragility will eventually and inevitably be selected against. How many creatures will we never know about because they couldn’t quite bear up against climate, predators, environment, or the distance between Boston and New York?
Okay, I may be referring to a very specific species that is at risk for that last one: a population of two that may or may not be viable in the long run.
Most relationships don’t stand up against selection pressures—from both within and without. You could say a selection pressure from within is just the act of being picky: the female bird is so not impressed with that particular feather display. Move along, pal. Relationship selection pressure from without has nothing to do with choice: if some manner of jungle cat eats the male bird, the female, no matter how much she approved of the male’s plumage, would seem to be shit out of luck.
I take no issue with my chosen bird’s plumage. When he met me on the corner of 34th and 8th this weekend, I saw him before he saw me, and I took a minute to simply admire him. Those are some fine feathers, let me tell you.
I know I am in trouble when Frank Sinatra starts singing in my head—that generally means I have passed out of the realm of reason and straight into fantasy, replete with imagined embraces in fog and fedoras. For the last few days, Frankie has been singing a George Gershwin standard, which begins: “There are many, many crazy things that will keep me loving you, and with your permission, may I list a few?”
The request for permission was probably a rhetorical exercise; it’s entirely possible that whomever Gershwin was writing about never knew such a list existed. In that possibility, I feel George’s pain. One of those selection pressures that could crush this fledgling romance into extinction is the act of my listing those many, many crazy things that keep me loving him… so I write them to the ether, on a whim:
I love the way your eyes crinkle up when you grin, like a cheeky little kid who’s quite pleased with himself for having been caught covered in peanut butter. I love your selective use of anachronisms when you talk. I love how the universe saw fit to create you with a breathtakingly perfect blend of irony and self-awareness—the personality version of a dry martini—which goes so well with your corduroy blazer. I love that I love your friends and your favorite book. That you are excellent at receiving gifts. That you drink ‘dark and stormies,’ which are awful. That you have expressed strong opinions about my shoes (you hate my Tevas, which recently broke and made me think of you). That you remember certain places where I have left pieces of myself. That you see me, my lowest common denominator self, who prefers blue jeans, talks too much, and is filled with obscure Star Wars facts, and you like all of those things. That sitting across the table from almost every date I have had in the last year, I have thought that I would rather be with you.
The memory of all that? No, they can’t take that away from me… but I don’t want the memory of it. I want the reality of it. Unfortunately, reality is the biggest threat to our population of two; something along the lines of “cause of death: blunt force reality.” Love and evolution aren’t mutually exclusive: I believe the best kinds of relationships evolve. Sometimes I worry, though, that giving something time can cut both ways: if you don’t make something happen, how can you make anything happen?
I’m not quite ready to drop the egg and see if it bounces; I don’t know that he’ll ever know of this list of many, many crazy things. But sometimes Nature does give me hope: there is miraculous footage of ducklings essentially BASE jumping out of their nest high in a tree.
They are fragile and wonderful too. And they bounce.
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