Still pondering the eternal mystery that is romance, I'm recapitulating a few romances and thinking back to that first moment of certainty, The Moment I Knew that this was going to be a Big Romance.
There is a term in a Bruce Cockburn song that I've used to define these moments -- "event horizon." The verse of the song goes like this: Wild shadows, acid verbs Eyelids opening dans mon coeur Tu me touche comme la pression Des etoiles sur les tenebres * In the elevator and the empty hall How am I ever going to hear you when you call I'm always living and I always die on the event horizon of your eyes I'm a loner With a loner's point of view I'm a loner And now I'm in love with you * TRANSLATION: Wild shadows acid verbs Eyelids opening in my heart You touch me like the pressure Of the stars on the darkness http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alT19_AzXFU <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alT19_AzXFU> An "event horizon" in astronomy is that boundary surrounding a black hole from which no more light can escape. Once you cross that boundary, every- thing -- physical objects as well as light -- is sucked into the black hole. The Moments I Knew are like that to me. They were the moments *after* I had crossed an event horizon and realized that I was past the point of no return, and was on my way on what would probably be an interesting journey. Here are a few of them: * Trying to think of what music to play in the car after picking up a woman I had driven from New York to Vermont to see, hoping there might be a resonance there but not sure of it, I selected Keith Jarrett's "Koln Concert." We drove along for a few minutes, he hit my favorite chord change, and she literally stopped in mid-sentence and said, "Who IS this we are listening to." The romance was a Done Deal. * Walking along a pathway at Cobb Mountain on the first day of an ATR course, passing a woman walking the other way. Stopping a few feet further to turn around, as if to say "Who WAS that?" and finding her doing the same thing. * Saying goodnight to a woman I had been thinking of as only a friend, and who had been thinking of me the same way. I don't think that the idea of romance had occurred to either of us. But then we realized that our respective work travel schedules meant that we wouldn't be seeing each other again for three weeks. There followed an awkward silence, followed by three weeks of realization, followed by several years of romance. * Literally running into someone -- neither of us watching where we were going and me knocking her off her feet -- and looking down to find a beautiful Japanese woman who was (fortunately) laughing and realizing in that instant that we were going to be lovers. We were, that evening. * Having worn my "Serenity" logo T-shirt into Barcelona, starting across a crosswalk and seeing a woman coming the other way. I saw her aura first, and it wowed me enough that it took me a second to realize that she was wearing a T-shirt that said "Browncoats." I never made it to the other side of the street. * Walking down a hallway in the building I worked in and seeing a woman ahead of me in the hallway, walking the same direction. Her back was to me and all that I could really see was her long hair. I literally lost my footing and had to brace myself against the wall, and the only thought that went through my head was, "Oh shit. There's one." She still is, twenty years later.
