Not Another Bodice Ripper - The Case for Serious Romance Part One

THE INTRODUCTION
Romance in general has always prescribed to formulas. Ask any literary agent who religiously sticks to what sells, and any aspiring romance novelist that would like to change things up. Romance novel trends seem to hate change more than any other genre. It is ironic then that it is the category of fiction that needs a makeover the most. However not truly in style, just in the context this style is delivered and perceived.

THE ISSUE
Romance has always suffered from a fallacy of perception as the people who don't actually read the genre seem to have the most to say about their inefficiency as a viable form of fiction. Yet in their vaulted wisdom of what is literary genius, and what is the lowest common denomination of literary fair, I must broach some fallacies of logic. Most high brow fiction involves some version of a love affair. The difference is usually how sexual interactions are portrayed if they are even portrayed.

THE COMPETITION
I think of some proverbial heavyweights of fiction such as Charles Dickens, Earnest Hemingway, and even Jane Austen. In their stories they seem to have very austere, pre-described, and idealized versions of love being portrayed. This is in some terms a 'clean' ethereal based love that only leaves a mess of the tongue and not of the person in a literal sense. The characters generate more passion for misplaced ideas than they do for the presence of another. Is it this sense of high dungeon that produces literary excellence?

In some instances in Hemingway's work for example there are clear overtones of a consuming misogyny as women can be easily trapped in a box and label of a mother, or a whore. It's always painfully Freudian when they end up as both, and thus rendered perfect. Yet this somehow manages to always be observed as part of the literary genius. The analogous representation of the purity of story because of the personalization of sexuality that is hardly ever actually realized just theorized.

THE THEORY
In some ways I believe the bias towards romance is a much deeper seated issue of humanity's perception of itself. The baser instincts of mating that romance points out are seen as 'immature' and 'unrefined' for many. Physical desire is usually seen as an indication of a simple beast instead of a hallmark of one in tune with the nature of whom and what it actually is. Human beings are mammals, and in many situations that animal instinct and urge is much more reliable in choosing a mate than a pros and cons list. The feeling is that romance makes absurd assumptions about this level of attraction and magnetism. That this 'animal' urge cannot be the basis to eventually grow into a deep and abiding love because love is something of a human nature, and not an animal one.

People with pets will tell you how well animals know love. Better sometimes than other human beings. They don't go with logic that their love will be returned. They operate on instinct, sometimes presenting themselves to an owner unsolicited on the street. This is how they love. Why is the idea that human love can be similar so seemingly odd? Or maybe they just have issues with the sex.

To Be Continued

That Divine Spark

I dared love once to show me the truth.  Face me head on show me what the mettle of love is and can be.  It starts with the wind.  Always it starts with the wind.  The touch of that which cannot be seen can only be felt. Always it caresses my skin pulling my mind towards you.  I imagine your hands live in that space.  As it ruffles my skirt and pulls at my hair.  I turn towards it like a flower to the sun.  Thirsty for another breath of you on my skin in my hair felt and not seen.  It seems at the oddest times you are in fact always there.

Never dare love to show you its face because it ends up being your own ravaged by tears.  Always tears fall like rain in joy in sadness in grace in pain.  The storms are the best with the drops of rain and the whip of the wind.  The build is where the truth lies. . anticipation.  It brews slowly softly within to break its wrath across this plane.  I feel the rise in me the instinct to meet it.  You can only survive that which you bear yourself to brunt and even then it is merely a mercy that survival is possible. It breaks open, shattered in bolts of lightning across the sky. The sky bleeds, the earth feeds.

Elemental and sublime in the heart of knowledge I remain complete in the hearth of my emptiness I surrender to defeat.  A force of nature that has rend and set asunder all earth, hell and heaven in a calamity of indisposed inevitable unbearable music.  The gnashing of teeth it’s called, the lamenting, the unfulfilled moaning. We forget in chaos the Universe was born.  Only in chaos will such marvels come into being. It lies in the clash. It lives in the fight. The push for solidarity against the desire for union.

The will of destiny is the mating of chance and karma. They dance around each other like pulses of violent intensity with passionate disregard.  They meet and recoil, the joining painful, sweet, yielding, hard, impossible, inevitable. One carries the light, the other bourn by the dark. Its completion that the space calls for.  Meeting of different ends to form a cohesive whole.

What is born lives in the soulful coupling of two never meant to meet but must know each other. The boundaries of commitment unresolved, unrefined, primordial and absolute. As one sees the other hears, as one inhales the other exhales, as one touches the other feels. The answer is not clear, or spoken but felt.  It moves in the subconscious that causes the belly to pull, the heart to skip. A knowing that has nothing to do with logical comprehension matching to identical pairs.  This is the way of nature filling in what was left unfilled. For each open space there is matter to align perfectly to it. Fingers lace, skin meets blends joined.   Separation an improbable and probable instance cursed to join in that moment and walk different planes in all others.

Forever together, forever apart. Bound in the endless dance of existence.

Not Another Bodice Ripper - The Case for Serious Romance Part One

THE INTRODUCTION
Romance in general has always prescribed to formulas. Ask any literary agent who religiously sticks to what sells, and any aspiring romance novelist that would like to change things up. Romance novel trends seem to hate change more than any other genre. It is ironic then that it is the category of fiction that needs a makeover the most. However not truly in style, just in the context this style is delivered and perceived.

THE ISSUE
Romance has always suffered from a fallacy of perception as the people who don't actually read the genre seem to have the most to say about their inefficiency as a viable form of fiction. Yet in their vaulted wisdom of what is literary genius, and what is the lowest common denomination of literary fair, I must broach some fallacies of logic. Most high brow fiction involves some version of a love affair. The difference is usually how sexual interactions are portrayed if they are even portrayed.

THE COMPETITION
I think of some proverbial heavyweights of fiction such as Charles Dickens, Earnest Hemingway, and even Jane Austen. In their stories they seem to have very austere, pre-described, and idealized versions of love being portrayed. This is in some terms a 'clean' ethereal based love that only leaves a mess of the tongue and not of the person in a literal sense. The characters generate more passion for misplaced ideas than they do for the presence of another. Is it this sense of high dungeon that produces literary excellence?

In some instances in Hemingway's work for example there are clear overtones of a consuming misogyny as women can be easily trapped in a box and label of a mother, or a whore. It's always painfully Freudian when they end up as both, and thus rendered perfect. Yet this somehow manages to always be observed as part of the literary genius. The analogous representation of the purity of story because of the personalization of sexuality that is hardly ever actually realized just theorized.

THE THEORY
In some ways I believe the bias towards romance is a much deeper seated issue of humanity's perception of itself. The baser instincts of mating that romance points out are seen as 'immature' and 'unrefined' for many. Physical desire is usually seen as an indication of a simple beast instead of a hallmark of one in tune with the nature of whom and what it actually is. Human beings are mammals, and in many situations that animal instinct and urge is much more reliable in choosing a mate than a pros and cons list. The feeling is that romance makes absurd assumptions about this level of attraction and magnetism. That this 'animal' urge cannot be the basis to eventually grow into a deep and abiding love because love is something of a human nature, and not an animal one.

People with pets will tell you how well animals know love. Better sometimes than other human beings. They don't go with logic that their love will be returned. They operate on instinct, sometimes presenting themselves to an owner unsolicited on the street. This is how they love. Why is the idea that human love can be similar so seemingly odd? Or maybe they just have issues with the sex.

To Be Continued