My Collection of Happy Endings

“Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger. The greatest stories are those that resonate our beginnings and intuit our endings, our mysterious origins and our numinous destinies, and dissolve them both into one.”

This is a photograph of my own collection of once upon a times and happy endings, new languages acquired, old ones forgotten, books of distant lands travelled, and the stories that inspire me to search for the kind of love that some say only exists in fiction.

Piccolo Amore: Bows

My little love at the moment is bows. They are the epitome of femininity and somehow always perk up an outfit with just enough girlish flare and innocence. Worn in the right way, it can also convey timeless elegance. Elegance. My favorite word.

The Inconvenient Kind.

Why is it that most people tend to find the person they end up with at the local Starbucks post-doubleshot-grande-caramel macchiato mix-up or while leisurely perusing through the cooking section of a bookstore chain? Having accumulated more than my fair share of air miles, hopping from one continent to the next, I always wonder why there are not more stories of love that spans oceans and time zones. To me, it just seems like the chances of finding “the one” you are meant for within a ten mile radius of where you grew up would be nothing short of obsolete, yet this tends to be the general trend. Perhaps fate favours convenience as I can say first-hand that tending to a love across the lovely pond we call the Atlantic is certainly not for the faint-of-heart, only the brave. Whatever the reason, if fate truly is kind and gives most of us a fellow with the same zip code, I am elated to be the exception to her kindness. I am looking for great love. The kind that people would want to write a book about- a charming prince, an unlikely principessa, exotic locales, and a "dragon" to slay. I dreamed of the inconvenient love and behold, dreams do come true.

If I Were A Boy, In Love With A Girl.

I like to think that if I were ever a boy in love with a girl, I would recite this poem to her. There is nothing comparable to Neruda.

If suddenly you do not exist,
if suddenly you are not living,
I shall go on living.

I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.

I shall go on living.

For where a man has no voice,
there, my voice.

Where blacks are beaten,
I cannot be dead.
When my brothers go to jail
I shall go with them.

When victory,
not my victory,
but the great victory
arrives,
even though I am mute I must speak;
I shall see it come even though I am blind.

No, forgive me.
If you are not living,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you
have died,
all the leaves will fall in my breast,
it will rain upon my soul night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with cold and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to walk to where you sleep,
but
I shall go on living,
because you wanted me to be,
above all things,
untamable,
and, my love, because you know that I am not just one man
but all men.

- Pablo Neruda