Now I'm awake, have been for a bit or awhile. Reading my book and brooding. I haven't been sleeping terribly well for the past week, owing to that fucking flu (and if you get it, you'll know just what I'm talking about -- it's not the worst flu I've had, but it just sticks with you and nags and nags and nags and nags). Anyway, it makes it hard to focus and get one's feet under you. I think I'm a day or two away from fully rebounding from it, and hopefully I'll be back to being able to sleep properly again.
(break to get a glass of icewater)
There, I'm back. This week, I plan to query some of my books to other agents, sling out a bunch, just shotgun it, see if I can garner any interest. We'll see.
I'm thinking of adapting some more of my short stories into screenplays. I tend to write fairly cinematically, and while, as ever, the screenplay format daunts me, I'd still like to turn a few of the pieces into them -- especially a few of them that would play very well onscreen. Of course, this is even more of a longshot than anything else, but I have the material, so it's just a matter of adapting it and finding homes for it.
Was thinking about unrequited love today, as perhaps part of my monthly musing about Love(tm). Given that, according to a study, 98% of people experience unrequited love in their lives, that might be a worthy aspect of love to go into, although what a dismal graveyard that place is, yes?
It does, however, introduce a word most people don't likely know (at least by name): limerence -- an intense feeling of attachment toward someone (or, I suppose, something). Limerence can be felt as extreme joy or intense despair, depending on whether it is reciprocated or not. Wikipedia nicely sums it up...
Limerence is characterized by intrusive thinking and pronounced sensitivity to external events that reflect the disposition of the limerent object towards the individual. Basically, it is the state of being completely carried away by unreasoned passion or love, even to the point of addictive-type behavior. Usually, one is inspired with an intense passion or admiration for someone. Limerence can be difficult to understand for those who have never experienced it, and it is thus often dismissed by nonlimerents as ridiculous fantasy or a construct of romantic fiction.
What does a soul do in such a situation? Love stories have two limerent souls finding one another, of course, and that gives one the happy ending, the Hollywood Ending -- but an unrequited love is ultimately a tragedy, and can, alternately, be a horror story (one of my favorite horror movies, "May," has an absolutely cringe-inducing plot in it where the title character, the painfully shy and fucking weird May, falls for Adam, this coolio mechanic in her neighborhood, and May tries hard to make it work with her and Adam, only to have it go terribly wrong -- that part of the story is almost more horrific and squirm-inducing than the rest of the movie, which is actually darkly funny throughout -- good little horror movie, if you like horror movies).
Related to the "levels of love" I was nattering on about earlier is precisely that -- what do you do if you love someone more than they love you? That seems like a recipe for emotional disaster. Of course, SEINFELD parodied it comically with George Costanza obsessing about a woman who clearly didn't like him, was actually repulsed by him -- he said something like "She just hates me so much, it's irresistible." Which, of course, is just the situation George would find himself in. It's funny because it's painful, because George is such a twisted, fucked-up guy, of course, he'd dig that.
Anyway, as a Romantic, I don't like to think about unrequited love, obviously -- true love should win, true love deserves to win, so when it doesn't, or isn't shared, or whether someone's deluded and thinks they knew true love only to find it turning to ashes in their mouth, it's painful to think about. But it exists, for sure, and is definitely a part of the equation, even if it's the dark side of the coin flip. And it's surely part and parcel of the notion of the "Hopeless Romantic" -- and, so, I suppose I should dwell on it a bit. Consider this just a preview; gotta brood on it awhile. Well, it's tomorrow, now, so I guess I'll go to sleep!
