Of love and other distorted wonders
There is a song by Spanish group Amaral , whose lyrics go something like 'without you, I am nothing / a drop of water wetting my face / my world is small and my heart is shards of ice'. I liked the music, thus I didn't pay much attention to the lyrics until Maite , a friend, called this a song by 'Amar mal' (to love badly, unwisely). It has been years since that quip, yet it still keeps me alert to my own conditioning. I am hardly the first person, let alone the most qualified, to point out how very unhealthy most 'romantic love stories' and 'romantic gestures' truly are. And no, I do not blame cinema or pulp fiction, since they are simply providing that which the consumer will buy. Love is another one of those marvelous elements of life, like food, dance, parenthood, even alcohol or adrenaline (to name but a few) that make us, humans, reach the highest peaks of joy and excitement for our mere existence. Love, like all of the others, has been basta...