together – as did I. And so we were for the month-and-a-half from January to Valentine’s Day. She looked once again at her prize – a DVD of Sleepless in Seattle. “Thank you!” I only shrugged, despite wanting to be able to do so much more; but the crowd held me in check. “You’re welcome.” All-in-all, I considered my first venture into the holiday of love a great success. I had made my first true love happy. Exactly one week later, as I was helping her proofread an English paper, she informed me that it was God’s will she date someone else – a rival I was only dimly aware I had. He was a basketball player and extremely popular on campus, a sharp contrast to me, a decidedly un-athletic English major. They had both prayed about it, she said, and both agreed that God wanted them to serve and worship Him by entering into a relationship with each other. I was stunned and confused; but, not wanting to appear blasphemous, I did nothing to stop her as she left me, essay in hand, to go meet her love in the cold under the pale February sun. It had taken three pages, a lot of effort, and more time than I had anticipated, but I had finally finished my essay about love. I looked at my computer screen and smiled wryly. Three pages to say I didn’t know a thing ; big accomplishment. My blog was mostly miniature essays and rants such as the one I had just completed. Since I had previously written everything from movie reviews to an attempted definition of beauty, I supposed that love wasn’t that far out of line for me. My attempt at defining the one universal emotional constant included dictionary definitions, clichés, and sarcastic wit – the last of which is my specialty. My essay was liberally sprinkled with such phrases as “Love binds the universe together. Sentimental drivel, or cold hard fact?” and “The human race has an annoying predisposition to deception.” I read my own essay to myself once again. Not bad, I thought, although I suppose I could’ve changed a few things around for organizational purposes. Leave it to me to try to impose order and organization on something as nebulous and illogical as love. Despite my misgivings, I received quite a bit of positive feedback concerning the blog entry. I was praised for being “profound” and for “describing the indescribable.” It’s possible that the kudos were for my delineation of what I had termed “classic physiological symptoms” or my discussion of how love is uniquely human, even in language (after all, every living creature has “animal desire,” but only humans “make love”). At first the comments pleased me, making me feel appreciated in at least a cerebral sort of way, but then they made me question myself. If I was so good at writing about this stuff, and I knew exactly what I was talking about, why couldn’t I actually use this knowledge and get a date? Peters, “Love (Noun)”
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