Romeo and Juliet – hidden pilcrow

Funny thing

Published on 02/08/2023 by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

It is easy to be in love in a poem because the object of your affection does not snore
or have bad breath, or for that matter, any of the myriad little things that annoy the hell
out of you. It is easy to be in love in real life too, because even if it happens that Romeo
or Juliet of yours farts at the table during a romantic date, the hormonal cocktail flooding
your brain will make you see nothing but that cute blush of embarrassment. But the same
blush twenty years later, if it happens at all, will test your patience one too many times.
Funny thing—love—a tipsy bookkeeper on leave.

a woman on a rock among the stormy waves raises her hands to a whale jumping out of the sea

Love actually

Published on 31/07/2023 by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

For love, we do crazy things. For love, we change the world—or at least try to.
All that for something we cannot even clearly define, despite millennia of effort
and a plethora of adjectives added to it. The brutal truth is that Romeo and Juliet
were nothing more than oxytocin junkies (to be accurate, it is a whole cocktail
of chemicals, but you get the picture). So excuse me, but if you asked for my take
on the subject, I would say, love is the white whale in an ocean of chemically
induced despair. And yet, for one more shot at it, I will give up anything,
or something like that.