Romantic Fancy

Eschewing all things Superbowl, I'm taking the exact opposite route and choosing instead to dwell today on Romance.

I can't help it. Even without going to Target, I'm still managing to surround myself with all things pink, red, hearts, lace, polka dots, Victorian blossoms, teacups, doilies, rosettes, gauze, ruffle, bloom.

I'm gazing upon old photos of love:

baby addie and me:

darin and me in '03:

and our yard when it blossoms:

and totally coveting handmade vintage Valentine goodies like this:

and this:

i'm even writing in this journal:

Jane Campion's Bright Star is the perfect film to watch when you're in the mood for romance.

The real kind, the poetic soul-deep kind. (Not the Jennifer Anniston kind)

Especially if you already are a complete fool for the Romantics, and by that I mean the British Romantics starting with Wordsworth and Coleridge and passing their flame on to Shelley and Byron and Keats. John Keats was the one who believed that good poetry should "fill every rift with ore," creating images upon images so rich and voluptuous they rise out of the page with full shape and exquisite sensual detail; as Coleridge had written of the poet's experience: "the images rise up before him as things." When I read Keats' "On the Eve of St. Agnes," that is exactly what happens, or "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," or "Ode to the Nightingale," I am in the heady brush; I am with the ghostly maiden; I am closed in velvet curtains.

It was imagination, the pure bliss found in fancy, tapping into a sort of universal creative spirit, that lifted these poets into new worlds.

That, to me, is Romance.

Not commericalized goodies, but still...I love Valentine's Day because there are parties and pretty panties and Sweetheart candies and everyday I can wear ruffles and lace and red polka dots!