I am reading “Les Fleurs du Mal”.
Beautiful poetry. I am surprised to find that Baudelaire and I have a lot in common.
Case in point:
He writes, in a ‘Sad Madrigal’,
‘What do I care if you are wise?
Be beautiful, and sad.’

Wow.

I have a theory.
As a people, we enjoy destruction. We like to watch it. To share vicariously in the grandeur of decay, and of loss.
The destruction of something beautiful is inherently beautiful.
That is why so many people visit waterfalls.

A waterfall is just that. Water falling.
But its allure is not in that.
It is that something is falling. We are mesmerized by the simple fact that the water is symbolically dying, flying off a cliff and crashing to the ground below.
That is it.
It dies, but what a magnificent death it is, with what magnificent disregard for life, for prudence. Clad in its funereal splendor of trapped rainbows, it goes blithely to its dissolution.
That is what we enjoy.
It brings home to us the wildness that we will never give in to, the urge we sometimes have to leap into an abyss, for no reason at all.

There is great self love in that, of a different kind.

The reason I am writing all this is a phone conversation with a smitten friend. He tells me that he has found the girl of his dreams.
He has always been inclined to melodrama.
He tells me all about her, all of her (many) virtues. She seems very nice.
She seems perfect, actually.

Now this may sound masochistic, but I would hate that.
Because I would like to love someone just a little bit self destructive
Because I would rather love a waterfall than own a stream.