Blog: “Almost” In Love

I am sitting at The Roasterie, a Brooklyn Bob in front of me. A soft chair behind me. A folded leg beneath me. And two French tourists next to me. And I don’t know if it is the accents, the fact that they’re foreign, or maybe that they might be kind of cute. But I feel exactly as Joel Barish does in the quote above. It’s not the first time either. Anytime I go anywhere I see the love of my life. Or a love of my life. So much so that it almost takes meaning away from the phrase.

I seem to revel in being a hopeless romantic, pursuing promising prospects up until the moment when they commit to liking me in return and then, all of a sudden, their beauty seems less sharp, their “interesting personality” not quite so exciting. I like being half heart broken, feeling pain for what could be rather than what is.

Enter “Almost Maine”, a play written by John Cariani and set in a cold, fictional Northern Maine town. Nine short vignettes make up a tale of love below the northern lights as couples find or lose each other in various ways. What makes the author unique is that he takes metaphors and forces them into reality. In one story, a woman returns bags of an unknown substance to her boyfriend and proclaims them to be “all the love he has given her.” Later, a man can’t stop falling down as he literally falls in love with his best friend.

I’ll be honest here. I never cry when reading. When Finnie dies in “A Separate Peace”, my eyes remained dry. The end of “The Great Gatsby”? Not a tear. As character after character found themselves hopelessly entrapped by an all too familiar feeling, I caught myself welling up several times.

And now I’m sitting next to strangers, wondering if love can be as instantaneous as Cariani makes it seem. Can feelings arise so suddenly? Absolutely not. I know that. The world knows that. But for some reason reading it on a page makes it seem possible, plausible, preferable.