The problem with reading a book like Wuthering Heights or watching any kind of classic, passionate movie is that it completely alters your romantic perspective. Whereas you would have once been content with any sane warm body that gives you a present on Valentine's Day, you now require not only someone startlingly handsome, but also intensely amorous that would create scenes at dreary, misty airports, always have Paris, kiss you in the rain complete with a swelling soundtrack, write you a song so that whatever happens you'll be reminded of your love, save you in the icy waters of the Atlantic, carry you into a cave in the African desert, and insist upon standing in your garden to catch a glimpse of you at your window, wailing your name.

You now need a Civil War hero, a World War Two freedom fighter, a penniless poet, and someone who doesn't mind having Breakfast at Tiffany's.

The Wuthering Heights DVD is sitting guiltily by my TV set, itching to be put in, and I know that I desperately need to return it to Blockbuster so that I can pick up season 1 of The X Files (a desire spawned by a recent X files rerun I was captivated by) and forget completely about this English moor nonsense, and riding on horseback, and lingering among stormy skies with Heathcliffe...

No, I mustn't think about it. I musn't. I was satisfied with my summer thus far until two nights ago, and I need to forget about my bleak, barren romantic future. The problem is, as I suppose the same Cathy faced, there aren't many decent dateable guys around. Most are rapper/posers, others are boring, still others are too short, too tall, too... I don't know. I don't want to go out with anyone just to have something to do. I've had my chances, believe me, and the only person I've ever really had a connection with was Ryan...

I know I'm babbling nonsense, and I know (now) that there's no chance of that reality to come to pass, and I don't suppose I want it to anymore. Ryan was, and will be, for a time at least, the horrible "What if" lurking in my past. I think sometimes of what might have happened if either of us had been brave enough to explore what I thought we felt a year and a half ago, or even this past spring at the sushi retaurant. I wonder if he asked me today if I would say yes, or if there would be enough passion there to have something more than a silly, enjoyable time.

I suppose that that's the only thing I can do - wonder - and I know it's rediculous, and I'm glad that any kind of feeling I've had for him has dimmed. I've always felt that I am destined (such a silly word!) for some kind of grand, epic romance. How stupid it seems, put down in words. I guess all hopeless romantics do and I guess we can't help it. We're the kind of people that read Shakespeare and sigh, or read Keats and whisper it to ourselves simply because it sounds so lovely. The worst of us dream of knights and kings and honor, of chivalry and stolen, heated glances, dream of smiles under sun and rain and moon.

We're a silly bunch, also cynical at times because a part of us knows that it can't all be real. But we all think that one day it inevitably must happen to us, no matter what our better senses say. And so, in parting, I include a scene from Moulin Rouge -

(Quick synopsis) Satine is a courtesan whose dream is to be an actress in 1899 Paris at the Moulin Rouge. Christian is a naive english poet with Bohemian values, already smitten with Satine.

S : I can't fall in love with anyone.

C : Can't fall in love? But a life without love - that's terrible!

S (cutting in) : No, being on the street, that's terrible.

C : No.

S : What?

C : Love is like oxygen. Love is a many splendid thing, love lifts us up where we belong, all you need is love!