This oddly sentimental habit of coalescing your feelings for each other into a symbolic, inanimate object left publicly amongst a host of similar... is illustrative of our (rather endearing) desire to embrace the grand idea of love as something beyond merely the personal, situational or chemical.
It is that wonderfully innocent idea of some ethereal other that, when and if we are fortunate enough, passes through our lives and through the agency of that special someone, engenders us with the electric force of beauty and meaning beyond that which we are capable of knowing ourselves.
A star-struck two, suddenly able to see and experience the world in more vibrant colour, with richer joys, shared understandings and a more total humanity than we were ever capable of before.
Its a beautiful notion.
And as anyone who knows me would be aware, one that I am (despite myself) constantly susceptible to.
My current pondering is not necessarily specific to myself, more to my surprise at just how seemingly pervasive is our need to embrace this beautifully intoxicating notion of 'le grand amour'.
Paris is, as the well known cliche goes, the geographical embodiment of all our historic, romantic notions of love.
Historically, it has become inextricably entwined with the idea of its romanticism.
It is as though so many loves have formed here, passed through here, grown here, broken here... that the historical imprint of the weight of all of this has been left upon the cobbled streets, along the river banks, in the balcony windows and on the summer lawns of its parks.
There are uncountable words of prose and poetry written about it, and after all this it doesnt surprise me that its reputation remains.
What surprises me, perhaps, is our continued willingness in a contemporary world of consumption, and cold 'rational' material individualism, to embrace such a grandly naive (if beautifully warm) and undefinably uncontrolable idea.
It is evident even in the desire of people to come to Paris at all, knowing its reputation is steeped in long dead historic cliche, as a catalyst for their own desires to find and embrace that life-changing notion of the grand love.
It is evident in the innocently kitch idea of the locks, attached in the hundreds of thousands, to the bridges of Paris, inscribed with the names of people so wonderfully childish in their embrace of the idea that their feelings for each other can somehow transcend themselves and last forever.
As I wander the streets and parks and river of Paris, I see people living every moment in a desire... a hope... that they can find and embrace that great love that will change everything for them and their chosen one.
Perhaps it is all just a silly, naive cliche born out of tired romanticism that has been so overused as to have been stripped of all but its most riddiculously childish notions of a love that cannot ever really exist.
But even if it is, I love it.
I love the wonderfull innocence it represents.
I love the simplicity of it.
I love the blind, unquenchable hope of it.
I love the way that it goes against every cheap, commercial, material, cynical, cold, individual, selfish current of a contemporary culture rapidly stripping us of the simple joys in our lives.
I love its hope, beauty, and its basis on sharing something rather than taking it for yourself.
If for nothing else... I thank summer in Paris for reminding me of it... silly romantic that I am.
And, with the usual inability to find my own words to adequately express all, I shall leave my final words on the matter to Tom Robbins...
“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”
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