Love. Or something like it.

A Disney princess and her prince charming, dancing under glowing orbs.

I went to a wedding in Seattle a few weeks back (yeah, been wanting to write about it for a while but have been slacking...). I fell in love with Seattle, and I think that it was because of the beautiful weather, or maybe the beautiful wedding. No, wait, it was the ferryboats. Definitely the ferryboats. Now, i am not a fan of weddings. I've never wanted one myself, always thinking that I would elope instead. Weddings bore me and people seem so stressed out, and unhappy even. But, my friends Lindsay and Evan really seem to love each other-- I mean they do love each other. And you can tell and that made me happy. Maybe I just love the two of them myself, and that's why the wedding was so good.

I am working on a little audio doc about love (as many of my friends know, since i am constantly pulling out my digital recorder to stick into the face of some poor, unsuspecting person, such as Carl, whose bachelor party we inadvertently joined when his friends meandered over to our campfire). I love asking people about love, especially those people who really seem to have found it because they love talking about it. You know those friends-- they can't wait to share their advice and insights and how-we-met-and-knew stories. Before I've just rolled my eyes, but now I feel like a scientist, gathering specimens to examine closely while I listen to their pontifications on love over and over again, taking note of the breathes they take and pauses as they come up with just the right words to describe how it is they feel for their lover, looking for the right metaphor. I study their words and tones, wondering what to keep for the final project and struggling with things to cut, since it all seems to be part of the answer to the mystery of how this thing called love works-- why we fall in love and how it continues to grow and grow.

And like a scientist, I have my personal reasons for wanting to discover the right formula, since the one I have been sampling this whole time seems to have an ingredient or two missing. Love, that I have found, but the agent that makes it lasting and right somehow has eluded my experimentation. I examine these audio specimen with the hope that some puzzle may be solved, the missing pieces fall into place, the formula developed and patented, and that I can bottle it and drink it and say, ah yes, this is love.