One Valentine's Day, we were married-- after
years of living with and loving each other., years of courting, cuddling, and
slight fightings. We were happy but back at home, when we were talking about
everything, my partner reproached me for loss of new topics to talk about and
overdose of I love yous. We both turned silent; we tried not to sleep in the
same bedroom and instead separated ourselves from another so that we could
contemplate new topics. But I could not sleep. I felt a deja vu in my head. The
loss of topics already happened between us two for a lot of time but I felt
that it also happened already a long time ago.
Then someone slipped a letter to my door.
* * *
Dear Lover,
A long time ago, lovers around the globe
complained in two things:
First, lovers already exhausted all kinds of
topics that they could talk about. One would be irritated how a partner would
repeat the same topic they just discussed a day or hour ago. Of course, this
problem emerged when the lovers were always together or perhaps, a better way
to put it, the trouble came when lovers "badly" miss each other that
they have to meet, text each other, chat each other, and write letters to each
other.
They will talk about sex, their parents, their
jobs, their hobbies, their problems, some news, gossips on friends, their dream
houses, their dream families, their life plans, their childhood, and everything
under the sun and under the stars and under the bed and under the blanket and
under the bedrock of topics. Just simply under everything.
Not that they talk all the time-- because of
course lovers would not just talk but also eat, have sex, but they just simply
cannot think of new topics to talk about. When they already run out of new
topics, the only resort for couples is silence, a dreadful silence, a dreadful
game of saying we run out of topics, a dreadful way of asking a partner whether
or not he or she could formulate a new topic and if not, let us end this
freaking date and call it a day or even better (or worse) let us divorce or
separate. Well, divorce or separation is a fear among couple. The loss of
topics increased the rate of divorce and separation.
In order to address this, the government
established online exchange forums and even seminars, and research conferences
to talk about the said problem. Here, couples gathered and traded new topics
(some for free and some with payment). Contests were also held to devise new
topics and winners were rewarded with great prizes. Intense lessons on history were
done so that couples would talk about past historical events. History lessons
were then followed by other subjects that couples would study to learn so that
they could talk about new topics.
A sociolinguistic economist declared that topic
was a resource already exhausted universally. Also, space administrations all
over the world are sending rockets, satellites, and spacecrafts to discover
cultured humanoid lifeforms to whom they can collect new topics.
Sociolinguistic zoologists were even studying animal language to find out if
they can learn new topics from animal couples. Astrologists and prophets
proclaimed that the scarcity of topics was not just a sociolinguistic
apocalypse but a cosmic symptom of the nearing Doomsday. The loss of topics,
they said, were divine punishments for man's greed to name everything when the
world was created.
In connection to this is the second problem.
When lovers ran out of topics, they, as stated earlier, resorted to silence but
of course, lovers would prefer to exchange I love you just to break the silence
between them and lovers would of course use the magic sentence in every
greeting and every goodbye.
Lovers ran out of words and ways to say I love
you. I love you seemed to become a robotic and programmed automatic response
among couples who ran out of topics to talk about and were tired of blurting to
each other the dreadful "next topic please." Oh dear, only if topics
were mugs of beer ready to be ordered in bars.
Couples loved each other so much that when they
fight, they used to say I love you to say sorry and to renew or resume their
love. When they part ways, they substitute I love you to take care, honey I
gonna miss you. When they are apart, I love you means I miss you. When they
meet again, I love you means I missed you, honey.
The world had enough I love yous. The world was
deafened and trashed with many voices and letters with these words and its
variations such as 143 (sometimes affixed to a colon plus asterisk),
abbreviated ILY (sometimes added with SM or SO MUCH or other abbreviated
adverbs, compliments, superlatives, and modifiers), and AlDub You.
And of course, I love you would always have the
robotic and programmed automatic response I love you too and 1432. Cliche
responses to the question, how are you, also brough troubles as they became
robotic, programmed, and automatic. How are you? I am okay. I am fine. They
were vague and lovers would interpret at some times as their partner's way of
saying I am not okay or I am not fine; I am just pretending that I am so I say
the opposite. Lovers would even discover that it is their partner's way of
saying do not talk to me; I am busy; I want to end this conversation; can we
talk later?
Plus, invitations to cinema, roses, teddy
bears, love letters, Cupids, hearts, flash mobs, kneeling to propose, weddings,
surprise weddings, weddings with twist, weddings in unusual venues and costumes
and themes-- all symbolic ways to say I love you-- were exhausted. They all
became cliche.
Couples already tried the sign language and
even attempted creating new sign languages for them. The problem was confusion
among couples especially those couples with two different cultures. One sign
means I love you in a culture but in another, it means fuck off. Some tried to
upgrade the non-verbal way in saying I love you by inventing dances and
learning the Braille. Almost every couple already learned new languages just to
say I love you. But languages were exhausted too.
Mathematicians tried to create formulas and
codes that when solved would mean I love you. The problem was that many couples
hated math or were too busy to solve them and these formulas and codes were
also exhausted. Every partner already knows every formula and code that means I
love you.
One mathematician even attempted to solve the
final digits of pi just to tell his wife that love was like his pi, endless.
Cheesy! Couples competed then to solve the final digits of pi to surpass what
this mathematician did-- the longer the digits were, the greater the love. This
was fun until they realized that this was endlessly tiresome and were becoming
cliche.
Scientists even created pick up lines based on
scientific concepts such as the theory of relativity, radiation, nuclear fusion
and fission, the natural selection, genetics, oxidations, etc. One would hear,
"Oh you increased the rate of my dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine (and
other love-causing hormones)."
To solve the scarcity of topics and death of I
love you concerns, the government strictly imposed that whoever would deliver
cliche topics and cliche ways of saying I love you to his partner would be
executed.
Thousands of couples were executed not only
because they violated the law but because when one's partner was in the death
row, the partner could not help it but to beg for execution too. Many became
single while many also used the law against their partner. They would complain
that their partner talked about a cliche topic or gave them a cliche way of
saying I love you. This is because some partners were not faithful or were just
driven by money to find a partner.
But she and I joined the Alliance of Silence
and Separation (ASS), an underground movement of couples who would not talk to
partner for a long time either through silence or through separation. Mute and
deaf couples took advantage. The group was underground because the government
treated silence and separation as a symbolic way of saying I love you and
because the group grew larger, the government treated silence and separation as
symbolic manners of saying I love you that would later become cliche. The
members were gradually exterminated.
And she and I escaped and hid to invent a
memory-remover. We removed everyone's memory, without a trace that memories
were removed (like in my favorite movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind), so that everyone would forget not only the cliche topics and cliche ways
of saying I love you, but everything that happened. Funny that they were having
deja vu over some things familiar.
So you, dear reader, I am sending this letter
as a wedding gift just in case you and the world would need this. Spread this.
Follow all attempts we had. And before the government impose that law, get the
memory-remover in the attached address I sent.
This worked with your ancestors, your
grandparents, and your parents. Their memories were removed and when they woke
up, they start anew with the same old topics.
Good luck.
Sincerely Yours,
Friend
P.S.
I was running out of ways to end this letter.
* * *
The letter had no name of its sender. I was
thinking of this and thinking of keeping this letter a secret in the
wastebasket. (I was a bit surprised to find another copy of the letter in the
wastebasket.) In fear that my wife would find them, I burned them.
I am blessed already. We are a perfect couple.
She's having Alzheimer's at her age (an unusual yet benign case for she is not
that jumpy like old people are), memories gradually escaping her, while I am a
freak by accident. Every day I wake up without recollection of yesterday's
events. Yeah, just like 50 First Dates.
A friend suggested to me to make a video that
would recall that my wife and I are lovers, and a video of yesterday's recap or
even recaps in greater span of the past and not just yesterday. And so I do
them-- with packs of newspapers for current events update-- every day at 11 pm,
just before 12 am and just before my disease strikes-- the two videos
compressed in 10 minutes. I never cheated or messed up our memories or any
information on yesterdays. I never failed to make videos. I have to stay awake
or find time to create them. Also, no one ever messed up our conditions in some
crazy way like making us believe that yesterday is three weeks ago. At the same
time, we were patient, whenever one forgets or repeat old topics.
(Anyway, the friend who suggested to me to
create videos of recaps, is a bit crazy. I saw
him this afternoon kissing my wife claiming that my wife already forgets
that they are once lovers. Yuck! Earlier, this morning, this friend kissed me
too and said that he used to be in some videos "we" create but he
decided to burn when I met my wife. How confusing! Is he a maniacal gay? I
think he is messing our relationship! Thanks God, he was already out of our
sight. Thanks God I would not remember him tomorrow.)
So who needs new topic if all we have to do is
to express our love to each other and have a chitchat no matter how cliche and
old the topic is? After all, we won't remember them and after all, we all gonna
die someday. Who the hell needs a memory-remover? We were just enjoying each
other, the moment, the remaining time.
We do not need topics. We simply need each
other.
I entered her bedroom, had sex, and after that,
sat beside each other-- our faces smiling then becoming blank then smiling
again then back to blank-- speechless. The unspoken is more than words. Words
and silence may be cliche. We may run out of topics. But we would never need to
"start anew." We simply have to take a rest, take a break of silence,
take a vacation from each other for a while, and when we return, we have new
topics to talk about, new stories to tell, and new memories to make. We would
just keep on moving forward. After all, if one indeed love someone, no matter
how repetitive and cliche one is, he or she would stay.
Expression is never the problem. Staying is.
