"Do you think you weren't loved enough?"
She tilted her head and looked at me. Then she gave a sharp, little nod.
"Somewhere between "not enough' and "not at all'. I was always
hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get
my fill of it - to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just
once. But they never gave that to me. Never, not once. If I tried to
cuddle up and beg for something, they'd just shove me away and yell
at me. "No! That costs too much!' It's all I ever heard. So I made up
my mind I was going to find someone who would love me uncon-
ditionally 365 days a year. I was still in primary school at the time, but
I made up my mind once and for all."
"Wow," I said. "And did your search pay off?"
"That's the hard part," said Midori. She watched the rising smoke for a
while, thinking. "I guess I've been waiting so long I'm looking for
perfection. That makes it tough."
"Waiting for the perfect love?"
"No, even I know better than that. I'm looking for selfishness. Perfect
selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortbread.
And you stop everything you're doing and run out and buy it for me.
And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and
hold this strawberry shortbread out to me. And I say I don't want it
any more and throw it out of the window. That's what I'm looking
for."
"I'm not sure that has anything to do with love," I said with some
amazement.
"It does," she said. "You just don't know it. There are times in a girl's
life when things like that are incredibly important."
"Things like throwing strawberry shortbread out of the window?"
"Exactly. And when I do it, I want the man to apologize to me. "Now I
see, Midori. What a fool I've been! I should have known that you
would lose your desire for strawberry shortbread. I have all the
intelligence and sensitivity of a piece of donkey shit. To make it up to
you, I'll go out and buy you something else. What would you like?
Chocolate mousse? Cheesecake?"'
"So then what?"
"So then I'd give him all the love he deserves for what he's done."
"Sounds crazy to me."
"Well, to me, that's what love is. Not that anyone can understand me,
though." Midori gave her head a little shake against my shoulder. "For
a certain kind of person, love begins from something tiny or silly.
From something like that or it doesn't begin at all."
...............................................................................
tell me, what is love?
Stepping on the rainy street
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
norwegian wood
Posted by littleSpring at 9:06 PM
Labels: reading is inspiring