you read all kinds of books and see all kinds of movies about the man who is obsessed and devoted, whose focus is a single solid beam, same as the lighthouse and that intense, too. it is heathcliff with catherine. it is a vampire with a passionate love stronger than death. we crave that kind of focus from someone else. we’d give anything to be that “loved.” but that focus is not some soul-deep pinnacle of perfect devotion - it’s only darkness and the tormented ghosts of darkness. it’s strange, isn’t it, to see a person’s gaping emotional wounds, their gnawing needs, as our romance? we long for it, i don’t know why, but when we have it, it is a knife at our throat on the banks of greenlake