Lovers vs./for the World

"But what could be less perverse, more militantly normal, than the idea of 'the intimate couple against the world' that John invokes? As Zizek rightly points out, drawing upon Duras, the only positive model for the couple is not two people looking into one another's eyes, but both looking outwards to a Cause to which they have both pledged alliegance." -kp

"i liked it best how
we took the whole world on
back to back
long knives drawn"
-rainer maria (the band, not the rilke)

In a typically drunken Saturday move, your truly meets a girl, gives her his number, then feels bad for the other guy courting her, as well as her left-out roommate, and so ends up failing to seal the deal with a good-night kiss. That, in microcosm, tells the entire story of my antipathy towards romantic relationships (RRs), which in previous posts I've all but labeled as a minor forms of terrorism. The worst examplars of the RR are those couples (i.e. my roommate and his gf) who can't keep their hands off each other in public, to the point of excluding the entire world around them in their selfish bliss-lock bubble of "fuck you, World". Could anything else be more narcissistic and postmodernisticly QUIETIST than the couple who have decided that all that matters is their relationship to each other, the only Truth they will ever believe in?

The Rainer Maria song quoted above ("Long Knives Drawn", from the LP of same) is the perfect articulation of the RR stance. Compare that to the Zizek quote above. His is not an absolutisizing rejection of RR (as this author might advocate in his weaker, terrified-to-deal-with-the-drama-of-another-relationship moments), but a plea to turn it OUTWARD, to turn this intense couplehood towards a Cause/Purpose/Truth/Good/Beauty greater than itself. (Ironically, the Rainer Maria song was actually recorded after the couple fronting the band -- guitarist Kyle Fischer and bassist Caithlin Demarrais -- broke up, which completely redefines the "rah rah, love love" vibe of their previous work.)

The most endearing couples to me are those elderly, life-long activist/artist couples who supported each other in the pursuit of greatness, whose love of each other was but a by-product of their absolute love for the world (though not, i should point out, a love for the worldly per say). Perhaps even in my drunken state last night, I felt a slight glimmer in this in my desire to include the room in our dancing and revelry.

Or I'm just a pussy.