When John Donne wrote that line he was trying to convince the sun to quit shining through his window so he could stay in bed with his lover a little longer. That guy was a class act. His love poetry is among the best in the English language, and I hope he's watching this project with amusement from his tomb in St. Paul's Cathedral.
Love may know no season. People do, though, and I need to figure out when to set off on my odyssey. Summer is best for me; I tutor high school students for a living, so July and August contribute butt to my bottom line. But is that the best time to collect love stories? I'm guessing that one of the two kinds of people most likely to sit down with me and talk love are college students, who'll be harder to find in the summer. On the other hand, most colleges have summer programs, don't they? Maybe I'm making this a bigger deal than it is. But then back on the first hand, with half the country on vacation are the roads going to be crowded, making driving a chore?...
You can see I'm in a worried frame of mind. Been thinking a lot about that wild card I mentioned yesterday, the one about finding willing interview subjects. If I build it, will they come? I've been consulting with my friends about it. No one is sure. Fortunately, a good friend -- whose name I'll withhold because she's likely to also be a subject -- has offered to spend a couple days with me before I set out in earnest teaching me how to approach people.
What this drives home is that this journey is not just about compiling love stories or writing a book; it's also about self-discovery. Even if I come back without understanding a lick more about love than I do now, I'll have met a lot of people and learned how to talk to strangers. I'll still be an introvert, but you can't spend ten thousand miles asking people for their love stories and not come out of it feeling closer to the center of the human heart. To return to Donne, I'll be less of an island entire unto myself. And that alone would be enough.
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