A Song of Air and Fire

I was talking about Lover's Lanes with my dad the other night. He understood the part about wanting to travel, but wasn't sure why I wanted to collect love stories. Why do you need a theme?, he asked.

Really there are two answers to that question, but I can sum them both up with one diversion into Tarot. There are four suits in a Tarot deck, two feminine and two masculine. The masculine suits are Rods and Swords. (If you're not sure why these are masculine suits, consider enrolling in a course on Freud.) Rods and Swords embody two different ways of "being a man." Rods are about energy, adventure, even animalism, like the magic wand of a magician; their element is fire, and they show it in their passion and love of novelty. These are the mountain climbers, the bungee jumpers. These are the guys who pick up and drive across the country to collect love stories on a moment's notice.

But I'm not a Rod. I'm a Sword. Swords are about finesse and careful consideration. They approach life with the perfectionism and discipline of a fencer honing his craft. Curiosity, sure -- but in contrast with the exuberant experiential curiosity of a Rod, a Sword's curiosity is intellectual and is about patterns rather than experiences. Swords are the suit of air -- not in the sense of freedom but in the sense of coolness and living on a higher plane than the brute material. Swords think; Rods act.

But Swords are also the suit most prone to make problems for itself. I certainly have. I think too much. It makes me anxious and depressed. I insist too much on everything going according to plan; I have trouble living in the moment. I am a Sword, but I am broken.

The first reason I'm collecting love stories, not just traveling, is that I'm a Sword. I need structure. I need to have a reason for what I'm doing, a purpose guiding my blade (or my Honda). What's more, the act of studying or cataloguing anything, like love, appeals to the Sword in me. It makes me more willing to do something Rodlike, like go on an adventure.

Which is good, because motive number two for collecting love stories -- and the trip as a whole, really -- is to become more comfortable with my Rod side. The future is a terrifying place sometimes. If I could just approach it with the anticipation and glee of a Rod rather than the skepticism and defensiveness of a Sword, maybe I'd have less trouble facing it. And maybe, if nothing else comes of my journey, maybe I'll learn that not knowing what town I'll be in tomorrow night or when I'll find my next willing subject or even whether my voyage will succeed -- in short, the uncertainty of the future -- is cause, not for panic, but for excitement!

Plus I just really want to hear people's love stories. There's that too.