Whereas the wind blows through her hair precisely as it does through the branches of the fields, it buffets me as an advertising banner in a parking lot: my clothes pull and then slacken across my back, I lean awkwardly into it and squint, I face down and shuffle, I look for cover.
Among the many ways in which I remain a naively adolescent boy is this: I view women as effortlessly woven into the natural world, while I stand apart from it awkwardly. It can feel to me as though women are birds in flight, while I am like a turtle in a plastic aquarium or a deprecated robot in a midwestern university lab.
This lyrical impression of women can be critiqued in any number of ways, and above all in that it is not true. But very little that is lyrical has statistical accuracy and nothing is duller than the politicization of poetics. Ever ill-at-ease in the world, ashamed of the contrivance of my personality, disgusted by my graceless body, I am happy enough to believe in the possibility that half of humanity is not so afflicted.
My believing it is assisted by the fact that I know nothing at all about women, like many men. If this ignorance grates, I apologize, but romanticization is largely an act of deliberate incomprehension. Even if I could understand, I’m not sure how useful that would be. To be irresponsibly in love, one must be partly blind, and sometimes I wish I would put my eyes out.
