Wrecking the Magic

Perhaps the most glamorous couple I have seen during the day was on a vaporetto (motorized bus-boat) in Venice. She was a young Italian beauty whose graceful long neck reminded me of a young Audrey Hepburn. Her dress was exquisite, perfect for a fancy holiday. Her partner was tall, dark, and ridiculously handsome, and he wore a beautiful Italian suit, his jacket draped casually over his shoulders.

It was late Friday afternoon, sunny, and the temperature was exquisite. The vaporetto was leaving from the train station, and from her excited look I assumed they were there for a weekend vacation. The setting was extraordinary, and every once in a while she would stretch up and kiss him on the neck or cheek. The only flaw in this romantic image was that he was talking business on his cell phone the whole ride.

He was not there in the moment. My wife observed, "He's wrecking this for her. He doesn't deserve her." Cell phones are marvelous, but I wonder how many potentially romantic moments they ruin.

In John Fowles novel Daniel Martin one chapter takes place at an amazing mesa in New Mexico named Tsankawi. When you hike to the mesa top there, you walk on the same trails the Anasazi (Ancient Ones) used centuries ago. The trails are worn into soft volcanic tuff, and in places the trails are worn so deep that you have no choice but to place your feet exactly where they did. I’ve hiked those trails, and doing so created an extraordinary feeling. The surrounding views are magnificent.

When you reach the mesa top, not much remains of the Anasazi village. But you can find shards of their pottery lying on the ground (it’s a Federal crime to remove them). In the novel Daniel takes his girlfriend Jenny there because he wants to share what to him is a magical place. When they reach the mesa top, she is fascinated by the shards, and begins to collect them to make necklaces as presents for her friends. Not only does she miss the magical aura he feels, but she is desecrating it. She says the shards she’s collecting will never be missed. After that Daniel stops seeing her, and she, knowing the reason, tells him that it wasn’t fair for him to take her there as a test.

Was it a fair test or not? Not everyone will share all our personal enthusiasms. If we take someone we care about to a place we find magical, is it a fair test to take their indifference to that enchantment as a sign--an indication that they are not as much our hoped-for soul mate as we had imagined them to be?

[Vaporetta photo courtesy of Flickr user Nick Bramhall, Tsankawi photo courtesy of Flickr user KinnicChick, both under Creative Commons licenses.]