On-line Romance Course

There is an answer people - what you need to cultivate is Romance. The following pages are a self-guided course in how to become a Hopeless Romantic. Follow the directions - don't cheat or jump ahead - and the rewards that flow from Love freely and eloquently expressed can be yours!

Requirements to successfully complete the course:

1. You need a journal. Nothing fancy is required, you can pick a wire-spiral bound college notebook, or an "empty" book as sold in book stores. You will use this book to write your observations and lessons in.
2. You need time. You need ten uninterrupted minutes each day. This needs to be a time after the kids are asleep - but before you are too tired to function.
3. You need a sense of whimsy. This is not a course in how to fold napkins - your heart and soul and your "younger self" are required to attend.

We are overloaded each day with sensory input. If you didn't have the ability to eliminate 95% of the input you receive from your five senses, you would either be dead or insane. You need to be able to concentrate on the road when you drive - but, all the while, signs in neon and plastic cry out to be noticed and admired. You have to be able to block background noise out - or you'd never finish a conversation. If you couldn't select which tactile inputs are important - your clothes would drive you crazy by rubbing on your body.

Your first lesson in Romance is to learn to observe. For the next five days, pick one of the five senses and during your exercises concentrate on it alone. Go through the exercises in any order...

Sight - Pick the most interesting window in your home. Go to the window in the morning and look out for 1 minute. Write a list down everything you see. Leave the list alone until the evening. Go back through the list and describe the items you saw, using as many adjectives as you can. What color where they? What texture? Where they moving? Fast or slow? For example, my list for this morning might include a palm tree. In the evening I would flesh out the description by saying I saw a "Tall Palm Tree with a brown, scarred, bent and twisted trunk, and long, flowing, green, filigreed fronds."

Sound - Go outside after dark. Close your eyes. Listen for 5 minutes. Strive to find the layers of sound - first the closest loudest sounds; then the further, quieter sounds; finally search for the furthest, nearly silent sounds. What do you hear from nature? Which sounds come from technology? Can you hear the sounds of human interaction? Go to your journal and list what you've heard.

Taste - Pick your favorite dinner meal. Describe it from memory. Can you pick out individual flavors? Certain spices? What's your favorite beverage? Describe them in terms of taste.

Smell - get a friend to drive you around your neighborhood. Roll the window down, close your eyes and smell. What's out there? How does it make you feel? Does it bring back memories? Scientists say memory is directly link to some smells - that a smell can take us back with greater accuracey to a single moment than any other stimuluas. When you get home, write down what you smelled. Link it to a source. Describe the source.

Touch - go feel a lawn, a beach, a tree and some liquid (water?). How does the touch linger? Are you aware of the wind on your back? Try holding some familiar objects, and let them turn in your hands as you explore them by touch instead of sight. How is your experience changed?

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