As the saying goes, ‘love ain’t no walk in the park’. If it was, it’d be Jurassic Park. Anyway. Love takes many forms – self love, the love you might feel for a family or community, love for what you do, love of nature. Romantic love, however, is unique in its ability to deliver both beauty and horror, pleasure and pain, purity and immorality.
So naturally, with Valentines Day just around the corner (sorry to be predictable!), this week’s instalment delivers five very different stories about love.
Let’s dive in.
The WWII Pilot Who Built a Plane and Risked Death for Love
Dan Dalton for Buzzfeed – 2016
“Out on the runway, the biplane touches down without complaint. Lieutenant Ronald W. Spriggs climbs from the cockpit and finds his stomach filled with butterflies. Flying was the easy part, but he only has a short few hours with the woman he loves before it’s time to go, and he wants to savour every one.”
Secrets and Wives
Matthew Pearl and Greg Nichols for Truly Adventurous
“Sherry’s friends worried she was falling too hard too fast. Raised Mormon in a small town in rural Washington, the single mom was trusting to the point of naive — at 31, still green to the ways of the world. But even the most guarded in her circle had to admit there was something appealing about Martin.”
Rapture of the Deep
Gary Smith for Sports Illustrated – 2003
The tragic love story of Audrey Mestre and Pipín Ferreras is especially poignant. “Carried away by love – for risk and for each other – two of the world’s best freedivers went to the limits of their sport. Only one came back.”
The Pursuit of Loneliness
Hayley Campbell for The Guardian – 2017
Not everyone needs a relationship to feel complete. Some actively seek out solitude to find contentment, and that’s very much OK. Hayley Campbell beautifully articulates this need in her very personal piece, ‘How I Chose a Life of Solitude.’
Cat Person
Kristen Roupenian for The New Yorker – 2017
This isn’t about love – more about sex – but I had to include it for its pure visceral quality. While it’s a fictional tale, very few pieces of first-person narrative are capable of evoking the level of stomach-churning disgust, emotional uneasiness and sheer, unadulterated ‘cringe’ as the author expertly delivers here.
Bonus Long Read:
Food and Break Ups
Claire Finney for Foodism – 2020
Break-ups can trigger an entirely new relationship: the way we interact with food. Claire Finney explores the different roles that eating can play in the wake of heartbreak, derived from her own personal experiences.
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