s.j. In Focus

I wasn’t in the
mood writing, so I made this mangaka style, and like a manga it is read right
to left.

Arigato!

It was a late
afternoon in autumn. Long angled sunrays turned the sky into a twisted glow of mauve
and copper, the sun itself was little energy. The open sea was calm and tiny
boats where moving slowly along the horizon. Everything looked peaceful and
small up here. Under the sheltering roof, watching the drizzling of the sky
that silently painted a rainbow above the city.

A
rainbow. . . a fucking rainbow, I was thinking.

This
is great. A perfect now-or-Neverneverland moment. What am I going to do? Almighty
from above, just tell me what you want! What?!

Not
daring to look at her, I kept my head positioned to the rainbow and tried instead
to concentrate on the song that began to play in my head, a Bossa Nova song
sung by Astrud Gilberto. I adore her voice with the Latin accent. Starring at the fucking rainbow I could only
remember the first line:

‘Never trust the stars

When you’re about to fall in love…’

Think!,
I told myself. Just focus on that rainbow, after all you haven’t seen one for
ages. Isn’t it beautiful?! And so many
colors, one… two… three… fou…

“Love
is just all in the brain.” she interrupted my cerebral counting, “It’s just
chemicals, dopamine, Biochemistry, whatever.”

I
smiled, also because she broke this awkward silence, and replied with my head
unturned.

“Well,”
I paused. “love is more than scientists
can ever explain. Some things are meant
to be mysteries, like believe or miracles. If we had scientific explanations
for them, it will take away their essence.”

“No,
no, no. Look, it’s just chemical reactions!”

I
smiled.

I
guess I belong to those people who believe that love will always be more then
the sum of its natural parts, but of course she was right. For a long time scientists weren’t interested
exploring a phenomenon that has been around since Mankind itself. Science is cold and hard. Love is mushy and touchy feely. Science is
based on facts. Love is vague and fuzzy. If gravitation, according to Einstein, cannot be held responsible for
people falling in love, what then is this thing bound to that makes our world
go spinnin’?

Cupid’s
arrows wouldn’t be effective if they weren’t dipped first into a cocktail of chemicals
with an ingredient called phenylethylamine (PEA), which triggers the other substances. PEA is responsible
for that silly smile on your face when you see your crush. When we see someone who is attractive to us,
the PEA factory is in full steam. PEA
can also be found in strawberries and chocolate. But wait! Before you start
chewing that Snickers bar, you should know that the body naturally builds up
tolerance to PEA and therefore takes more and more to produce that special love
kick, the reason why from the earliest days our human mating pattern has been
“monogamy with clandestine adultery”. Some end up craving the intoxication of falling in love so much that
they move to one affair to another as soon as the first rush of infatuation
fades. (You may continue eating that
chocolate bar now)

If you’re lucky to survive the phase of
infatuation and its floods of fizzy amphetamines, another set of chemicals takes over,
namely endorphins. These are soothing substances that give lovers a
sense of security, peace and calm. That is one reason why it feels so
horrible when we’re abandoned or a lover dies. "We don’t have our daily
hit of narcotics."

Now
you can see a contrast between the heated infatuation induced by PEA, along
with other amphetamine-like
chemicals, and the more intimate attachment fostered and prolonged by endorphins.

Early
love is when you love the way the other person makes you feel. Mature love is when you love the person as
how she or he is. It is the difference of passionate and compassionate
love. It’s Bon Jovi vs. Beethoven.

Oxytocin is another chemical also called
the cuddling chemical, that sets in during the attachment stage as well. It increases the bonding between lovers, and
is also released during childbirth and production of breast milk. 

Another
chemical is Vasopressin, the monogamy
chemical, which is responsible for creating strong partnership bonds. Only
about three percent of mammals are monogamous; mating and bonding with one
partner for life. Unfortunately, as already mentioned, humans are not one of
these naturally monogamous animals.

So if I know that Love is just some cerebral
chemical reaction, can I choose with whom I fall in love with? Or in other
words, can I consciously fall in love? Well, it’s not that easy. You see,
nature has wired us for one special person. We draw an image of our ideal partner based on persons and experiences from
our childhood. A record of whatever we
find exciting or disgusting. Brown eyes
or long hair. The way our fathers
treated us and how we were taken care of by our mothers. All that
information gathered while growing up is imprinted in our brain’s circuitry by
adolescence.

Of
course no person will ever meet all the requirements, but it takes only a
sufficient number of matches for our brains to signal “jackpot!”

In
addition nature seeks the best compatible genes as these genes will be passed
on to our children and ensure that they are healthy, which is a complex
process.

And
how do we do this? We sniff out Mr. or Mrs. Right through Pheromones. They are smellprints which are as unique as
fingerprints. It is a force which overpowers reason and dictates where cupid’s
arrow will land. That’s how powerful Pheromones
are. 

Now there you
have a scientific explanation of love. Love broken down in less than 1000
words. Satisfied? Probably not. Love will still remain a mixture of reality and
Nonrealidad. Poetry and phenylethylamine. Facts and fuzziness.

The last sunrays became longer and as the
rainbow slowly faded I said,

“See that rainbow, we both know it has
something to do with the sunlight shinning onto droplets of moisture in the
Earth’s atmosphere, but we end up with technicalities that we don’t see the
rainbow at all. Before you know it… it’s gone. Sometimes explanations don’t
matter.”

We were both silent again.

“Yeah, whatever.”

I
nodded amused and glanced at her while she was still watching the rainbow
slowly disappear into the young soil
of the evening.