love is a lone, felled tree

if a tree falls in the forest, with no one to hear it, does it still make a sound? (read on to find out.)

last night, i was out with a couple friends and listened as they talked of love. okay, i was out with no one, but sat nearby a couple and eavesdropped as they rhapsodized about love. they were a young couple, i am pretty certain (given their ignorance on the chosen topic of conversation, i can't believe otherwise), though they looked quite old, as in their 70s (i attribute this old-look to a climate of lots of sun, wind, stress--perhaps antarctica). here is what gol (girl/old lady) and bom (boy/old man) had to say:

gol: love makes the world go round.
bom: love, exciting and new!
gol: love, life's sweetest reward.
bom: love is glorious, because it is ephemeral! love doesn't last--and that's why it's beautiful, of course!
gol: yes, it is fleeting--real and true love is FLEETING!
bom: and unrequited love--well, that's the best love of all! it lasts FOREVER!
gol: i say, i'm in complete agreement--unrequited love is eternal!
bom: it seems we're true romantics, gol!
(they kiss.)

hey, dumdums, which is it: FLEETING or FOREVER? yes, that inane chatter necessitated a third martini. today, i am not so much hungover than disgusted by the thought of gol and bom freely roaming about town, possibly corrupting hapless young minds. they ought to be locked up, i say. it's not just their specious/contradictory argument about love that makes the young/old couple so stupid, it too is the way they worship love--i mean, love--as if it were an ultimate acquisition in and of itself. i say, this is frivolous, myopic, solipsistic (ironically!); fundamentally, it's fucked up. it seems antarcticans are quite stupid.

toni morrison said that the function of freedom is to free someone else. i feel similarly about love: the function of love is to free someone else to love. the important thing here is that love have a FUNCTION. without function, a thing is pointless, useless, vain, and (in my highly regarded opinion) has no place to claim in this world. i think the phrase 'intrinsic value' is a contradiction in terms. what a shame, i say, what a waste. to love love or to love to be loved in return, what a small circle--nay, speck!--it is. if it doesn't expand--if it doesn't have further consequence than that, i say it's not love at all. (well, i always say that--but all this love talk is hypothetical, no?) so, love, unless it infects a life in such a way as inspiring poetry or music, saving orphans in malawi, or at least inviting the lone, drunk woman next to you to a menage a trois, it is like the falling tree in the forest: no one hears, no one's the wiser, and, really, who gives a shit?