Romance, it's my kind of love.

So I've been reading The Gospel According to Chanel written by Karen Karbo, a little non-fiction book I picked up at Anthropologie (yes, like most Torontonian-shopaholics I like that store). Not knowing what to expect from the beginning except that there were very pretty illustrations inside, I got the book anyway and was quite entertained. Entertained because the author is incredible blunt and funny.
ooShe talks about the life of Gabrielle Chanel in a journalistic, "this is why she was so fabulous" kind of way. I have to admit I am absolutely smitten by Chanel's attitude - she's honest, passionate, self-reliant, hard-working, and brute - in other words, what my little prudish friend would describe as "mean". But being honest, passionate, self-reliant, hard-working and brute is far, far from being mean. If I had to use one sweeping-generalizing term to cover up all those aspects of a person, I'd use the word stimulating. And what do you know, ninety-four pages into the book, you find out Chanel was born a Leo. My favourite kind of people.
ooAnyway, love's been on my mind for quite some time now. Maybe not love - romance. Romance is the butterfly feeling, the feeling you get in the first three months of a relationship, the feeling you hope will last you forever in that same relationship (goodluck), the feeling that allows you to wear your rose coloured glasses liberally. Oh how I remember that feeling..but according to Karbo (or Chanel..the distinction is fuzzy), you're lucky to have felt it, even if only once.

"In Chanel's own version of events, there was no booze-fueled drawing-room barter. Instead Balsan, hoping to allay some of her boredom, invited her to a foxhunt in Pau, in the high meadows of the Pyrenees, near the Spanish border. There she met and fell head over heels with Capel, who was gorgeous in his red hunting jacket astride his high-spirited Arabian. He was equally smitten. They kept stealing away from the hunt, galloping through the emerald green hills; jumping the clear, rushing the streams; and of course, falling in love. At the end of the trip, Chanel learned the time Capel's train was leaving from the station and left everything behind to wait for him there, not knowing whether or not he would accept her. When he saw her, he opened his arms and their bond was sealed."