Oh, How Times Have Changed!

I finally got to talk to Sara today. YAY! I haven't been able to chat with her on the phone in a very long time, it was very nice. Everytime we get on the phone we end up laughing hysterically, which is definitely a good thing.

Anyway, I told her about my reading "The Three Musketeers" by Alexander Dumas, a classic that I am simply loving. Today's chapter, the entire chapter, was all about the George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham expressing his devout love to Anne of Austria, Queen of France. It was positively hysterical. Following, are several exerpts from chapter 12.

"But you never told me that you did not love me, and truly, to speak such words to me, would be, on the part of yoour Majesty, too great an ingratitude. For tell me, where can you find a love like mine- a love which neither time, nor absence, nor despair can extinguish. A love which contents itself with a lost ribbon, a stray look, or a chance word?"

"Hold, hold! I shut my eyes, and I can see you as you then were; I open them again, and I see what you are now- a hundred times more beautiful!"

"And upon what them must I live? I have nothing but memory. It is my happiness, my treasure, my hope. Everytime I see you is a fresh diamond which I enclose in the casket of my heart."

"Because you do not love me, Madame! If you loved me, you would view all this otherwise. If you loved me, oh, if you loved me, that would be too great happiness, and I should run mad."

It cracks me up!! Probably because as I was reading it, the words passed through my mind in a sarcastic tone, as sarcasm saturates my being, I must admit. A bit more than it should, I guess I need to wring some of it out. Anyway, it made me laugh. And then when we were talking, it reminded me of....

"How beautiful you are, my darling!
Oh, how beautiful!
Your eyes behind your veil are doves.
Your hair is like a flock of goats
descending from Mount Gilead.
Your teeth are like a flock of sheep
just shorn,
coming up from the washing.
Each has its twin;
not one of them is alone.
Yoour lips are like a scarlet ribbon;
your mouth is lovely.
Your temples behind your veil
are live the halves of a
pomegranate.
Your neck is like the tower of David,
built with elegance;
on it hang a thousand shields,
all of them shields of warriors.
Your two breasts are like two
fawns,
like twin fawns of a gazelle
that browse among the lilies."
-Song of Solomon 4:1-5

Okay, so it's not very nice to laugh at the Bible. But when we read this in Youth, we laughed. And Sara and I were hysterical with laughter!! The funny thing is, this is what you hear from your average guy today:

"Babe, you're like... so totally hot. Your hair is so stylin. Babe, I just, I love ya... Your bod is rockin'!"

I wish I was joking. Sadly, I'm not. It's sickening. Really it is. Just think about the difference! Sara said that she would not understand that language of the old days, and we agreed that Alexander Dumas and his peers/decendants would turn over in their graves to hear the way we express our "love" these days.

It's amusing the way they expressed things, you have to admit you would probably freak if a guy walked up to you...

"Hey, what's your name? I'm Todd. I just couldn't help but notice that your hair looks like goats comin off a mountain. And your teeth, what teeth! They are like shaved sheep, just washed and scrubbed. Your temples- like two halves of fruit, like a pomegranate. And your neck is like a tower! Wow!"

I'm not about to go into the part about the fawns.

It really seems ridiculous, but when you think about, the way most guys talk today to their girlfriends is more ridiculous than the way the Duke talked to the Queen! He spoke to her with real love, with desperate yearning for her to love him, he allowed her to retain her dignity and spoke never, in the whole chapter, never spoke in a way that degraded her. He really loved her.

Love back then was real. I mean, there were lots of marriages that were arranged, people who got married just to have somebody to support them financially, etc. But love was real. And people didn't go around saying "I love you" if they didn't mean it. They didn't court a different girl every other week.

Well, okay, so in the book D'artangan is infatuated with Madame Bonacieux, who is married and a few years older than him. I'm not sure how that part is gonna turn out. I'll let ya know.

Okay, well I could go on and on and on about the stupidity of this world and how ridiculous and ignorant it is that guys go around degrading girls and treating them like crap and decieving them into thinking they are in love.

Just wanted to point out how times have changed. In a way, it's real funny and kinda cheesey to read that stuff... But in a way, when you think about it, it was serious, and they meant what they said.

Honestly, if I had to choose over the guy who told me I was "hot" or told me that my hair is like "a flock of goats descending from Mount Gilead"...

Considering the fact that in order for him to say that, he would most likely be a Christian...

With a sense of humor...

I would choose the goat guy. =D