I've been thinking a lot about love and particularly marriage lately for a piece that I'm working on. I've been hesitant to pull the trigger when it comes to writing another essay thanks to the whiplash I endured after publishing my last piece. I'm not afraid of being divisive, just articulating something so personal or narrowly defined that it fails to resonate with a wider audience...
Which brings me to these beautiful pictures of French model Caroline de Maigret and her partner, Yarol Poupad, shot by Johan Lindeberg. De Maigret is quoted on the BLKDNM tumblr, alongside these images, saying, "I like to wake up every morning and have the nice surprise of still having my man next to me...I feel I can still run away." It seems a bit shocking to my American sensibilities, this idea that the only thing keeping two people in a relationship is the simple desire to be with one another, not a contract or a social obligation, and the implicit awareness that love burns, and love burns out. It's sort of antithetical to love as I've come understand it - we'll call it Jane Austen brand love, Austen being, by my estimation, the de facto guardian of eternal flames and wedded bliss. I wonder if maybe I've been a bit foolish, buying into the two-hundred-year-old romantic fictions of a woman who herself never partnered. It is a bit thrilling, De Maigret's perspective...maybe hard to make a Pinterest inspiration board for, but what can I say...they look happy. Photos Johan Lindeberg for BLKDNM.
P.S. If you haven't seen the movie this post's title comes from, rent it! I think it's on Netflix...
