Posthuman Blues

So I'm inevitably wondering if I'll ever date again. If it's worth the effort. (The process is very much like interviewing for a job, although I never know exactly what kind of job; dates are like episodes from a Franz Kafka novel, tinged by a sense of intractable defeat and desperation.)

Right now I don't see it. I can imagine many trajectories my future might take -- at least when I'm feeling moderately optimistic -- but romance seems particularly elusive, like some dim, distant sun we have no hope of reaching without the convenience of wormhole travel.

Of course, you never know. Maybe something will happen (although I'm certainly not rearranging my life around the prospect). The problem is that I'm exceptionally solitary, so the odds of a chance encounter becoming something meaningful are almost impossibly remote. And chance encounters are just that -- chance encounters; they may very well never happen.

Finally, I'm left to confront the very definition of "romance." Does it contain some inherent worth or is it a rationalization for desires we avoid speaking about for fear of sounding cold, clinical or hopelessly detached? I can't help but wonder because, justifiably or not, I've been accused of all those things.

More than anything, I'm perpetually intrigued by how casually relationships seem to come to others. It's a constant study in alienation, unnervingly mysterious. I can only stand in slightly glazed wonderment, taking it in with the reserve of an astronomer happening across some rare celestial phenomenon.