the unfruitful search

If Dr. Ealy's lecture and Celestina's text have taught us anything, it is that love ends in tragedy for it is in some part a figment of our imagination which keeps us hungry and unsatisfied. If we are partly born with this inate need to search for our completeness, it is almost ironic that there is no real answer. We are born to torture ourselves on the path to attempting salvation. However, the sad news for us is that there is no such thing. We cannot be fullfilled - ever. No matter how many hearts or bodies we conquer and how many things we pocess, Celestina teaches us that we are in love with the idea of them and not the physical things we come to collect along the way.

It seems as though humans are then none other than delusional. We have a fixation on an insatiable desire and we go in circles trying to find the same answer - completeness. Yet, we are in love with an image, a simple figment of the imagination. We are in love with the subjective reality of percieving a certain object a certain way and then seeking the means to pocessing that object. But alas, that object does not exist the same way in reality as it exists in the mind so we can never have our cake and eat it too. What is the reason for living then?

Celestina is just another love story. The classic longing, and sickness. The classical elements such as forbidden pocessions, gardens, and death. It all seems so tragic. Like the classic Romeo and Juliet, Celestina ends in death. All that is left behind are the forlorn families of those who gave their life to the pangs of the sickness which, through their eyes, inflicted their unsuspecting hearts.

Dr. Ealy brought up an interesting point when he talked about the gender divide in love sickness. How could that be when we are all humans who suffer the same fate? Indeed throughout history women and men have been drastically separated. The woman embodies desire, lust. She brings with her intentions the devil. She brings forth life, yet she brings forth mankind's doom. It seems correct to percieve a woman who desires as a great threat. Dr. Ealy mentions that female desire can destroy patriarchal alliances and class structures. This reinforces the notion that women stand for destruction, as irrational, desire-driven, beings.

Throughout Celestina we see the way women have been employed by the patriarchy. Women played beneficial parts in society while acting as matriarchs, perhaps all the while without knowing. Celestina promotes the tradition of virginity by sewing young women up to "re-virginize" them. All of the prostitutes play a part in granting men authority and rationalism. In a way all of their efforts simply re-inforce their subordination.

This play provides the answer in life and our inescapable and terrible fate as early as 1499. Yet, generations upon generations have not listened. There is an ever-strong belief in true love and fullfillment. Plenty of people still believe in a thing such as soul mates which complete their missing parts. Yet, much of Celestina and Dr. Ealy's words prove to be true. We, as a sociey, are in love with being in love. We are constantly searching and hoping. Hoping to find what? Fools, we are all fools. We hope to find a different form of obsessive compulsive disorder. We search for the invigorating mix of endorphins and adrenalin that special someone can provide. I suppose this is the inner drug addict in us, searching for their next high - their next obsession. Do we really enjoy how crazy love makes us? In the lows of it, suicide is not uncommon. So many places have warned us and told us of this erotic melancholy which Dr. Ealy mentioned. Our obssesion with an image is in turn a never ending pursuit of unattainable things.

Like drug addicts are a slave to their addictions and their never ending hunt for that deeper, higher high, we are slaves to our desire on our never ending journey to completion and fullfillment.