"Dime que No" Ricardo Arjona's Ode to the Chase

While listening to Arjona's popular tribute to the art and thrill of the pursuit of impossible love, I found myself musing about the concept of playing hard to get and unrequited love.  While to most they must seem very different platforms of falling in love, I feel that they share a common denominator: the thrill of the chase.  Arjona sings, "Dime que no, me tendras pensando todo el dia en ti; planeando la estrategia para un si...Dime que no lanzame un 'si' camoflajeado, clavame una duda y me quedara a tu lado." (Say no, you'll have me thinking about you night and day; devising a strategy to obtain a 'yes'...Say no, send me a camouflaged 'yes' stab me with doubt, plant a seed of maybe, and I'll stay at your side).  The most truthful words a poet has ever written about Love I think, however, I don't think this phenomenon is exclusive to the male gender.  I feel that often women find themselves living with unrequited Love; yet they stay very much in Love.  Why is that? (Asks the rest of the sane world)  Why love someone who doesn't love you in return? It seems rather foolish, doesn't it?

However, there's a perfectly logical explanation, and that is that unrequited Love has a certain glamorous romance; it's the thrill of the chase...It's the proverbial impossible Love; it's what inspires the most beautiful music, poetry, literature, movies---it's what fuels the greatest Love stories of all time.  The forsaken lover doesn't ever focus on the fact that they are not loved in return, they are focused solely on the little hints of doubt they can interpret freely (though perhaps not logically) as the possibility that their beloved loves them in return.  For the same reason, the more you "play hard to get," the more you say no, the less the person smitten or in love with you seems to go away.

It seems to me that Love is a very tricky, very shady feeling, and yet almost against all odds we trust this feeling blindly...

I think Arjona says it best "si se me pone facil, el amor se hace fragil y uno para de sonar" (if it becomes easy, the love turns fragil and one stops dreaming...)...And it made me realize that even on my personal level, I have been inspired to write a few lines on the matter, and so I share them with you here....:

Esta pluma derrama una tinta agridulce sobre estas paginas
De vez en cuando esa tinta escribe sobre la reconciliacion y el olvidar
y de vez en cuando escribe de sentimientos que no entienden razon
la pluma vuelve a visitar momentos perdidos...

Momentos en los cuales crei que me amabas
Unas lineas despues esa pluma escribe sobre la resignacion
la resignacion a que nunca hubo nada del cual escribir...
Nunca podre escribir sobbre estas paginas con certeza sobre lo que tu pudiste sentir por mi
Esta plluma escribira en vez sobre miradas coquetas, sonrisas traviesas, caricias sugestivas,
momentos extraviados en una amistad ambigua....
deseas nunca expresados, pensamientos apuntados en un jornado sonador
sentimientos gravados en una historia bella en la cual los protagonistas tuvieron un fin inesperado...

Esta pluma lo confirmira--
en estas paginas esta pluma derramara nuestra historia
Agridulce, incompleta, y celestial.

INB 3/29/10

Translation:
This pen will secrete a bittersweet ink on these pages...
Once in a while this ink will write about reconcilation and forgetting
And once in a while it writes about feelings that lack reason

The pen continues to revisit lost moments
moments in which I swore you loved me
Several lines later this pen writes of resignation-
resignation to what never was mine,
what never existed to write of...

I will never write on these pages
with any certainty of what you could have felt for me...

This pen will spill on these pages recollections of flirtatious glances, mischievous smiles, suggestive caresses
moments muddled in an addictively ambiguous friendship,
a longing never expressed,
thoughts detailed on a dreamer's journal,
 emotions recorded in a beautiful story in which its protagonists met an unexpected end.

This pen will confirm-
on these pages this pen will write of our story;
Bittersweet, incomplete and heavenly.

INB 3/29/10