A thoughtful comment from our friend and contributor Catterina Coha about the ending of Giselle’s and Paul’s story: “Tidal Lock“. Thank you Catterina
Your fairy-tail ends with the prince and princess dying happily ever after
As the opening paragraph promised – Tidal Lock is a story about the incompleteness of the soul searching for its other half.
When found, it cannot be separated anymore.
The truth is that a relationship does not have to be as perfect as Giselle and Paul’s for two people to feel so deeply connected that the loss of one makes the other feel incomplete. My parents had countless disagreements and fights during their many decades together, but they were so complementary that when my dad died my mom felt like the broken tin soldier who could not stand anymore on his only leg without the support of his ballerina. In a strange way, and with a subconscious sense of guilt, I also perceived her as incomplete and when possible I filled a little bit of the huge space left empty by my father’s disappearance. I drove his car and took care of things the way he used to do, and my last beautiful memory with my mom was a summer evening in Florence when she told me that she felt the way she did when he was around.
What is that brings two halfs to match so perfectly around the edges that they become a whole? I think that, above all things, it is the learned experience that they can count on each other.
Back to Giselle and Paul, somebody said that Hell is the absence of the people you love (symbolically absence of God). People we lost live within us until we do, otherwise life would be intolerable. Sometimes, like in the case of Paul, this is not enough.
Francesco Marincola 