Washington, D.C., resident Rachel Machacek has been dating since her teenage years, and she still hasn’t met the right guy. After years of hoping to make a connection, Rachel couldn’t help but wonder if there was another course of action. Perhaps a more dedicated, less slipshod, more scientific way of finding love.

With warmth, insight, and a terrific sense of humor, Rachel tackles the world of dating with a journalist’s eye and a scientist’s curiosity.

Rachel Machacek was one of our early authors to respond in February 2011.  We welcome her back again.

February Q&A About Love…

Look what we owe to Shakespeare…

If music be the fruit of love, play ____________________(what would you most want to hear?)

The ukelele. Everything played on a ukelele warms my heart.

What is the greatest love prose you’ve ever read? Who wrote it? Please quote a few lines?

I recently read a book of short stories by Gina Oschner, “People I Wanted to Be.” In the stories, she works through the whole spectrum of love relationships in their imperfections and how humans make compromises for love. There’s some pain and darkness in there and the stories are real and beautiful.

And while this is not prose but a song, I’d be lying if I said the hair on the back of my neck doesn’t stand up every time I hear or read the lyrics to In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel.

Is your imagination of love, your ability to write about it – greater than your experience?

My imaginative version of love looks and sounds pretty with pink peonies and music in the background (ukelele, of course). And then there’s my real version, which doesn’t need the superfluous stuff. It’s simple and strong. More of a foundation than a bunch of accessories. My experience is greater because I can actually feel it.

Have you ever fallen for a character? Who?  How does he or she compare to the real love of your life?

I don’t think I have ever truly fallen for a character! I feel left out of this club because I know there are legions of Mr. Darcy devotees out there who swoon for him. I do have a strong feeling for Wesley from The Princess Bride by William Goldman. He’s strong, confident and tender. The real love of my life has these qualities. He just talks a lot faster and is not a former pirate. I don’t think

What are the words that you can’t imagine ever being associated with love?

Ambivalence. Cockroaches.

With a nod to Yeats – If “love comes in at the eye, how does it go out …. (please imagine the rest of this sentence)

I’m not totally sure how to answer this. Does love ever truly leave? Perhaps the feeling dissipates as a vapor (sometimes burning a hole through your heart and chest) but it always takes up a space in your memory.

Does love have its own language?

Sure, in the way that two people learn to communicate with each other, not just through words but through action. Because love is best when it’s a verb.

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