LOVE IN THE TIME OF LOATHING

"I only see a fucking rainbow." Francisco Peláez.

Love. Cursed word, longed for word. We all have felt it. Good love and bad love. What is the difference between both? I think no one knows, not even the most respected Instagram love coach.

There are good loves that kill, be it from diabetes, boredom, or perfection. Some good loves are like touching the sky with your hands, just to realize that grabbing a cloud is as much fun as drinking warm beer.

 
There are also bad loves. There are bad loves that hurt good, like when you bite the little balls that come out on the tongue after a fever or when the hot smoke of a cigarette burns the throat in its path. Other bad loves make you want death to come soon and make the seconds seem like eons.

In Amargore: Comics Anthology —winning project of the call for Promotion and Incentives for Art and Culture of 2021 in Medellin— you can see, live, and enjoy the inherent duality of love. In this anthology, four visions capture this constant indecision and perpetual debate between beauty and ugliness, appeal and disgust, and attractiveness and repulsiveness.

You could see it as scatological and terrifying vs. sweet and romantic. Now, it doesn't have to be a versus; it can be a with, a feat. Even if it doesn't seem like it, the filthy and the unpolluted can mix very well. All degenerate love needs a dose of tenderness; all innocent love needs an intense slap on the butt.

Among the youth, the term toxic love has become very trendy. They call toxic love to one who constantly generates conflicts and seeks to change the other person. It leads to disappointment, frustration, and decreased self-esteem. But what if we talk about other types of toxicities? One of those who need gas masks instead of paper-mâché masks —the kind people use to express their deepest feelings—?

Sex smells, good or bad, but it smells. Love too. Subtle fragrances mix with solid astringencies and stenches. Have you ever smelled a fruit stall that combines the aroma of fresh-cut fruit with the stink of decomposed peels? That's what love smells like.

It can also expel deadly collateral vapors. Not always, obviously. Only when the aroma is accompanied by salty tears. The smell of death in life, the smell of life after death. The smell of life that needs death to emerge triumphant. The smell of feelings that do not perish with dying, the smell of emotions that never fight regardless of efforts. The smell of love that is sown in bad soil, that did not know how to sow, or that the seed was simply born dead.

Love is an inevitable part of the human being and its nature: changing, incomprehensible, unpleasant. A human condition that goes beyond the body and its beauty romanticism. Humans shit, pee, sweat, and stink. And they are able to do all these nasty things and more while loving.

Love carries this plague, of course. It's no use trying to hide it. Sometimes we foolishly believe that we can pretend to be glorious bodies, that our bodies do not expel any disgusting substance, or that we eat flowers to shit aromas. We detach ourselves from the humanity of love to put it on the pedestal of divinity, forgetting that this is one of the most imperfect states of the human being.

What I liked about this anthology is that it works on —from four very unique styles— these dual, improbable, and funny aspects of love. And obviously, of the human who began to invent such a mess.

Here you can see how love stinks, hurts, attracts, gives strength, and steals it.

 
How it goes crazy, makes people feel ashamed, and makes you search incessantly for situations that won't come up.

 
How it generates a stupor, very similar to that produced by alcohol, which cheers you up and makes you scream at the same time.

 
How he manages to breed silent cries for help that nobody cares about.

 
How it makes the human not stop looking for the impossible, the happiness fired from an emotion that lives in the air.

You can talk a lot about love. Truths and lies all provide enough fabric to cut at a sewing club. It will never be enough, but it will always be fun. Be it self-love, partner love, love for several couples, or whatever. And well, if it's in a comic version, much better. And if it is told by voices like the ones part of this anthology, much better.

*Article originally published on Mapache Comics blog, the coolest publisher in Medellin. It has been edited to fit an English-speaking audience.