Is love blind?

In the movie “Bride of Frankenstein,” ‘the monster is on the run,  tramping through the dark forest, when he comes upon an isolated cottage — and hears music — and seeks refuge and comfort within.

It’s the home of a blind hermit who has been waiting for ages for a visitor — for a companion — for a human touch  — for friendship — and especially for love . Lucky for the monster, the blind man can’t see that his visitor’s an eight-foot-tall monster with a really bad haircut and metal bolts coming  out of the side of his head.

Both the blind man and the monster seek and need, more than anything else, someone to embrace them fully without hesitation or doubt or condition.

And they find it. The monster grunts his approval and joy as the blind man offers him a seat, then offers him a glass of wine, then plays on his fiddle as the monster sways and dances — rather clumsily and awkwardly, but let’s remember this IS Frankenstein’s monster.

But it all goes wrong when the old man lights a cigar and his friend gets too close to the flame and freaks out — the monster has bad experiences with fire, you may recall. So he swats away the flame, and the cottage catches on fire, and a passerby just happens to pass  by, and he recognizes the monster, and he sounds the alarm, and he rescues the blind man, and the monster runs off into the forest, and the cottage in the woods burns to the ground.

******

I’m trying to decide. Am I the monster? The blind man? The passerby? All three? I don’t know. All I know is that warm and perfect place where my dreams so recently dwelt has somehow been left a smoldering ruin.