Maybe the postmodern loneliness is a protective adaptation, from the perils of falling in love too easily. When the world population was pre-exponential, and measurable in the handfuls, you might have stood a better chance of finding your actual soul mate. But today, with 9 billion people fluttering around, social constructs and cultural conventions continually breaking down, and paths of communication exploding, it stands to reason that the odds of pairing with the wrong person are dramatically amplified. In a way, the yearning for a return to the romantic is a way of recognizing the loss of providence. And one has to trust - more than ever - that that lover in Verona can still find (and meet) that Juliet of Capulet, even as star-crossed today means separated by lands and dreams, affluence and poverties, and innumerably new and vast arrays, of poisons and poetries