It was all so much "cut up the flower to find what makes it beautiful". The latent hypocrisy of the whole thing depressed me to no end, but it was a vivid introduction to that distasteful pseudo-highbrow thing people do with everything from beer to wine to poetry to cheese.
The answer all along was simply "I like it". I like the way it sounds in my mind, the way it tastes with spaghetti. The way it rolls off the to tongue when read aloud. That's it. And that's enough.
Well, there is something pragmatic to be said about at least knowing why you liked something — personally, i like being able to semi-reliably pick a cheese or wine based on descriptions or memories, at least in the vain hope that it'll be above-average according to my tastes :)
Even Love itself can be dissected and torn apart, the inner workings exposed for the grime ridden machine that it is. But that is done in neurology, not literature.
The answer all along was simply "I like it". I like the way it sounds in my mind, the way it tastes with spaghetti. The way it rolls off the to tongue when read aloud. That's it. And that's enough.