some useful definitions of that thing called "love."
(cross-posted here)
hey lion,
as you know, i've decided to do this dating thing again. not too many dates, though, and very breezily. i'm doing just enough to keep my life interesting and maintain my self-esteem as a desirable woman. also, i'm putting some distance between the present and everything that happened between september-december 2014. finally, i am very much into money and bylines this year. the focus must be laser-like. "money and bylines" would make a great podcast name for someone, by the way.
here's a positive thing: since my tolerance for shallow interactions with people has become extremely low, i only seek out people with whom i can have real conversations. my saturday night date was intelligent on top of being pretty -- although he is a bit of a tortured overthinker. he also seemed to me the human embodiment of authoritarian saturn. i suspect that if i continue to see him my desire for spontaneity and play will be perceived as flightiness. i already know that he thinks my childlike interests (cartoons, comic books, genre fiction) are childish.
anyway, we were each on our third drink at the bar when he gave me the definition of love that he'd given to his therapist. "love, to me, is a world without scarcity or loss," he explained. "but then i read 'faust,' and in that book the devil does this fucked up version of a jesus miracle. instead of just making infinite wine, the devil makes infinite wine and condemns people to drink it all. so what do we do, clementine? what do we do?"
"well," i said. "i'm not sure that this directly responds to your existential crisis about being poisoned by abundance, but i've been reading anne lamott lately. she wrote a book called 'bird by bird', which is a set of instructions for writers. she says that when she first started writing, she was hung up on the idea of paired opposites just like everyone else. she thought that the opposite of love was obviously hate. after she wrote more and became more sympathetic to her characters, she discarded that notion. she decided that hate was not the opposite of love and in fact nothing was the opposite of love."
this seemed to comfort him. i forgot the next part of the conversation though. it was some tangent about logos, pathos, and ethos. this earlier part of the conversation stuck with me, and i recounted it to manic pixie roommate the next day. "i agree with your writer," she said. "in the sense that hate is not the opposite of love. i love my boyfriend, but sometimes i hate him and he drives me crazy. but then i love him again. you're more likely to hate the people that you love. because you care. like love, hate is an attachment."
"so if love has an opposite at all..." i mused, sensing where she was heading. "it's detachment," said manic pixie roommate. "love is an attachment and its opposite is detachment." if people tell you that they are over their ex-lovers but that they're mad at them -- they are lying to themselves. negative attachments are still attachments. isn't that interesting?
prying truths out of neighborhood men,
clementine