On loving strangers

August 20, 2008 at 12:48 am | Posted in reflections | Leave a comment
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I say to myself sometimes that I am in love with faces. In the right mood, I can study one for hours, the curves and shadows, and feel nothing but warm fascination, a desire to reach out with my entire being to caress this emblem of human fragility and courage. But this is not to say that I am a kind or friendly person. And it’s not that I fall in love with every face I see. Tonight in class I sat next to a man who enjoyed making gratuitous inane remarks when we got into our small discussion groups. And I was forced by politeness to listen and respond, which meant making eye contact. His face drooped asymmetrically around the eyes; folds of thick flesh sagged from his cheeks. But worst of all was his mouth: it was as though some tiny fanged rodent had gnawed away a hole between his two front teeth, from which a grey rot spread outward. I was ashamed of my revulsion but I’m sure I couldn’t hide it. He smelled bad, too.

From an artist’s perspective I might have drawn him, felt some compassion for the character that lay upon the hills and valleys of aging skin that decorated his skull. But I was not an artist at that moment, as I am often not, especially in public. I was merely a petty, selfish brute, drawn in upon myself and carefully masking a blind snarl.

I believe I could fall in love with anyone, but it’s a self-deception. In a figure-drawing class in college I came within minutes to love each model, and I believed this was a pure aesthetic love for the human form. In retrospect it could have been their confidence I loved, their self-love radiating toward me unencumbered by clothing; or perhaps they had been hired because of the beauty of their bodies, however unconventional. I draw friends, lovers, family, and I love them more for having carefully recorded the slopes of their noses, the way their eyelids sweep and fold. But this does not make me a better person. It doesn’t even make me a better friend, lover, or relative. The love I’m talking about is completely unconnected to a relational emotion or skill.

Increasingly I am startled by my own coldness. I spend days or weeks isolated from all but the most minute human contact. When I ventured to the grocery store today to refill a prescription, I automatically held the elevator door for a young sweatsuited woman trotting toward me. She said thank you in a small, kind voice, and it shocked me. My response was a mute nod, maybe ten percent of a smile, which I imagine must have looked more like a twitching lip. When I said “thank you very much” to the pharmacist – the unconscious calculations of her helpfulness and efficiency had warranted this particular canned response – she surprised me by smiling and saying “you’re welcome” in a friendly voice. Somehow those two tiny interactions left me feeling more human than I had ten minutes earlier. Did I have actual interactions with these strangers? Why should a rote politeness make me feel anything at all? If their words were false or hollow, is my being moved by them a symptom of my own naivete? What is it to be human with someone, after all? Did I owe something more to these women who expressed a simple momentary warmth? Where do you draw a line in connecting with strangers? Do you miss your stop on the bus ride to hear the rest of the story of their awful week, year, life? About their sister’s wedding, about a child’s broken arm? How do you end something you just started? How do you say, “it was nice to meet you, and I have no interest in ever seeing you again”? Does that hurt for everyone else to hear as much as it does for me? What is the point of becoming attached when the one assured outcome is heartbreak?

I have the capacity to fall in love with a face, the same way I fall in love with bodies when I practice massage therapy. I love them for all the humanity they contain. To access that humanity in this way – detached but attentive, even fond – is to make myself feel more human for a few moments, without the risk that comes with revealing myself in turn.

It’s nice to know one’s capacity for making beautiful things out of ugliness – one’s own especially.

Dreams of love and loss

August 9, 2008 at 9:24 am | Posted in dreams, relationships | Leave a comment
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Do you ever have dreams of an ex that leave you feeling destroyed in the morning? That’s me today. It wasn’t an especially bad dream, plot-wise, but it’s always the emotional charge of it that lingers. So last night it was him walking away with his girlfriend (my ex-girlfriend, technically), walking away again and again, always smiling, without a scrap of concern for what he was leaving behind.

I’m calling this day a wash; I don’t expect to get anything done.

Feeling all of these horrible emotions churning inside me, fresher and more concrete than I’ve ever experienced them, I’m astounded that I spent two months of my life forcing myself to continue feeling this way: unappreciated, neglected, expendable, valueless, not enough. I excused it because I thought it would “build character,” and held out because I thought things might change if I waited long enough. How fucking stupid was I? And the thing is that this is not an anomaly in my life: it’s just an exaggerated version of the pattern I’ve run through with pretty much every guy I’ve ever loved, or wanted to love.

I should be grateful for having had this destructive pattern shoved in my face so that I can never repeat it again without remembering vividly how much it hurt, how much I didn’t deserve to feel this way. But I’m not at the point yet where I can feel grateful, or anything, really, except confused, wounded, and violently angry.

Yesterday it was a different dream, a different ex (call him Travis): I dreamt that after half a year of silence I flew across the country to his parents’ house on a whim, knowing that on this day of the week he would be there for dinner. Pristine snow blanketed the lawns and shrubbery in his neighborhood, creating that magical stillness of the east coast winter. I arrived at his front door and the house was empty, so I got out my cell phone to call him when he walked up. It was an awkward meeting. He seemed like maybe he was happy to see me, or just surprised. He kept saying, “You didn’t call me to let me know… you should have called me.” I had dinner with his parents. I saw his old bedroom for the first time. I knew from his Livejournal that he was dating his ex (the one before me) again, that he was most likely madly in love with her again. But still I hoped for something, a reconnection, a return to the intimacy we had created between us once upon a time.

When I woke up I felt a warm stirring inside me, the abrupt reappearance of the fondness I had felt for him when we were together. So my yesterday was flooded with fuzzy memories and a longing to reconnect, as we had (almost?) in the dream. I fought hard against the urge to IM or email him; I ended things clumsily back in March, and we haven’t spoken since. Would he resent me for contacting him? Does he hate me now? Is it even possible, or practically desirable, to try to recreate what we had? I don’t know the answers to these questions. I would like to know that he thinks fondly of me, but I’m not sure it’s worth the asking, the risk of finding out the opposite.

Do other people have such strong reactions to their dreams? Do they ever haunt your days, the ones that stick despite your best efforts to release them to their natural dissolution? Are there dreams that you cling to like a warm blanket, letting their good feelings envelop you until finally they fade?

Where do we find the things that matter?

August 7, 2008 at 4:39 pm | Posted in relationships | Leave a comment
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My writing buddy invited me to watch this lovely movie with her last night: Before Sunrise, a dialogue-driven film about two young people meeting on a train in Europe and spending a charged, beautiful day together before returning to their separate corners of the world. An excerpt:

“I believe if there’s any kind of God, it wouldn’t be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there’s any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something. I know, it’s almost impossible to succeed, but who cares, really? The answer must be in the attempt.”

– Celine in Before Sunrise (2005)

I loved that line. Does that make me a sap? It’s such a stereotype: women find meaning in connection with other people – family, friends, children – while men seek it out in the realm of material success, prestige, worldly accomplishment. I’d have to say I have a healthy dose of both in me. I want my life to have had some impact, changed people’s lives, because of something I produced, something that came solely from me. And I tend strongly toward solitude, preferring the occasional company of just a few close friends to regular, well-attended social events of any kind. Still, though, I value connection, and I think magic does happen there, when you finally confront someone’s humanity and the alienation that is human existence melts away, even just for that one possibly deluded moment.

Celine points out that it’s almost impossible to succeed in understanding someone, in bridging the gap between one consciousness and another. Most people – well, most people I know, the scientist types and whatnot – will say it’s not almost impossible, it’s just plain impossible. Our pains and sufferings, even our joys, are ultimately private; our attempts to express these to other human beings are weak and distorted at best. Any belief in true connection is therefore relegated to the realm of mysticism, where I am generally more or less happy to reside. And I’ve had moments where I felt that my mind shared a space with another’s. Many of these moments were, sadly, drug-induced, and for this benefit alone if the drug in question had not been made illegal I would probably still be ingesting it every weekend. In one relationship, in particular, I had this feeling that I could access my partner’s emotions, if not his thoughts, at any time, no matter where he was. For years after that relationship ended I looked to replicate that experience with someone else, but it never happened. I fully concede that in both of these cases I may simply have been surrendering to the attractive illusion of having connected with someone in a way that meant I was not, ultimately, alone.

I know I’m not the only one who craves this ineffable kind of merging, but are we in the minority? For people who have come to terms with the fundamental impossibility of this idea, do you find that the connections you make with others are sufficient? Do you wish to be known completely, to share your most cherished experiences with another human being – not just the external circumstances of that experience, but the experience itself, the way that it transforms your consciousness? Or am I just way out in left field now?

I like to believe that everyone is wandering around, hungry for this. It seems that if this were true, there would be some basic tenderness underlying the principles of our interactions. Even the shared hope, if it were recognized, might be enough to encourage us to offer more kindness to one another.

Something that makes you say “yes, yes!!”

August 6, 2008 at 2:39 pm | Posted in writing | Leave a comment
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I was at a coffee shop today with my friend Lana (not her real name). We make writing dates and she chooses places within walking distance from her house, because she knows all the cafes with free wi-fi and her neighborhood is slammin’. It happened that today’s destination featured some installation art: one-page written pieces by an assorted collection of individuals, Lana being one of them. During one of my frequent breaks I wandered over to read hers.

Standing there, with my knees buckled into the faux leather couch against the wall, my back hunched unattractively to bring my eyes a little closer to her piece, glue-sticked to a sheet of cardstock, I smiled and felt small emptinesses crumbling within me, caving in from the joyful pressure of sincere recognition. I came back to our laptop-clad table grinning. “I liked your piece,” I said sheepishly.

“But what is it? It’s nothing,” she complained. “It’s not a story.”

“It doesn’t matter!” I knew my stumbling praise was ineffectual. We’re both planning on applying to MFA programs in the fall. Requirements: a written portfolio, anywhere between 20 to 40 pages long, depending on the school. They want to see promise; they want to see structure. Short stories or, less attractively, a chapter of a novel. So where does this beautiful, curious creature fit into that framework? Right now, maybe it doesn’t. But it’s perfect exactly the way it is.

This gives me hope for my writing. Maybe the stunning, jagged beauty of life doesn’t need to be captured in some conventional form in order to be successful as art – as something that moves you. Can I be okay with that? Similarly, could it be that I might be seen as complete, whole, without polishing my jagged edges or fitting myself into a role, a standard, a predetermined form?

I want to show this piece to everyone. This, I think, is what real art is. This is what I want my writing to be. The inarticulate soul finds resonance in a worldly something, hears its own song being sung. And it’s goddamn beautiful.

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