His senses quaked. He forgot about Guy. All he wanted was to find the girl and interrogate her. Ask her about her clutch: had she packed it herself and, if she had, why had she chosen to include those strange items? He wanted to tell her he loved her. And right there and then he did.
Love is more profound than that, said most people: but why would something as great as love have to forsake that which was greatest about human relationships- the newness of knowing? This still happens, only in a more nuanced, profound manner, said most people. You never truly know somebody until you have spent many years with them. True enough- but was there such a thing as knowing too much about someone? Did there come a time when all additional knowledge was unimportant…or overkill? Yes, but no one cared to admit it. The pleasures of education were not reserved for experts in a given field- as a matter of fact those people had already experienced them and were thus partially deprived of them thereafter. No, the greatest pleasures of education were available to those who were discovering things for the first time, for whom whole worlds were opening up ahead, not dimly lit caves. People who had heights left to scale.
Similarly the couples whose love remained strong until death were no different except for one critical detail: they had not allowed the beauty of newness to pass out of sight and mind, they had held fast to its memory and it had kept them afloat in return; I first met…in…and she was the most beautiful creature I ever saw. That beautiful nostalgia became a habit. But now impatience was more and more inspirited. While all those environmental alarm bells got shriller and shriller the tortoise-like trudge of action plans were still mocked by the same pack of hares. Seasonal wardrobe changes and products designed to live only long enough to witness the birth of the next model. The dual prongs of impatience: waiting so long on the one hand, not waiting long enough on the other. And books without paper that fit in your palm. Blah blah blah blah blah. Mental illnesses gobbling up all the space reserved for habits. Ayla. And if those things were true, maybe those tiny loves Smith lived on would soon be the only sort worth seeking.
Hmmmm..... Is this why we say that we know someone 'inside out'? Because the dynamic between two people is stretched to the point that it becomes inverted and perverse? Now that I think about it, there is nothing natural or pleasurable about something being inside out. Maybe we should recognise when a relationship has reached its limit and bow out before it snaps back onto itself.
ReplyDeleteWe tell people our secrets and feel liberated, oblivious to the fact that this will be followed by the weighty realisation, "there's nothing left to tell." We should guard our personal mystery more fiercely. But I have to disagree about the 'enchanted beauty' of newness: to me, this cannot be found in a first meeting, or even an early meeting with someone, in finding out where someone lives or what music they listen to or why they have to get up early tomorrow. It's in uncovering a previously unseen chamber in the hearts or minds of those with which we are already familiar. I don’t care nearly as much about getting to know people I don’t know as I do about people I do know.
P.S You have a fetish for novelty, Meanders.
ReplyDeleteBy divesting love of its infinitude you unwittingly invite a number of other notions, or alter-egos if you like - sex, lust, worship...and of course time - to the table, the result of which is a sort of definitional fog. It therefore becomes far more of a challenge to separate the love impulse from some other, ostensibly inferior, one.
ReplyDeleteLogically then, trifling tidbits of a personality assume the same level of importance as essential ones, 'pleasure' and 'happiness' grow commensurate with one another, Smith's twenty seconds and some else's forever acquire a kinship that would otherwise have been missing and considered downright nuts.
This, however, need not be a bad thing for love. Straining a relationship to its utmost in pursuit of those 'unseen chambers' is all well and good, but perhaps at times we do so at the expensive of other, ephemeral enchantments. That is the condition of infinite love. But only Smith could tell you the whole story.
I wish to meet Smith
ReplyDelete