Butterfly on a Wheel
The Mission UK
W. G. Sebald talks about the invisible subject: that topic, that thing, we find so pressing, so permeating, that we never stop thinking about it (even when we're not thinking about it). We may not even be aware it exists -- but it does; it's constantly vibrating at the depths of us. We explore and talk around it, try to define it, craft our entire world around it. Our invisible subject, whatever it is, drives our decisions and our lives in ways that only make sense in retrospect.
My invisible subject, as far as I can figure, is passion.
It takes on various manifestations, and turns me on to various conversations. Creativity, friendship, education, literature and music itself ----- but behind it all there is this fucking necessity to define Passion. To feel Passionate. To be emPassioned at every moment. I know it's unrealistic, I don't care -- intellectually, emotionally, it all comes back to passion.
Relatedly.
Today I am thinking about love.
Attempts to define love inevitably fail. I try to show my gr. 9s this when I teach Romeo & Juliet -- which is not, incidentally, a love story -- but that's kind of the point. We create these comically idealistic representations and try to fit them under a comically small umbrella term: love. Even the qualifying terms we have are pathetically insufficient: platonic, romantic, familial. The Ancient Greeks tried slightly harder, but 6 types is just as inadequate. Current sexuality discourse is all up in queerplatonic relationships, trying to bridge or widen the gap between romantic and platonic as befits each individual case, but guys I think we're all missing the fucking point.
Love is infinite.
And when I say that, I don't mean ~my love for you is infinite~ though the fact that we try to spatially define love probably says a fair bit about our culture. How-ever. What I mean by love is infinite is that I feel a different, particular, kind of overwhelming intensity for every person who means anything to me. For every interaction with any of these people. Ad infinitum. And I hesitate to call any of it love, proper, because I'm starting to think the term doesn't apply.
Here's my issue: we smile in kindergarten and we're told oh yeah that's 'happy' -- you feel happy. Point to the smiley face, learn your feelings, memorize those sociolinguistic codes. Ignore, or put aside, the fact that your experience of happiness is likely completely different from every other person's. This is true of every emotion, and you may not even have to compare yourself to someone else: when I miss my sister, I feel it in the base of my fingernails; when I miss my best friend, I feel it in the center of my torso. Why? Because they're different people, and I can't help but feel them differently.
I don't know where I can go with this. So much of this entire thing -- the invisible subject generally -- is inarticulable. But I am frustrated, I am done, with this idea that romantic love supersedes all else. I don't even think romantic love exists, at least not in the way we codify and delineate it. I think you choose a partner, if monogamy's your thing, and then: the feeling you get from them is a feeling you need. Differently, but not necessarily more intensely, than what you feel & need for & from other people.
My frustration stems from the fact that:
- when I say I love you it doesn't cover anything that I actually want to say.
I can't express, none of us can; so we grasp at metaphors, nicknames, lines of literature or songs that slip into our guts and spiral. They aren't enough. But these names, these metaphors, are all we have, and so we keep trying to twist our tongues around them, trying to get across how profoundly you matter, how constantly you are present, how deeply I feel.
I can't express, none of us can; so we grasp at metaphors, nicknames, lines of literature or songs that slip into our guts and spiral. They aren't enough. But these names, these metaphors, are all we have, and so we keep trying to twist our tongues around them, trying to get across how profoundly you matter, how constantly you are present, how deeply I feel.
- when I say I love you it isn't what I want to say at all.
And I only want metaphors, because trying to catch everyone under one blanket term is fucking damaging. Why is a first 'I love you' to a boyfriend more important than the first to a friend? Why are we forced to say it to family members we don't know when we don't actually feel it? Three words that don't mean anything at goddamn all if you're going to splay them around like that.
- I love you is all I ever want to say.
And if I say it, I mean it, I mean it profoundly: I do love you, because love fucking seethes in me; I am absolutely full of it. I want you to know that: that if I have told you I love you, I do, with every piece of my heart. But that scares people off, see; for so many, love is something to be rationed, to be delicately parceled out at an opportune moment. Sometimes it feels like people experience love with boundaries, limits. I do not experience this; I do not understand this. I love resolutely, completely, and quicker than limits would appreciate.
- when I say I love you there is always the worry it will be taken the wrong way.
Because it's not enough. As an expression, it's not enough. Three fucking words to express the grandest passions of the human experience?! Please. And I don't love you like that, trust me: I love you like flame, like ocean, like cells and supernovae. There is no place to put this feeling, no action to complete it: it is boundless within me, pulsing through every vein, but it stays there. And I say "I love you" to try to get it out, to hope you understand -- it's not physical, it's not typical, it's barely even emotional -- it's another category altogether, one I don't think we've defined. And whether you understand or not, I am rife with it. But that's all.
- love is not the right word.
It's just not. And I think that covers all of it: I don't feel love. Not how I'm told I should be feeling it. I feel explosion, violence, magic, thrumming fire, atoms splitting, time spiralling, cells rearranging. And for every person, it is unique, and certainly more intense for some. But: when I say I love you it is a bald lie and a vehement truth. Simultaneously. Every time.
And the year ends again.
Love breaks the wings of a butterfly on a wheel.
