“O how often she wants to get close to him with seductive words, and call him with soft entreaties! Her nature denies it, and will not let her begin, but she is ready for what it will allow her to do, to wait for sounds, to which she can return words”
-Ovid’s Metamorphosis
-Ovid’s Metamorphosis
So this is what ‘they’ went on and on about. Rather anticlimactic, one would think…no “I”! Rather anticlimactic ‘I’ think and we already know that ‘I is someone else’.
Such is my present place, this space that I am forced to sit in and pretend to breathe from. It is a regurgitating well of disappointment, lingering nostalgia and that desperate urge to get back to that pretty pedestal of perennial optimism that I used to command so well. I miss that girl, with her positively Panglossian window to the world or whatever passes for the direct opposite of nihilism these days.
It still lingers in some forgotten cracks I suppose, that romance in betrayed beauty. That somewhat desperate need to see, hear, smell and touch some purpose in everything is not completely dead. But it is desperate now.
Desperation is distinctly unbecoming.
So this is what it feels like to lose your heart, your head, your surface and whatever passes for the thing that lies beneath. Why do people glamorise broken hearts so damn much? They are not glamorous, they are pathetic and the illusion one grows up with is trite and stupid when it shatters. I find that the cruelest fate for the perennial optimist is to discover that she only ever falls in love with the perennial nihilist. I have spent my past term reading altogether too much into the philosophical and literary undertones of ‘the Other”. I wish I could treat it in the general feminist vein of De Beauvoir or Freidan and debate semantics, but trust me to have to recognise it in my being as that elusive ‘truth’ I was so set on stumbling upon for so long. That no matter where I go or how far I get, I will always seek in opposition to my self. What I want and what I want to be will never inhabit the same space and so I continue to stare at him from a distance (there’s that word again)… desperately.
By chance, the boy, separated from his faithful band of followers, had called out ‘Is anyone here?’ and ‘Here’ Echo replied. He is astonished, and glances everywhere, and shouts in a loud voice ‘Come to me!’
She calls as he calls.
I chalk out my library schedule and my meal times in accordance with optimizing my chances to set sight on him and while doing so I work actively at remaining as inconspicuous as I possibly can. I have gauged from my observation of “active social behaviour” that the modus operandi when one “has a crush” is to dress up and not down. Generally I have been acknowledged as the girl who arms herself well with her apparel, I coordinate colours and costume jewellery like camouflage, they are put together just right to balance out being noticeable but not ‘noticed’. My face beneath its subtle coat of paint is too naked for me to tolerate but lately I have taken to exposing it. I wear myself and choke on myself in a corner as I hear him speak about the non-ness of existence while I so dearly covet its “other”. Sadly, I realise more than ever that this is what draws me to him so, the fact that he does not see anything or need to and I do see everything and need to. I envy him his nonchalance.
I never thought I could envy that in anyone.
I find that even in my fantasies of him, I do not covet sex. This surprises me, because I thought that leaving my former self and finally being able to openly acknowledge my Ignostic affiliations would allow me to pursue physical pleasure sans guilt. I am a tad deflated to recognise that it was never guilt that stopped me in the first place and that it was that notion of “closeness”…of sharing that I desperately needed to precede the act. This proves to be a bit of an oxymoron considering that one needs to be “open” to allow oneself to be “close” to someone: to let them kiss your neck, hold your hand, smell your hair and share your sheets. You need to trust that they will not curtly nod the 'morning after' and tear to bits that shy web you are weaving of ‘wanting to be with them’. That they will not laugh in the face of your lilting ministrations to get them into your mind, hoping they will like it there. So my mind has an issue with sex.
I find that even in my fantasies of him, I do not covet sex. This surprises me, because I thought that leaving my former self and finally being able to openly acknowledge my Ignostic affiliations would allow me to pursue physical pleasure sans guilt. I am a tad deflated to recognise that it was never guilt that stopped me in the first place and that it was that notion of “closeness”…of sharing that I desperately needed to precede the act. This proves to be a bit of an oxymoron considering that one needs to be “open” to allow oneself to be “close” to someone: to let them kiss your neck, hold your hand, smell your hair and share your sheets. You need to trust that they will not curtly nod the 'morning after' and tear to bits that shy web you are weaving of ‘wanting to be with them’. That they will not laugh in the face of your lilting ministrations to get them into your mind, hoping they will like it there. So my mind has an issue with sex.
My body and virtue are waiting …desperately…for my mind to get over it.
He looks back, and no one appearing behind, asks ‘Why do you run from me?’ and receives the same words as he speaks. He stands still, and deceived by the likeness to an answering voice, says ‘Here, let us meet together’. And, never answering to another sound more gladly, Echo replies ‘Together’, and to assist her words comes out of the woods to put her arms around his neck, in longing.
In the past few months I have deliberated myself into oblivion. I have tried to find a sense of ‘certainty’ in attraction and lust. I have used, reused and discarded everything from ‘Fallibilism’ to ‘Determinism’ to ‘Fatalism’ to ‘Solipsism’ to ‘Agathism’ and have stumbled back upon Nihilism, a position I have major qualms starting from in the first place. It is unpleasant recognising that one is a ultimately a masochist.
It leads to…desperation.
Much of my state is exacerbated by the fact that I have been reading Leonard Cohen, Simone De Beauvoir, Ovid and Jorge Louis Borges in tandem. I particularly enjoy the latter in ‘The House of Asterion’ opening with “I know they accuse me of arrogance and perhaps of misanthropy, and perhaps of madness. Such accusations (for which I shall exact punishment in due time) are derisory. It is true that I never leave my house but it is also true that its doors (whose number is infinite) are open day and night…” But each offers only a corner of caprice, nothing concrete for me to define this need or take charge of my deepening affections. I suppose it was a tad naïve of me to think I could finally find the convenient corner of philosophy to dump ‘unrequited love’ in and be done with it.
He looks back, and no one appearing behind, asks ‘Why do you run from me?’ and receives the same words as he speaks. He stands still, and deceived by the likeness to an answering voice, says ‘Here, let us meet together’. And, never answering to another sound more gladly, Echo replies ‘Together’, and to assist her words comes out of the woods to put her arms around his neck, in longing.
In the past few months I have deliberated myself into oblivion. I have tried to find a sense of ‘certainty’ in attraction and lust. I have used, reused and discarded everything from ‘Fallibilism’ to ‘Determinism’ to ‘Fatalism’ to ‘Solipsism’ to ‘Agathism’ and have stumbled back upon Nihilism, a position I have major qualms starting from in the first place. It is unpleasant recognising that one is a ultimately a masochist.
It leads to…desperation.
Much of my state is exacerbated by the fact that I have been reading Leonard Cohen, Simone De Beauvoir, Ovid and Jorge Louis Borges in tandem. I particularly enjoy the latter in ‘The House of Asterion’ opening with “I know they accuse me of arrogance and perhaps of misanthropy, and perhaps of madness. Such accusations (for which I shall exact punishment in due time) are derisory. It is true that I never leave my house but it is also true that its doors (whose number is infinite) are open day and night…” But each offers only a corner of caprice, nothing concrete for me to define this need or take charge of my deepening affections. I suppose it was a tad naïve of me to think I could finally find the convenient corner of philosophy to dump ‘unrequited love’ in and be done with it.
That’s probably the Echo in me.
He runs from her, and running cries ‘Away with these encircling hands! May I die before what’s mine is yours.'
She answers, only ‘What’s mine is yours’
He runs from her, and running cries ‘Away with these encircling hands! May I die before what’s mine is yours.'
She answers, only ‘What’s mine is yours’
