Love III
The parsimonious night warden knows exactly how little fuel the fire needs to keep burning. Sometimes he pities the embers. Ash-streaked, panting with the wind, they seem ready, desperate even, to give up their glow. The night is warm, but an insensitive decorum, or else boredom, makes him reach for a handful of twigs. Is there anything more helpless (and thus any better analogy for love) than a flame? It must eat whatever it is fed. It cannot become free without becoming frightful. And so we in turn pity our own feelings. We guard them. We make a secret of what kindling will burn us most bright, going so far as to reject it when offered. We fear becoming lazily tended. The greatest trust is in making oneself predictable.
The famous grammarian, of all people, wrote that falling in love was like driving a sports car—exhilarating the first time, better than average forever, but at some point you know how it’s going to feel. Then again, the only times when I’ve driven a sports car were when someone infinitely richer than I let me borrow theirs for an evening, and the exhilaration always came in part from an offhand, quasi-indecipherable comment they made about what would and what wouldn’t be covered by the insurance. Complacency has its own risks.
She wasn’t interested in the manners and signs of young couples, a field she considered too light for serious study. Instead her attention fell on older pairs: how much intimacy still silkened their voices; whether they held hands or walked single file down the street, one dragging behind the other like a squeaky-wheeled suitcase; if they smiled when the other offered them a tissue, and whether it was a clean one, or as yellow and wrinkled as their faces. She wanted to see what proofs revealed that they still bothered to send ripples across the placid ocean of time, insensibility, and routine that separated them. She was preparing herself for her later years, when she would use this data to determine whether the surface disturbances she saw were genuine pulses from her beloved’s heart or mere byproducts of the tides of time. One scene that especially stuck with her was two older parents walking down the street, the trim, hawkish father arm-in-arm with their teenage daughter, the dowdy mother huffing and puffing with a bag of groceries behind them. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she teased me. In the end, we got to know our fears better than our loves. Our fingers were willing, but the water had become terrifyingly cold.
Like with all feelings, one is usually feeling something else, but sometimes it does come over you, like awe but without the distance, like your soul kneeling while you stand, or standing tall while you lounge in bed. It’s good to say “I love you” in these moments, but limiting ourselves to the narrow truth undermines the essence of that truth, because it makes the words seem like a reward. So we say it all the time. Usually, what we’re saying is, I felt it recently enough to be pretty sure I’m not lying.
Acknowledging the limits upon imagination and fortune that such lists can impose, a friend once recommended that I try writing down all the things that I might want out of a love relationship. I pushed out three pages before I started feeling nauseous—I realized that what I had written so far was, unwittingly, an idealized version of myself. In general I’d say my affections are insufficiently appreciative, in both senses of the word. I can’t enjoy an excellent book without wanting to assimilate something of its style, without, indeed, feeling that it has stolen something from me just by existing. From one girlfriend I learned the creative impulse, from another knife skills and a certain kind of emotional patience. Recently in Skopje I was approached by a man from Syria asking for money for a ride down to the Greek border—he’d recently tried crossing into Croatia, but he’d been caught and deported down the chain of GDP per capita. When I gave him some money, he admitted he didn’t know what the local currency was worth. Oh to be so forsaken…in some Macedonia! I had a rental car. I offered to drive him. On the way, we discussed love, among other things. I said, “If it wasn’t for having known her, I wouldn’t have offered you a ride. You know what I mean?” Though the tricky thing is that, for better or worse, the more ways you learn to love, the handier you become with them, the easier it is to give love without feeling it.
I sometimes goaded her, against all her blessed better instincts, to find fault in others. As I suspected, this faculty, rusty though it was from disuse, was possessed of a natural talent, and it was exciting to see her imitate so-and-so’s sycophantic smile, or describe the cowardice of a friend she’d long since forgiven. I don’t know if anyone really seeks in love a roof under which they face no judgement, if there are people so starved for calm. For me it’s not enough to be favored; I need to make sure that the eye is sufficiently discerning. I don’t see this as a sign of low self-regard. I already know the verdict. I just want it read with eloquence.
“I feel immense sorrow just knowing it’s possible for two people who loved as much as we did to have caused one another so much pain.” How many more times in my life will I have to type out that sentiment? Sometimes, as I’m falling asleep, alone in bed, they return to me, the faces of everyone I’ve loved, stars appearing against the twilight of my mind, their expressions frozen at the apex of affection. They aren’t gone – they’re all here – they must, they simply must be in reach of one ambitious morning. What do you call the opposite of a panic attack? Something equally unfruitful. She said, not without a hint of melancholy, “You’re attracted to people.” This judgment she put like an oriflamme into my hands—she wanted to measure how judiciously I held it. Is it fair to say of an emperor that what he has is just maps? If only at night, if only alone, I will allow myself to feel more expansive for having loved my way into all this territory.