dialectical damage

Susan Rothenberg, Butterfly, 1976

Molly Donovan: “Susan Rothenberg's intuitive approach to painting led her one day in 1973 to spontaneously sketch the image of a horse—a subject that would preoccupy her until 1980. She later recalled, "I had been doing abstract paintings, using a central dividing line so as to keep the painting on the surface and call attention to the canvas. . . . The horse was just something that happened on both sides of my line. The image held the space and the line kept the picture flat."

Two questions for you guys: 1) I’m gonna be in Europe for the next two weeks… any kind of writing that you’d like to see? Travelogue? Food recommendations? Random musings? 2) I was wondering if we could do a Modern Love type of thing on the Substack… like, reader-submitted short essays about friendships and romantic relationships? Any interest?

On the walk a girl asked me why I wrote about relationships and I said it was because relationships, like clothes, are things you can’t avoid. Unless you’re a hermit, you come in contact with people every single day, and the decisions you make around who you like and dislike, who you keep close and avoid, who you love and how you treat them become the foundation of your life. Everyone has a philosophy on relationships, even if they can’t articulate it. If you’re good at relationships, you don’t need to be good at literally anything else; if you’re bad at relationships, you will never be happy, no matter what other virtues you possess or what you achieve in the world. Put that way, it sounds scary, and I’ve always approached relationships with a certain kind of terror.

Being in relationship with another person often involves a clash of styles. Like, someone else might have a similar philosophy on relationships, but they probably don’t have the exact same approach. And relationships are inherently a two-person game, so suddenly you’re subject to someone’s process—how they communicate, how they spend their time, who they like, what they value. And you have to decide if you like it, and more than that, are capable of adapting to it.

I used to believe that you should love someone for who they are. I still believe that, but with the caveat that I think that you should also love how they handle things. Is the distinction meaningful? Maybe it’s obvious—as a matchmaker, a lot of people certainly tell me they want to date someone whose judgment they respect. Of course, someone’s judgment can be broken down into a million little things. What’s their prose style? Do they talk slow or fast, do they think slow or fast? Are they confrontational? Are they direct or indirect? How do they talk when they’re angry? How do they apologize? How do they give feedback? Are they expressive or contained?

I mentioned offhand to a friend recently that I could never date one of our mutual friends. He has a habit—I’m gonna make it up for privacy—something like, he believes in only buying plane tickets when he’s already at the airport. My friend couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get past that. And my take was basically that it’s not about the habit itself, it’s about the way that it’s representative of a million other things about this person and their style of doing things and how they live. About their relationship with time, anxiety, control. The great thing about friends is that you aren’t exposed to every single downside of their style and general conduct—like, to some extent it doesn’t really matter if they’re messy or clean, if they’re avoidant or anxious, if they’re a good romantic partner or only an okay one, because you’re not affected by it. But if you’re dating someone and living with them, you are impacted by everything they do.

Often I wish I could approach romantic relationships with the loving detachment I bring to friendships. Like, sometimes you’re on the phone with a friend and they’ll be like, “I’m considering doing [The Worst Idea Ever]” and you’ll be like, “Yeah, I don’t think you should do that, but good luck if you do!” But that would necessarily be a rejection of the merging that occurs in romantic love, where what they do to themselves becomes partially something they do to you.

I keep thinking about this Gillian Rose line from Love’s Work: “There is no democracy in any love relation: only mercy. To be at someone's mercy is dialectical damage: they may be merciful and they may be merciless.” Love necessarily involves exposure and damage. But another word for damage might be change, or expansion. Falling in love with someone’s style is not the same thing as believing it’s the one most compatible to yours. It’s more frustrating than that, and more magical.

first days of summer

"self-portrait at 28"

HOUSEKEEPING: We’re doing a version of Bookbear Express matchmaking that pairs people based on their three favorite Substacks and closing it in a couple of days. We need more girls!! If you are interested you can fill it out here (if you are any other gender you will be waitlisted for the next round).

Nabokov to Vera: “It’s pouring, the trees are getting greener before my eyes, I love you. I’m almost afraid of the intensity of this happiness.” In a dream I showed you the poem I wrote for you and I was embarrassed. It’s been so many years since I last wrote poetry, and the writing felt like an opening. I don’t understand how I could possibly be wrong about the feeling I had when I met you, which was calm like still water. Like the soles of my feet touching the deepest part of the pool on the first days of summer. Green and white tiles and chlorinated water burning in my nostrils.

Early afternoon: the sun pours aqueous through my skylight. I light the carrot-shaped candle at my dinner table. For years now, this is how I hypnotize myself into writing. It occurs to me that loving you feels remarkably similar to working on the novel, which is to say it requires extreme patience, and at times has induced despair. In fact, I hate talking about you in the exact same way I used to hate talking about the book, and am carefully optimistic to others in the exact same manner. Turns out that’s the way I sound when I’m in the middle of an extended project.

Sometimes I feel like you punish me for my abject romanticism by methodically demonstrating how different your values are. And then I’m not allowed to be annoyed at you because it feels like kicking a dog in the face. You’re so well-intentioned, so ardent, so sweet. I know I deserve to suffer because I made you fall in love with me.

I threw out all the decaying flowers and kept the two bright yellow chrysanthemums in the vase. My friend told me love is supposed to be easy, feel easy. At Pearl Spa one time the Korean lady pushed down so hard on my back I started crying, and then laughing because I liked the pain so much. David Berman:

I walked out to the hill behind our house
which looks positively Alaskan today,
and it would be easier to explain this
if I had a picture to show you,
but I was with our young dog
and he was running through the tall grass
like running through the tall grass
is all of life together,
until a bird calls or he finds a beer can
and that thing fills all the space in his head.
You see,
his mind can only hold one thought at a time
and when he finally hears me call his name
he looks up and cocks his head.
For a single moment
my voice is everything:
Self-portrait at 28.

I watched The Materialists last week and enjoyed it. I found Pedro Pascal charmless, but I suppose that’s who he’s playing. It’s a shame that I’ll never be the character that represents safety in a movie. It seemed implausible that Dakota Johnson lives on a salary of 80k in New York City and wears that particular Doen dress to the wedding. I see why she ended up with Chris Evans (very charming), despite him proposing to her over halal cart food. The movie made me think about how being a matchmaker is a very romantic and very cynical job at once. “Math and magic,” like a reader said.

clothes store memories

HOUSEKEEPING: We’re doing a version of Bookbear Express matchmaking that pairs people based on their three favorite Substacks. It’s free, you should participate, and you can fill it out here :) In particular we are looking for more girls!!!!

I loved the loft we rented in Williamsburg from two gallerists who had bought property in the 90s and become rich off it. S didn’t like it because there were no doors and none of the furniture was comfortable. I didn’t like Williamsburg and spent all of the time I wasn’t working wandering around Greenpoint browsing vintage stores. Today I’m wearing the slouchy blue cardigan I bought from Shop 86 in 2022 (looks like Gucci, the shopgirl said); yesterday I wore the plaid Burberry skirt. I can’t tell you exactly how many months I lived in Williamsburg but I remember the black Rachel Comey dress I got off Rent the Runway that year for my birthday and the heart-shaped choker from the MNZ store.

Clothes store memories: they are markers of where I’ve been and where I am now, what I kept and what stopped working. I sold the Ganni rainboots that Bella Hadid made popular that year on Depop because they were so uncomfortable. I still have the silky green overalls I got from Malin Landaeus; I still long for the green and white dress I lost in Paris and couldn’t replace. We were moving constantly in those pandemic years. Being as absent-minded as I am, I lost a lot of clothes.

When S moved back to SF, he took several boxes of my clothes out of storage, and I sorted through them all. It was interesting to see how my taste had changed since 2020. I’d gone through an all-consuming athleisure obsession that coincided with a temporary interest in weightlifting, and then a period that can best be described as “discovering SSENSE and doing entirely too much.” I was wearing these bizarre Eckhaus Latta sweatpants and rotating through way too many oversized sweatshirts. There was a pink Ganni beret that lasted two days max. There was the brief love affair with Kith. I had red hair for a while, and it did not suit me.

In those years, my desperate desire to figure out what I wanted out of work and love was reflected in the experimentation I did with my wardrobe. I’d always liked clothes, but in my teens and early 20s I didn’t have the self-knowledge or presence of mind to to really learn how I wanted to dress. It took a long time, I guess, for me to get comfortable with myself.

*

Some of my friends went to Peru and did ayahuasca, or went on 40-day meditation retreats to find themselves. Instead of doing that I thought obsessively about what I wore. S was so confused by all the packages arriving. It was clear I was seeking, but what was I seeking?

What I wanted was always a feeling. I was willing to hold out for it long before I could articulate what I was even searching for. I’ve always believed that I would know it when you see it. Like when I walked into Colbo a couple of years ago and tried on these men’s Levi’s and thought—I guess I do like jeans. Some things just work, and they are so easy.

If you’re like me, when you don’t know how to sort out your life, you believe that a pair of Prada derbies from Poshmark will rescue you. Well, they didn’t deliver salvation, but they delivered something—after many years of experimentation, I now feel like my relationship to my sense of style is simple and uncomplicated. I know what I like and what looks good on me. I sell or donate the things I don’t wear. I know that clothes won’t save me, but they soothe me still, and I think they always will.

*

These days how I dress is pretty uninteresting. V-neck sweaters, midi skirts. I like Issey Miyake and Dries van Noten and Comme des Garcons and Lemaire. I still really love 90s Prada. I have precisely one pair of sunglasses that look good on me. The idea of going on a long journey and trying lots of things only to find that you’re essentially sort of boring and nondescript is funny to me—I remember arguing with a boyfriend I had in my late teens because he thought the way I dressed was too provocative—but also seems honest.

I keep thinking about this Sheila Heti piece Celina told me about—Should Artists Shop or Stop Shopping?

Most of us buy to project something about ourselves to the world of people who witness us, or to tell ourselves that we are the sort of people we want to be. But Sara’s time-rich consumer activity is different. It is different because the things she buys never seem expensive: a postcard with the Twin Towers on it; dishwashing gloves just the right colour of red. They are never expensive because she is the only one who wants them. Things that are expensive are the things we all want. If we all had the time to want what we in particular want—to figure out what those wants might be, then spend our time finding them in stores or online—we would cut down our discretionary spending by so much... But we have other things to do. We are not artists. Being not-artists, we buy what others buy, and spend so much more than we should.

Whenever something costs a lot, it’s because everyone wants it. The reason you want it is because everyone wants it. And you want it because it costs a lot—you want it more because it costs a lot—because its costing a lot is a sign that it is wanted by many people. The fact that you can afford it and others cannot makes you feel like you are part of an elite circle that not only wants it (like everyone does) but can afford it (like only some).

To turn yourself into an artist, stop buying things that cost a lot. Buy the things that other people don’t want—that only you want, because it’s the right shade of green.

In the piece, Sheila Heti talks about how writing is similar to shopping—both are about selecting. The same impulse that drives my writing drives my interest in clothes. Just as words are inescapable, clothes are inescapable—no matter what you do, you’re going to get up in the morning and put on something.

I still remember my favorite pink dress from when I was six. It was a tiered pink dress with a strawberry motif. Then and now, it felt like girlhood distilled. I guess I could buy myself an adult version of that dress—from Molly Goddard, or Simone Rocha.

Potential adult version of that dress

I guess part of why clothes are enticing to me is because, like books, they are all about knowledge. Who makes what when. And what are the references? Recently at a party a female friend and I fell into conversation and a guy friend of mine remarked something like, “Ava, I didn’t know you liked fashion.” I felt weirdly happy hearing that and it made me realize that my interest in clothes, like my interest in books, feels both public and personal. They signify an interiority that I prefer to dole out at will. The moment I tried on that pair of Rachel Comey pants with the weird zipper that catalyzed the beginning of my adult experimentation with clothes felt just as meaningful, and moving as the first time I read Anna Karenina as a teenager. They were moments that marked a new kind of consciousness.

who do you go to for advice?

The idea that I’m the “average of the five people I spend the most time with” feels self-aggrandizing.

Ragnar Sandberg, Resting women, 1933.

HOUSEKEEPING: We’re doing a version of Bookbear Express matchmaking that pairs people based on their three favorite Substacks. It’s free, you should participate, and you can fill it out here :) Check out the site, Sam made it and I think it’s very cute!!

The idea that I’m the “average of the five people I spend the most time with” feels self-aggrandizing. I think my friends are discernibly better than I am, and that means I’m doing something right. The people I love most are wildly smart, but they also have a moral character that I aspire to—I see them being kind and forgiving at the exact moments I’m tempted to be snarky and mean.

As a matchmaker, people often articulate to me their desire for a partner whose judgment they trust. It’s easy to know what you’re looking for when you trust your friends, and the way they make decisions big and small. I’ve learned that it’s impossible to be truly intimate with someone when you’re privately judging their decisions while politely nodding along. I decided last year that I would always say what I really thought as tactfully as possible. Maybe not three times, but at least once. When I lie to my friends, even merely through withholding my true opinion, I’m making a decision for them instead of letting them choose.

We all have blind spots. People who love and understand you can point things out to you that you don’t see. I find talking to Claude useful for the same reason—having the facts distilled and reflected back to you can help you accept reality. We all think we know ourselves the best, but having too much context can actually distort your perspective on the situation.

To some extent, your ability to be in a healthy romantic relationship is predicated on your ability to be in healthy platonic relationships. To be fair, a lot of people have the latter without the former, but I think relatively few have the former without the latter. Friends and family are what enable our partners to be a lot to us without having to be everything.

Everyone agrees with this conceptually, but most people have relatively little interest in living it. Making friends is impossible as an adult. It’s impossible, I don’t have time. I just don’t connect with anyone in the city I live in. We’re taught that we should work hard to get into and sustain romantic relationships, but friendships are supposed to be automatic and effortless. If you have to try, aren’t you doing something wrong?

Of course, the reason why most people don’t have friends isn’t because they never made them, but because they lost them over time. Maintenance is always the battle in love and in work. Asking your friends for advice doesn’t just serve you—your vulnerability and trust serve the relationship, as long as you make space to pay it back in kind.

The rewards and challenges of romantic relationships are so much more prominent in our culture than those of friendship. We’re presented with a straightforward narrative: meet the right person, marry them, and you’ll have figured out a major part of life. It’s no wonder that people often neglect close friends or renounce them or a partner. I’m certainly guilty of dropping off the map for long periods of time because I’m preoccupied or conflicted. But friendships can be amazingly robust and consistent, life rafts in times of need—several of my closest friendships are about to hit the 10-year mark, which means they have outlived any romantic relationship I’ve ever been in. My friends have slowly and gently changed me, like water gradually shaping a shoreline.

In the past couple years, I’ve experienced plenty of upheaval and change in my personal and professional life. It’s been amazing to witness the way my friends have held and supported me through it. I am not strange to them: I am familiar, known, and loved.