seeing that saves

on getting to know things better

Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell, Iona

You can ask me and Rishi Dear Bear questions here :)

The weather in London was exceptionally nice. When I came back, the weather in SF was also warm and lovely. I put on sheer dresses and layered cotton cardigans over them. I had new sneakers, loafers that looked good with semi-transparent black socks. Years ago I had started fixating on objects as a way to take my mind off my life. The right vintage belt that would sit low on my hips or the right cream-colored pleated Junya Watanabe skirt was easier to contemplate than romance or work. Objects could be Right or Wrong. It was easy for me to isolate their quality and put adjectives to the beauty I saw or didn’t see in them. I could make a binary decision on whether to purchase an object or let it go.

That used to be the relationship I had with novels. I read during every class, every year of school. I read at night with my Nokia flip phone flashlight until my brain squeaked to a stop. I read at recess, shivering during the colder months in Surrey, back pressed to the textured wall. Books were a place for me to temporarily deposit my consciousness and retrieve it upon completion. They were so much more pleasurable than being in my own mind. I was a hungry reader, not a discerning reader. I wanted more, all the time.

I started trying to write a novel because I so loved novels and the solace they provided me. It is obvious in hindsight that doing so would fundamentally change the way I related to books. All of a sudden, I started paying attention to how the magic trick was done. And once I started, I couldn’t stop. Seeing didn’t diminish my pleasure per se, but it took away my blind appreciation.

Ever since I started matchmaking, the phrase you don’t get high off your own supply has been going around and around in my head. Being a matchmaker creates a very technical awareness of love and of people that is definitively opposed to the experience of actually being in love. It’s like doing audio engineering for a concert vs screaming your lungs out to the song. I imagine it’s very similar to the experience of running a vintage store vs just being a consumer—you’re not thinking about how the Pucci miniskirt will be perfect for your vacation to Greece, you’re thinking about how to price your clothes to sell. Knowledge inevitably affects enjoyment, even as it deepens it.

All of this, of course, is a great analogy for relationships. In the beginning, you meet someone you like and you’re just completely overwhelmed by the experience of them. How they talk, how beautiful they are, how miraculous it is that they exist. Then you get to know them and you start to see their flaws. And then you start to put it all together—this is why they have this habit, this is why they’re neurotic in this particular way, this is how they use their phone. You think you know it all, and then they do something that utterly surprises you, and then you think: maybe I don’t know them at all.

In the beginning, there’s an almost anesthetic quality to finding something you really enjoy. You throw yourself into it, it takes you out of yourself. You stop thinking. And then as your relationship with it deepens, you gain a new consciousness that isn’t purely pleasurable. It’s mixed: both bitter and sweet. That knowledge is the price for deeper intimacy with the object of your affections.

Not everyone enjoys that knowledge. Writers are exceptional at romanticizing pain, but I wonder if they’re exceptional at romanticizing commitment. When I was a kid, I was so dismayed by the way all the adults I knew talked about love. I decided they must be bad at it, and I would be better. These days, I’m certainly aware that I’m no better than anyone at love, but I now conceive of the real battle as enjoying the experience. From Henrik’s wonderful essay:

Love is the thing we turned our resonance into through years of conversation and care. Just as this essay is the result of me sitting down at my desk four nights in a row after putting the kids to sleep, writing though I feel too tired. Showing up. Making space for the love of words to come. Letting something grow.

Love is like this for me. It is not about attraction or good feelings or needing someone. It is a way of showing up for others with care and curiosity. It is about doing what Johanna did to the people she met in the street, when she attended to them with open curiosity. Except you do it for several years instead of a few minutes. And the person you do it to returns the favor.

*

Many years ago, I dated someone who seemed almost constitutionally incapable of being happy. Because I loved him, I wanted to make him happy. But he couldn’t accept me the way I was. I thought that if I changed myself we could be happy together. He was like: I don’t think that will work.

Though I still don’t agree with my ex about, well, almost anything, I now think that he was right about me. I can’t be contained and I respond extremely poorly to attempts to contain me. I’m frequently embarrassed by my own wildness. It’s taken me a long time to start eating my shadow. And the thing that made it possible, of course, was being seen and still being loved. Though I don’t like to—don’t let myself—be seen.

For a long time, I didn’t think that anyone who really understood me could find me sympathetic. But you taught me that was a self-serving belief and, well, wrong. Just as I see how other people are flawed and love them anyway, you do the same for me. Even when I’m exposed and ashamed, you don’t look away.

*

Discomfort is the price of intimacy. Though what I feel for you is simple and pure, you are not. You are complicated in the way I am complicated. But I can’t and won’t reject your complexity.

I used to read novels for nothing but joy. Now I find myself dissecting them in my mind and sometimes it takes me out of the experience. I’m more self-conscious. But I still read constantly. I used to look to books for answers, and now I’m looking for something more subtle. Company, maybe, or relief.

When you really understand something, it’s hard to have illusions. But I’ve found something better than what I’d imagined.