#9
Hm. The forest is nice. You didn’t know what to expect, especially from yourself, after all this time spent in your own head, but you quickly picked up that the trick is to keep asking questions. Funny, shocking, smart, ridiculous, incredible anecdotes surge right from the hearts of friends in response. It is beautiful to listen to people and see them feel things. It’s nice to be asked questions in return too, and to talk and meet recognition or understanding. You had really feared the anvil of judgment that pulses through your head all day, but it’s not so bad! There are eyes everywhere, and they smile often. Mostly, people are lovely and want love. You miss home often, which is both wonderful and nerve-wracking.
Quite a few friends have concluded of late that dealing with men is simply too much effort, and it’s best to sink into the comfort of female friendships. It’s true—you’ve been doing some housekeeping yourself. But it’s not enough for you to just say, “ugh, men suck”, and move on. That’s too general a statement, and there are nuanced ways in which one can feel hurt. Mostly the spectrum goes from total jerks can hurt you to objectively perfectly nice people can hurt you too (or at least cause significant unease). How to go about things, then? First you must acknowledge the fact that these categories of good and bad don’t mean much to you anymore. Everything is relative. Anything can change at any moment. (How vague and empty these sentences are.) But you’ve been thinking a lot. And you’ve been talking to a lot of friends. The thing you hate the most is entitlement towards another’s time and energy, whether it is intentional or not. You’re thinking of K and G, who are tired of entertaining relations with others in which they simply don’t want to reciprocate, tired of the expectations, and tired of feeling guilty about it. Sweet friend C (gal pal extraordinaire) tells you about the most tender male friendship in his life—how open and freeing and vulnerable and nice it is—and it fills you with hope because you are miserably tired of hearing from beloveds about how miserably tired they are of being an “emotional sponge” for male friends. M used this phrase as you discussed at length the phenomenon of listening without being listened to. In an earlier issue of this newsletter, you’d cited a friend who wants you to just share things with her, and in the two months that have followed, it is transparent to you that no one can be a bottomless receptacle. Dialogue requires at least two willing participants. Imagine the difference between an embrace and a chokehold.
All of this reminds you of Meghana Indurti’s very funny essay, “A Letter of Appreciation for All the Men Who Haven’t Sexually Harassed Me”, especially these lines:
“Fourth, we have James, one of my best friends. James is the alliest of the allies. A guy I can complain to about a catcaller or men on Hinge who send dick pics. James is always sympathetic and shakes his head in disgust, because he would never do that.
In fact, he’s shocked that there are men out there who would do that, because that’s not how his mom raised him to treat women, and there should be more men like him, who know how to actually respect women. And then he usually pauses for me to agree that, yes, there should be more men like him, who actually respect women.”
There’s something within the following sentences from this blog post that strums something in you. You don’t know what it is yet (the question at its heart, though, is “What is love?”)—and perhaps time will tell:
“Blue Valentine also opens with a dog who comes to a bad end. They ask: if loving a dog is too much responsibility where are we headed? Has the imaginary for sociality come down to that measure? Everyone seeks an intimacy of proximity, or indirection, but (as Blue Valentine demonstrates) love demands more than wanting the dog to flourish; it requires knowing when to open the cage and when to keep it closed.”
Entirely in love with these paintings by Hulda Guzman:
Suddenly, graffiti witnessed on a balmy March morning in Mumbai comes to mind. It said, “Stop and smell the roses,” and a dear friend took a picture of it before you headed back, blissfully unaware of what was to come. Today it struck you how rarely you smell flowers unless they have been plucked. When you were little, someone told you that flowers that have been sniffed already can’t be offered to god, and so you never went too close to them because what if someone plucked a flower to offer it in a little temple in their home, without ever knowing that some kid had made it unusable! As your belief in most of these things wanes, you want to smell as many flowers as you can. How can something imaginary possess or stake claim upon the scent of flowers? It baffles you.
Your favourite place on the internet these days is the YouTube channel Recess Therapy, especially videos featuring Dillon, which can be found here, here, and here. Basically.