"Splinters" - November 14th, 2020

i want to have everyone's memories in my brain instead of having to rely on stories of them, thats love maybe

people successfully get really close to each other & smush their foreheads together, & discover this doesnt satisfy the mutual interest of putting each others memories in each others brains thus mitigating their conditions as splintered beings, & is a failure by the most idealistic standards... but they have fun in the process & thereafter ?

"Loving a Walk" - August 22nd, 2021

it takes some effort for me to love a mundane thing like a walk to the store. it's always easier to retract into my head, close my eyes & mull over things. a demented ingrained pull toward coasting in stasis, rather than indulging the eustress of allowing this or that thing to be special. i guess it introduces stakes: once i attach to the beautiful walk, returning home becomes a small loss. i can try to equalize that by loving the inside of my house just the same. unless that redesignates a certain level of love as the new "coasting in stasis," which is to say: love inequalities create stakes which create meaning

"Energy" - September 21st, 2021

i've noticed that i really really value when i feel any particularly distinct energy from a person, but if i feel like i'm being obligated to spend too much time with them it's like the energy envelops my whole everything & i start to resent that the infinite potential of my personal world is being squashed into just that single energy. i suspect this may be part of why some married couples come to resent each other. i guess real love is contentment with drowning indefinitely in a particular energy

"Motto" - September 30th, 2021

maybe "love is love" is a capable motto as long as a majority of the population meaningfully understands what love is. it probably becomes less capable in proportion to how distorted the general cultural perception of love becomes. assuming it's possible for anyone to meaningfully understand what love is in the first place. maybe not, in which case the motto is sort of meaningless aside from implying some other phrases. the motto could be these other phrases instead. "love, whatever it happens to be in each case where it may be existing, is harmless," or, "please don't be an utter sociopath"

"Continuity" - October 15th, 2021

i want to try to stop publishing things & going on about things unless i feel at least a glimmer of an abstract sense of continuity between the thing & the periodic occasions that i meaningfully picture myself being loved or expressing love - which is to say: an enormous amount of things & temperaments which i can either get out of my computer or put into it are in a fundamentally separate sphere from the experience of love. things i would categorize in this way might be references to cryptocurrency, the translation of my disdain for some ongoing cultural phenomena into a parody or ironic expression of it, attempts to sardonically deconstruct anything at all, ironic references to pornography or weird sexual deviances that are chosen as a common target of ridicule,

"Money" - November 30th, 2021

it sure is horrifying how the act of taking care of people we love is largely rerouted to the possession of money! something i find odd is that it seems to ironically reinforce the feeling that getting a business degree is a major act of love, even from the standpoint of hating all of it! this person was willing to capitulate to the circumstances & sell their soul just to provide for you? what greater sacrifice could there be?! it's love! but love is forced to be it! horrifying!

"Drunk" - December 24th, 2021

"disidentification, so what does it matter," desire playing out disinhibited in comfy isolation versus conforming to the certainty of a given reality, great sadness because one would like idealistically not to even have to CHOOSE (this choice being quite meaningful) to love another but for it to be outright irresistible. the irony. there is HARDLY any ambiguity or confusion about love - it SEEMS like, if there is sufficient honesty, all the inherent contradictions & absurdities present themselves in any given occasion of it

"Structure" - December 31st, 2021

the structure of romantic affiliation, established as an excuse to enact the unstructured human animal playfulness that should, to the extent that anyone is comfortable, just flow freely across & through social boundaries? rolls eyes... structure, which has a compartmentalizing effect, being imposed on the uncompartmentalized ideal of universal silly human friendship... rolls eyes!

"Stupidity" - January 1st, 2022

i would hypothetically like to feel madly in love with a person, just once... because i am stupid. well, i have skipped straight to a very stable & unassuming & asserted-to-be-indefinite love - often likened to an elderly couple on rocking chairs. i bet some people would be so grateful to just skip straight to here! i am often afraid of the idea that i am not in love - that i am desperate enough to retain a friendship that i am willing to don a tether of romantic exclusivity - forever precluding any hypothetical realization of the being-madly-in-love that i want (that i want because i am stupid)

"Holistic" - February 5th, 2022

i can understand a person romantically desiring another person, & finding it too painful to not have those feelings reciprocated, but i think i am arriving at an understanding that i have a personal incompatibility with that mode of engagement. i am fond of an alternative approach:

someone put forward the notion of a person in a relationship hypothetically presenting the requirement, for their comfort in being in the relationship, that the two remain capable of being friends in the event of a breakup

but i don't think it's a requirement that has to be imposed, as much as an initial bellwether that is merely observed, & which informs the palatability of a romantic relationship in the first place... a bellwether of a general, underlying, unwavering platonic care & sense of being valued in a holistic capacity, not just in a romantic capacity that would override those other capacities if it wasn't satisfied. this may positively display the intensity of the romantic capacity or negatively display the weakness of the other capacities, but the result is the same

it seems pessimistic to wholly accept the cultural trope of the "resented ex" rather than striving to maintain beneficial social relationships anywhere that it might be remotely possible - relationships which would ideally transcend categories of love

"Gratitude" - February 5th, 2022

i am grateful for the experience of being able to have sprawling & analytical & un-ego-clouded conversations about love & relationships even if on the more direct experiential level they can be stressful & heartache

"Collaborate" - April 11th, 2022

i want someone who will collaborate on the ambitious pursuit of holistic sweetness not just compartmentalize their sweetness to me, no actually i want someone with whom to perform the simple act of making the pursuit cease to even be ambitious

"Immerse" - May 25th, 2022

privately immerse oneself so thoroughly in a fantasy of being cathartically loved that it brings into focus the realistically productive perspective of how imperative it really is to excommunicate from one's concern all things sufficiently petty & incongruent with that feeling. derive real betterment as if it had been real

"Experimental" - June 25th, 2022

experimental possible quality of true love: you feel like hardly anything in your world deserves to exist in the same reality as the love between you & whoever, with its particular character. that many, perhaps most things are filthy in comparison

"Interrogation" - July 1st, 2022

i believe in the notion that love is heavily motivated by one person seeing in another person some quality (or qualities) that they feel they lack in themselves, & because of this i think that any time someone tells me that they love me i will have the immediate temptation to ask them up front, "do you see one or more qualities in me that you feel you lack in yourself?" i don't think i would actually do it though, because it would feel... i don't know, invasive, maybe sort of accusatory? or mocking? or like it's foisting that particular conception of love on them in an attempt to pry out some kind of underlying secret right from the get-go?

"Two Memories" - July 13th, 2022

i have a significant interpersonal memory that, to me, represents love akin to watching my cranky chihuahua meet another chihuahua & undergo an immediate temperamental shift to a kind of silent, plucky interest & curiosity... two people of a same "type" who can't recognize that "type" in themselves until they see its qualities assembled in another person, leading them to discover an aspect of themselves in the same moment that they discover another person with which to relate about it

something that represents a really effortless sense of equality, neutrality, levelness, evenness, sameness, naturalness. significant ease & relief on those terms. something that doesn't aim to be enrapturing but to express a tailored & modest positivity that may ironically turn out to be enrapturing on the grounds of that modesty... all much simpler in practice than the length of these two paragraphs suggests, basically

i have another significant interpersonal memory that, to me, represents love rooted in a kind of perverse desire to feel possessed, & does aim to be enrapturing, maybe

"Endearment" - July 29th, 2022

there's a specific common term of endearment that i've inexplicably elevated in my head a lot to where i wouldn't call someone it unless i really really felt like i really really meant something with it. i won't tell which it is here, that'd feel like watering down the idea of it maybe...

"Lens" - July 29th, 2022

i could imagine someone showing me one of their favorite films, & me not liking it that much, & then someone else showing me one of their favorite films, which happens to be the same film, & i like it that time just because it's not really the same movie when viewed through the lens of that person's act of enjoying, the way they talk about it, & just generally who they are & what they associate with... from this maybe i could generalize to some conjecture like "maybe with someone i love i could love the whole world as seen by them"

"Solitude" - July 31st, 2022

i feel like the only person in the world who is as devoted as i feel to the inherent value of something like the shadow of a window frame cast on a ceiling by a streetlight in a dark, quiet room

like i should be allowed to spend as much time as i want in any building i want, because i'm the only person who'd really get the value of that! (joking a bit)

if my friend hadn't booked that particular airbnb at the end of june, i wouldn't even know the way that that orange light streamed in through those blinds, across that arrangement of walls. i'm still thinking about that. it was important to me

it's like... i keep thinking i've found someone, but then they can't even appreciate this. or worse, reflexively do some kind of bathetic distancing from the idea that something as mundane as a room could actually mean something to them. & to me that speaks to some kind of divide

being around people is draining, & unpleasantly distances me from myself, insofar as it obliges me to temporarily forget all of this in favor of some gratingly mundane, mercenary, "casual" (above all else everything has to be so "casual") style of processing events & spaces

having to exist as a social being. having to have all the true, wordless qualities of events & spaces supplanted by their constant refraction through language

for as lonely as i tend to feel, i guess i really really do relish solitude. & what i want with respect to my loneliness is at least one person i am... similar enough to that i could share solitude with them, in a sense

but not in the sense of mutual escapism in the same room, i think! that doesn't feel like shared solitude, it feels like shared isolation

& it's not that, if we were in that room with the shadow of the window frame, that we would have to stay quiet, as much as whatever we said would feel like the preservation of the solitude... because, well, it would just be "right," in the real "love" way that is useless to bother trying to articulate

"Definitions" - August 2nd, 2022

two definitions of love that seem to conflict (in a way that evokes that old pedantic question of whether a selfless act is really selfless if it feels good for one to be selfless):

one. you have to give to someone but it is an extremely merciful phenomenon where you feel their joy & relief in equal measure because you love them, so it wasn't really your loss in any sense because it was love, it was equalizing

two. the commitment of giving to them even if there is something more self-serving that you could be doing - something that really still calls to you - isn't blown away by the equalizing joy of the first definition. maybe you don't feel viscerally good but antsy to be tending to something else as you hold & comfort the person in question. the willingness to still care for them even in the absence of a visceral emotional return shows that it is love - setting yourself aside for them

i guess the actual definition may be a sequence of experiences that alternates between these two forms

i guess definition two is equalized by the assurance that they'll be there when you need them too, even if they have to set themselves aside. but i have never felt like i needed anyone. so if definition two were definitive then i would not be able to love maybe

"Collusion" - August 12th, 2022

thinking only about a person resting their head, in an indivisibly, unaestheticizably mammalian sense that through these words won't get swallowed by someone else's head & decorated into something it's not, that these words only skirt the outline of because it's a wordless action, not a statement. a person getting to rest their head in a sunbeam

coming to see a person resting their head on another person not as an activity pre-defined in its whole (which gives it a sense of being a prescribed ritual) but as just a very frequently occurring dynamic collusion of the two wholly separate, independent factors of people liking to rest their heads on what is available & people who like each other liking to be close to each other

"Boundaries" - August 23rd, 2022

internal reframing of kissing as not the ephemeral acquisition of an experience of kissing but a way that a loss is achieved, a casting away or subduing of something otherwise omnipresent & perennial, a barrier, a holding-back

"Update" - August 24th, 2022

i want love

"Real" - August 27th, 2022

i want everyone everywhere to be as real as possible but i also want there to be room for someone i love to display a qualitative-more-realness so maybe i want everyone to be just a tiny little bit unreal

"Stakes" - December 25th, 2022

the need to see & feel that one is tangibly provably not alone (in the way that love offers) feels like it springs inherently just from the basic terms on which human beings exists, in the same way that the inevitability of death does, the way that there is just no way out & no way you could have existed without the question being posed to you, & this is why true love stakes i think can feel practically as drastic as life or death ones & in some cases provoke such agony (not saying anything new but just singing what feels like the song of being human because i'm human so i get to)

"+/-" - January 5th, 2023

loving someone for all that they are not, just as much as for all that they are

which is to say, loving someone for their somehow being an exception to a general . ,rot . ,decay . ,that you can identify in practically everything else, just as much as you love them for their actual qualities which seem to be the more visible & typical locus of love

which is to say, loving someone in terms of a cooperation between negative & positive qualities. which is to say, loving someone in terms of all that you would like to see destroyed, as well as all that you would like to see flourish

which is to say, loving someone for all their specificity, just as much as you love them for their basic decency of hardly reflecting to you omnipresent sicknesses

loving someone for there just being nothing wrong, which feels demanding in the abstract, like a demand for perfection, but when it actually appears, on its own terms, natural in its nothing-wrongness, it's just simple. there's nothing wrong, there's just simply nothing wrong

loving someone for this negative nothing-wrongness as the clean slate on which their positive specificity qualities flourish