Citations

Think of the way one per­son can make you feel, also the way that one per­son is only one. Why want that one per­son who is only, after all, one per­son, and why wake up lon­ging for a per­son and fall asleep lon­ging for the same per­son and who knows if anyone else in this is lon­ging ? You don’t know if that one per­son is lon­ging, too.

the over-deter­mi­na­tion of each thing unheld

That per­son who is only one per­son is just as over-deter­mi­ned as any­thing else unheld, over-deter­mi­ned like an ange­lic realm or the com­mune or wha­te­ver else you never get but real­ly want. You hold their face in your face. You see how their face goes from one expres­sion to the other. You ima­gine how you could make their face move bet­ween expres­sions. You ima­gine how if you held their face in your eyes how that face would look when held. You think about their face a lot and ask some ques­tions of it : What would it look like if I tou­ched it ? What would it look like if I did that thing to that per­son ? What would it look like if the per­son were doing that thing or another ?

the elas­ti­ci­ty of sur­prise on the longed-for’s face

Remember what it loo­ked like when that per­son was sur­pri­sed by you ? You said some­thing they didn’t expect. That it was unex­pec­ted deligh­ted them from sur­prise, then you saw their face in imme­dia­cy and elas­ti­ci­ty of sur­prise. They said, “You just did that sur­pri­sing thing!” and their face was spread open by sur­prise. You were sur­pri­sed by their sur­prise, and your face spread up open. Every one was imme­diate and elas­tic then. And remem­ber the gri­maces, the person’s face in anger ? Remember the dere­lic­tion and affec­tion ? Remember the look on the face in pure vul­ne­rable reci­pient of plea­sure ? Remember the face with its cre­vices of intel­lec­tual effort ? Remember how you wan­ted to trace any cre­vice ? Remember the look of dog­gish desire ? Remember when you were in your plea­sure, and you ope­ned your eyes and loo­ked at the person’s, too, and added it to your own ? Remember the look of that face in minor pain ? You remem­ber that person’s frus­tra­tion, to, and when you cau­sed it, how the frus­tra­tion slow­ly took the face and ossi­fied it, how that person’s frus­tra­tion when you cau­sed it could be the oppo­site of that face’s sur­prise. This is one per­son, but these were so many dif­ferent faces, then.

the thou­sand fictions

These one per­sons are so many dif­ferent ones, and even if the one per­son has never been your lover you can still remem­ber all of your love in its pre­cise ite­ra­tion and all of it in dif­ferent mea­sures com­bi­ned, and if that per­son hasn’t been your lover yet or for wha­te­ver rea­son never will be, you can make a thou­sand fic­tions of when they were. You can think of the time you haven’t but did deny the per­son plea­sure. You can think of that time you haven’t given but did give plea­sure free­ly as if you were just a radia­tor or the sun. You can think of that person’s face when you made that per­son weep from your own cruel­ty or sad­ness. You can think of the time with that one per­son a thou­sand times or ten thou­sand even if none of it has been yet or will, for wha­te­ver rea­son, be.

the pre­cise method

How do you long ? Like you do. There’s the person’s face in the mor­ning, and then again at night. The per­son is there in dreams some­times : you can think in your dreams “we will walk through this city” and the city is end­less and like eve­ry other city until you wake up. You can ima­gine saying “let’s be as inno­cent as ani­mals or chil­dren” and in this mea­ning “let’s hold each other’s faces in our faces and eyes and pre­tend to suf­fer none of the des­truc­tion inherent in this”. The day is made of alter­na­ting ter­ror of having that per­son with you in some way or not having that per­son with you in some way, the ter­ror of their inter­est or non-inter­est, the ter­ror of asym­me­tri­cal or sym­me­tri­cal desire. Pulling out of the ter­ror, you make some plans to pull out of the ter­ror, to frac­ture idea­li­za­tion or make the per­son more pre­cise but increa­sed expo­sure never actual­ly results in decrea­sed idea­li­za­tion like you plan.

lon­ging as cosmopolitanism

So you can swear you think the one-ness of this one per­son feels real­ly spe­cial right now, and in most hours you would swear to their spe­cial­ness, but in fact it isn’t even that per­son and never limi­ted like that. Sometimes it is one, some­times it is ano­ther, some­times it is a future-orien­ted lon­ging, some­times a nos­tal­gic one, some­times it is a gene­ra­li­zed they-ness, some­times a him-ness or her-ness, the way all the people of past lon­ging com­bine with those of the present lon­ging. This is like some­times how you are in a city you used to live in or one you have visi­ted a lot. Then some­times you feel like you are in all cities at once, or that all cities are basi­cal­ly just one, or that you are dri­ving or wal­king in a city that makes each city the same like the dream city you have the one-per­son in. So, too, your lon­ging has both an enlar­ging and flat­te­ning effect : now that you have been alive for some time, it’s clear all this lon­ging is a kind of cos­mo­po­li­ta­nism. This is the lon­ging that is not in actual rela­tion­ship but out­side of it. That is when it is lon­ging in the state of the gene­ral but not in the spe­ci­fics of one-on-one bodi­ly nego­tia­tion. You hold a face in your eyes a lot and say “I am a citi­zen of lon­ging for that one per­son”, but what you real­ly mean is that you are a citi­zen of lon­ging for the world.