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Dollop | Jun 07 2002

I want to note here for my future self to read, that yes I am aware as I write these words that my happiness at meeting this woman is at best one phase of feeling, and that as our relationship develops, this feeling will be replaced by other feelings, feelings like the feelings I’ve felt with others, what is to stop it from happening?

*

Later, as we were leaving, I looked at the picture of us on her mantle, taken by her roommate at the beginning, the first or second week. It touched me, our happiness then. “Look, baby,” I said as she wrapped the collar of her coat around her, “this is when we fell in love.” At that moment I saw her again as I had in the beginning. Where has she gone? Or more to the point, where have I gone?

*

The way I’ve stated the problem, there’s no solution that leaves me happy, or even with any hope of happiness. Perhaps then the problem must be restated.

*

A man in the future remembers a woman he saw as a child, before the outbreak of World War III, before the human race was forced to live underground. He is chosen for an experiment. In this experiment he either goes back to this earlier time or dreams that he does, going as himself today. He meets the woman and without a word is accepted by her. I cannot describe how beautiful this is, the dream-like quality of it. I too fell in love with her. Or not with her, but with these photographs of her, of the two of them together, their tenderness. There were two pictures in particular that struck me, both of the woman. In the first she is prone, I think, I cannot tell if she is prone but it seems that she is. She appears to be naked, but too is uncertain: she has her arm crossed before her. In the next photo, the next moment, she opens her eyes, she has her eyes open and is looking at the camera, at her lover, with happiness and wonder.

*

—I suspect I’ve never been happy with anyone, beyond a few weeks or months. When I think like this, I wonder if happiness isn’t another red herring. —Meaning? —Meaning happiness can never be a stable condition, so if I expect to find a relationship that makes me happy in this sense, I’m doomed. —But if I understand you right, you lose something different from happiness if you lose A. —Yes, closeness, intimacy. —But doesn’t the intimacy you share with A make you happy? —In a way, yes. But there’s another kind of happiness I want that A can’t give me.

*

Told A last night that I want to feel more happiness with her. What I meant, I think now, was not happiness but love.

In Akerman’s film a couple lay in bed, unable to sleep. Finally the man says, “What are thinking?” The woman replies, “I wish that summer were over,” and then, “We no longer love each other.” “You’ve been thinking that a long time,” says the man.

*

When we walked in, A went into my room to hang up her coat and I hit the PLAY button on the answering machine. As has become my habit when A’s around, I turned the volume down to an almost inaudible level, for fear there’d be a message from K. The first message was from one of my roommate’s kooky friends, so I turned up the volume. A came out of my room at this point and stood with me listening to the second message, which was from a different friend of my roommate’s. The third message was from K. She simply said something like, “Hi, it’s K, give me a call.” At the sound of her voice, my heart sank. I looked at A to gauge her reaction. Her face was blank. Neither of us said anything as K finished and the fourth and final message began. It was from A’s sister; I wasn’t able to pay attention to anything she was saying. I saved the group of messages so that my roommate would hear his, and A and I went to my room. I sat in my green chair, had A sit in my lap, and embraced her. After a minute I said, “K and I are friends,” and A said, “What did you say?” and I said, “K and I are friends,” and A said, “I don’t understand,” and I said, “I don’t know how else to say it: K and I are friends.”

*

While I napped, the phone rang. This woke me enough to wonder if it was K. It may have been. I considered getting up to see if the person had left a message, but then decided it was better to continue to nap, not knowing.

Even now I want to know, and even now I prefer to stop myself from knowing.

Happiness is the possibility of happiness. It is the belief that something pleasurable is coming, or may be. So long as I put off checking that message, it remains possible that the message is from K. But once I check it, it becomes what it is, which may not be a message from K. Until I know what it is, it can be what I want.

*

Thought again of giving up everything and setting off. But where to and why? I know enough to know I need other people for my dollop of happiness.

*

I think I’m about to call K. The problem is, I can’t call her yet because I’m in a crummy mood. I can’t call K while I’m in a crummy mood; I have to be happy when I call her, I have to be a source of happiness for her. It’s sad in a way. I mean that I feel compelled to pretend. Maybe I won’t call.

*

K said that Nietzsche said that life or happiness, I forget which, is a zero-sum game: the greater one’s capacity for pleasure, the greater one’s capacity for displeasure, so we all experience roughly the same amount of pleasure as displeasure, which puts the lie, K said that Nietzsche said, to Utilitarianism.

Neither K nor Nietzsche know what they’re talking about.

*

I’ve so hoped that K will call but I don’t think she will. Why is this? Maybe she feels she can’t expose herself, her feelings, anymore. Or the other hand, maybe she wants to be won over: she spoke of being impressed how her now ex-boyfriend persisted. Perhaps I will call and try to win her over. But to what? To me? What is it I would want? I don’t think it’s sex so much as what sex expresses: intimacy, wanting and being wanted. I’m not saying it, but I’ve often thought of A. In the end this thing with K, whatever it turns out to be, is only going to make me miss A more. But how I do stop it? How do I stop myself from wanting it? And not just with K.

*

Camus does not say that we must imagine Sisyphus free, but that we must imagine him happy. Though, again, he does not say that Sisyphus is happy, but that we must imagine him so. What seems to be implied is that life is unbearable if we have no faith in the possibility of happiness.

*

It’s possible that one only completely remembers or completely forgets, that there is no middle ground of half-remembrance. Still, I’m dubious. A thousand grains of rice can surely be called a pile of rice (A taught me this), whereas five grains cannot. At what point does a collection become a pile? At a certain point it’s definitely not a pile and then at a certain point it is. Somewhere between these two points is the point where collections become piles, but where this point is, is fuzzy. It’s fuzzy because the idea of a pile is fuzzy. A surprising number of ideas are fuzzy like this: love, happiness, [more examples here].