Les Mots d'Amour

So the short story in the New Yorker from a few weeks ago was written by Jeffrey Eugenides. He's a darling of the literary establishment right now. However, I've never read any of his books, though his name is familiar, having been associated with the film The Virgin Suicides and a novel that's on my list, Middlesex. I read the short story, Extreme Solitude and liked it because 1)I fetishize my college years and 2) I fetishize poststructuralist theory, or at least the idea of it.

Extreme Solitude takes place at Brown University in the 1980s. The heroine, Madeleine, is an undergrad English major who decides to take a seminar in semiotics and bumps into the work of Derrida and Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse in addition to a strapping young, "unpretentious" philosopher named Leonard. It's about how she falls in love with Leonard despite Barthes' watchful and poetic deconstruction of love, which she is also kind of into. The two contradict each other. Madeleine and Leonard, these are smart and handsome WASPS who are impossibly emotionally sensitive, too. So annoying, but because Eugenides is a good writer, I liked the story.

The story culminates when Madeleine says "I love you" to Leonard. To this, Leonard offers Barthes' problematic definition of love:

je-t'-aime / I-love-you

The figure refers not to the declaration of love, to the avowal, but to the repeated utterance of the love cry.

1. Once the first avowal has been made, "I love you" has no meaning whatever; it merely repeats in an enigmatic mode-so blank does it appear-the old message (which may not have been transmitted in these words). I repeat it exclusive of any pertinence; it comes out of the language, it ... The situations in which I say I-love-you cannot be classified: I-love-you is irrepressible and unforeseeable... I-love-you belongs neither to the realm of linguistics nor in that of semiology...in the proferring of I-love-you, desire is neither repressed (as in what is uttered) nor recognized (where we did not expect it: as in the uttering itself), but simply: released, as an orgasm. Orgasm is not spoken, but it speaks and it says I-love-you… This formula responds to no ritual; the situations in which I say I-love-you cannot be classified.

* * *

One does not need to take a seminar in semiotics to know this is true. The problem is, "love" or whatever feels so intense at the time that it's happening and language is inadequate to capture the bewildering feelings of it and how it passes away, too. Therefore, to Barthes' definition I offer the lyrics to Edith Piaf's Mots d' Amour (translation follows):


C'est fou c' que j' peux t'aimer,
C' que j' peux t'aimer, des fois,
Des fois, j' voudrais crier
Car j' n'ai jamais aimé,
Jamais aimé comme ça.
Ça, je peux te l'jurer.
Si jamais tu partais,
Partais et me quittais,
Me quittais pour toujours,
C'est sûr que j'en mourrais,
Que j'en mourrais d'amour,
Mon amour, mon amour...

C'est fou c' qu'il me disait
Comme jolis mots d'amour
Et comme il les disait
Mais il ne s'est pas tué
Car, malgré mon amour,
C'est lui qui m'a quittée
Sans dire un mot.
Pourtant des mots,
'y en avait tant,
'y en avait trop...

C'est fou c' que j' peux t'aimer,
C' que j' peux t'aimer, des fois,
Des fois, je voudrais crier
Car j' n'ai jamais aimé,
Jamais aimé comme ça.
Ça, je peux te l'jurer.
Si jamais tu partais,
Partais et me quittais,
Me quittais pour toujours,
C'est sûr que j'en mourrais,
Que j'en mourrais d'amour,
Mon amour, mon amour...

Et voilà qu'aujourd'hui,
Ces mêmes mots d'amour,
C'est moi qui les redis,
C'est moi qui les redis
Avec autant d'amour
A un autre que lui.
Je dis des mots
Parce que des mots,
Il y en a tant
Qu'il y en a trop...

Au fond c' n'était pas toi.
Comme ce n'est même pas moi
Qui dit ces mots d'amour
Car chaque jour, ta voix,
Ma voix, ou d'autres voix,
C'est la voix de l'amour
Qui dit des mots,
Encore des mots,
Toujours des mots,
Des mots d'amour...

C'est fou c' que j' peux t'aimer,
C' que j' peux t'aimer, des fois...
Si jamais tu partais,
C'est sûr que la la la la la la la la...


TRANSLATION:

It's crazy 's that I can love you,
that I can love you, sometimes,
Sometimes, I want to cry
Because I have never loved,
Never loved like that.
That I can swear to you.
If ever you went away,
Went away and left me,
Left me forever
Surely I would die,
I would die of love,
My love, my love ...

It's crazy that he told me
the pretty words of love
And like he said
But he did not die
Because, despite my love,
It was he who left me
Without saying a word.
Yet the words
There were so many,
There were too many...

Well today
These same words of love,
It is I who say them again,
It is I who repeat
With as much love
to another besides him.
I'm saying words
Because of words
There are so many
There are too many ...

Basically it was not you.
As it was not even me
Who said these words of love
For each day, your voice,
My voice or other voices,
It is the voice of love
Who says words,
And more words,
Always words
Words of love ...

Ice Cream For Dinner

I played tennis for two hours on a gorgeous late afternoon into evening. Earlier, I had lunch--mediterranean veggie plate at a restaurant right on the river. The weather was perfect today. And now I am polishing off the last of the mint chip ice cream and it's so good. Sometimes, even though I claim to like only savory foods, a good mint chip ice cream feast will really do the trick. Mint chip is actually kind of salty--it's the kind with the briny chocolate wafers. Sometimes you don't need to eat a real meal for dinner, because I am an adult living in my own apartment with no one to tell me what not to do. And because it's summer. I love summer.

Nomadic Aesthetic

I think often of home. Not my literal home as in my apartment, although that's where I feel mostly comfortable. Mostly comfortable except for the gashes and gaping holes that appear when I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder where I am. These are abscesses that are deep inside me, which act up now again like a bad tooth. I am harboring bacteria in there. The holes that go down and out into nowhere, inside which I float like an unthethered astronaut in stark, elegant white against stark elegant black of the universe. And by home neither do I mean where my mother lives, three time zones away, where I did some of my growing up, both literally in her womb and surrounding environs. Where I got into trouble and got good grades, and from where I was on a singular, burning, mad woman's road to get out of. I visit this home and see it as nostalgia and simplicity, but only from this vantage point. By home, I also don't mean exactly, "where I'm from," which strangers ask constantly, cavalierly, as if this was an obvious question for which there would be an obvious, stupidly clear answer. "Where are you from?" California. "No, but where are you really from? FROM, from?" Being that I don't look like Sally Whitelady, people are always thinking it's alright to ask this question. The answer is, I don't know because where I was born is not at all where I consider I am from. And this isn't simply about political correctness--I really don't know and it's the source of my existential discomfort.

I think of home often because I live alone, have lived alone for my entire adult life partly because the choices I have made, from the miniscule to the majuscule, have made being solitary the best solution for this narrow, winding path. What is home? I find myself searching for it constantly.

Entanglement

I went on an OK Cupid date today with a Physicist. It's strange that you know in an nanosecond, not that I know how long that is exactly, if the other is meant for you or not. I walked into the cafe and met his gaze and I knew. A lovely, quiet, humid afternoon in a sultry, depopulated cafe. The perfect recipe for romance, given the correct ingredients, which are Party 1 (immovable object) and Party 2 (irresistible force). Or insert any of your two combustible, highly flammable compounds: Here. In this way, perhaps online dating will help me to strengthen my instincts, my love instincts. So of course, the physicist is not for me, but he will be a darling for someone else, though we spend the better part of four hours discussing theoretical physics, Robert DeNiro, and comparative cuisines of the Mediterranean. He told me about the concept of entanglement--which means that you cannot measure the position of an electron while also measuring its speed. The electron is entangled. This concept was very helpful in elegantly getting out of the inelegant situation that always happens at the end of the date when one party professes a desire to see the other again--and the other party doesn't. "It's very mysterious," I said. "I'm not sure...can I think about it and get back to you?" I demurred. I suggested that I couldn't possibly measure my feelings while simultaneously making a decision about the probability of two strangers drawing toward each other like magnets. He understood. I said goodbye. Science is forever, love is delicate.

Ballade de l'humeur vagabonde

Summer is here. There is a song that's on my I Pod by the legendary French actress Jeanne Moreau called Ballade de l'humeur vagabonde and the last verse goes: Il ne faut rien regretter, après l'hiver c'est l'été, et aujourd'hui comme hier je serai prête à tout recommencer. (One should regret nothing, after winter it's summer, and today, like yesterday, I will be ready to start from the beginning.)

This song came on today as I walked through my neighborhood where I gaze at green, full, bushy trees that have grown so tall and wide over the last few months. It's as if they've supped full at spring and gotten fat and verdant, juicy with life. Everything is green and it's a light, grassy green that covers everything in a splendid act of spontaneous exterior decoration. The drapes match the carpet and everything else--green is nature's black. This green contrasts perfectly with the occasional Japanese maple, whose aubergine and fire leaves suggest red headed beauties rushing through the forest. Testarossa--like the woman, like the car, like the tree. The street slopes in a way the Pacific Ocean slopes at the end of Wilshire Blvd.--toward you, coming at you like wine in a Riedel glass as it goes down your gullet. The effect is the same too--somewhat intoxicating seeing the trees looming and swaying, birdsong echoing against their massiveness, against a late afternoon sky, steel gray, mackerel or maybe steelhead trout, with the ends of sunlight seeping through--all coming at me like wine in cavernous glass--sumptuous, sensuous, and slow.

Walks like these do make me appreciate the world as it is. It's so hard for me to do so sometimes. I hated it here for the longest time and now I am tied here due to job. I never thought I would be in a place so green, and yet here I am. Not hating the winters, not hating the provinciality, not hating the remoteness from perceived centrality. The center is me, I guess.

These plants and their colors make me also temporarily forget my aloneness. And the ghastly online dating bullshit. I so dread doing so, but what choice do I have? I am going on a short trip then going at it like a salt miner or someone digging to China. Soon. After the weekend. Then, my life will be complete.

the snow come downeth

I did put up an online dating profile. I did communicate with various young-ish men of the local region. I did get creeped out and alienated. I still have the profile up, but all I can do is respond with extreme sarcasm or dry, ironic deadpan to these people's emails. I understand, it's difficult, but why so lacking in humor? Why so lacking in absurdity? I need at least an acknowledgment of the absurdity of online dating from a suitor to feel like meeting someone in person.

That's alright, because it gives me more time to get deeper into why I do my work--writing and teaching. And also, to mull over my various creative projects. Things look way more poetic when one is alone. Perhaps I will go skiing tomorrow after the bounty of snow that is coming down right now.

Dating

I really should start dating again. Specifically, online dating. I wish there were an alternative, but I have never been good at hanging out at bars like bait or striking up conversation with attractive strangers at Target or whatever. Even at the gym, where I see the same people all the time, I have difficulty chatting them up. I am shy. Shit. It's nice but it can, however, stop you from doing all things in life you want to. Which is to date and mate, I guess.

I should put up another profile on the dating site I was on earlier. I met with two eligible bachelors, but I wasn't enthralled. They were alright--one was lacking in humor and the other one was too Aw Shucks for me. What am I saying, they were fine, I just wasn't into it, the whole thing. I feel so unmotivated, but hanging out alone on Saturdays cooking fabulous dishes and watching interesting critically claimed films on DVD gets repetitive. I've got to do something to move my life forward in more interesting ways, and that involves other people. I have some very good friends, but it's not like I want to hang out with them all the time, either. There need to be more people around, circulating around me. However, I live in a small city with bigger, more urbane city aspirations, but sadly, has never gotten there. If I intend to continue living here, I need to make more of an effort. I don't want to, though. I mean I do want the result, but I am reluctant to do the work to get it. What can I say, I live in contemporary America.

Cycling Epiphany #24

I love indoor cycling or spinning, which is my preferred term. I like the idea of spinning in place, spinning spinster, hamster wheel, and other funny and inevitable metaphors that it suggests. However I adore spinning, it is my salvation, or at least one of them. It saves me from my overburdened mind by letting my body completely exhaust itself cardiovascularly. And as I tend toward morbid thoughts, it boosts my neurotransmitter levels and gives me a little dopamine, I think. I prefer to exercise to exhaustion than take anti-depressants any day.

The other day, I was spinning rapidly and happily in place at my gym as the music blasted us into MTV videos of our untethered imaginations and our very tethered bodies. The instructor put on one awesome R & B classic after the next, including Freak Show by the Bar Kays and Super Freak by Rick James. Freaks are a very marketable and fun concept. The "freak" in mainstream funk pop in the 80s was a theme--remember the Mary Jane Girls and Vanity 6 and all other Prince spin off groups that sang about loving being sex objects while wearing lingerie? ha ha. Those were fun times indeed.

Suddenly the music changed to Ike and Tina's version of Proud Mary during which we had to ride uphill during the slow parts and then spin very fast during the ecstatic chorus. I started thinking about Ike and Tina--we remember Tina Turner, always, and since that biopic What's Love Got to Do With It, we can't think about her in any other context as the Phoenix that rose from the ashes of a horrifyingly abusive marriage. As I thought about the fact that Ike's baritone bits in the beginning are inextricable from the fullness of this particular song, I felt a bit sad. Ike is the poster child battering husband-ass-hole. Yet, when Tina comes back with her love--her authentic passion and enjoyment of singing the song, I realized that some people, maybe most people, can survive anything. You can help but to sing along to this song--it's so joyous and energetic. We were all singing and dancing on our bikes. Tina is Proud Mary and you can hear it in her voice.

Perfectly, the instructor ended our class with the somber, yet rich ballad, What's Love Got to Do With It. Fitting song for a good ride for the body and in the mind.