Things to give away.
I wondered what other items had been in the box that could, in one way or another, be indications of love, but which I was, at the moment, unable to understand.
Oh, you might have lost something here.
The wallpaper is wound up, and stored away in a handy basket. It is not yet fixed to an interior wall. Also, the chair is placed in an unusual position not according to its purpose: it has been put on its side.
The pictures are, what is called in photography, „low-key“. Both are relatively dark, the objects shown are photographed with only little light accentuating their forms and the materials they are made of. Another light is directed to the background. The lamp is positioned below the horizon, a bit like the rising sun.
The latter observations are not very important, but the first ones are; the implications of something that is put in a new position, or something that finds itself different from its usual way of being. This could describe love, maybe. It’s hard to say - or to see.
I recently renovated my bedroom. When I peeled off the wallpaper, I found the remains of some even older wallpaper beneath it; wallpaper for children’s rooms, showing foxes wearing clothes, playing ball in the forest, cooking food on a stove, fishing by a lake.
It was strange to find this because, when I feel lonely, I like to imagine myself as a fox, roaming about the city, looking for something to eat, returning to my foxhole, playing some piano, and then curling up under the sheets to sleep. I like to imagine my neighbors in their apartments as foxes too, coming home from whatever they were doing outside. This may not be the most original of thoughts, but here it was, stuck between wallpaper and wall.
'Why do you think of foxes?' I would imagine one of my generally good-natured, but also highly opinionated friends asking me. 'What surplus value does the fox-analogy add to the idea of just you, sitting in your apartment?'
'Well, first', I would answer in case he ever asked, 'foxes are mostly more attractive than humans. And they move much more elegantly.'
An argument easily won!
I would keep a much more important aspect to myself: I admire their silent gaze, just looking at me, oblivious to language, starring a little longer, then suddenly turning around to run away. Deciding not to bond, to keep their independence, and to leave me alone with my desire.
I would also keep to myself the man who stood in line behind me at the market, whom I did not dare to look in the eyes, but whose presence I sensed on my neck; something warm, and radiant.
Me in the kitchen:
The egg is frying in the pan and the green tea is brewing.
Will both be ready in two minutes?
No.
Us in the forest:
„If only everything were that simple.“
She smiles and holds another edible mushroom she just picked in front of my face.
„If only I would not get such panic when someone falls in love with me."
And if only I would not get such panic when I fall in love with someone.
I frequently observe people reaching out to touch a thing when they want to understand it. When people try to grasp something, they often touch their heads.
Do we also try to understand another person by touching them? Is this where desire comes from? Perhaps I should not generalize, but maybe this is true at certain points in everyone’s life.
How to grasp something that is not going to last, like a stone.
How we try to understand something intangible, like this body.
This was supposed to become a story about the brain. How a scientist once explained to me about its plasticity. How the connections in our brains can alter throughout life according to what we learn, practice, or experience.
I was in a love relationship with said scientist. And he preferred to understand this relationship not as exclusive between us two. There would be, he said, some adjustments to be made in our thinking. And although I tried to engage with his discourse at first, after a while I started to think about differences and opposites that might not be reconciled.
Other than the scientist, the concept of plasticity of the brain stayed with me for a while.
Something really seemed to have changed. Maybe not only through the course of this relationship, but also in general - perceiving other things, unfolding in ways before my eyes that were new, or at least different from what I had known before. Did they appear different, because the way I thought about them was different from before? Had the relationships in my brain been altered, newly established, reconnected in some ways, modified by different modifiers?
Despite me having undergone a phase of deep uncertainty after the scientist went away, I also enjoyed to imagine how the notions and concepts in my mind seem to be modulated with every move I make in life.
There came another scientist. A different school of thought. Again, my mind was shaken. I felt at odds with the things I thought I learned and with many concepts I relied on. But there was something that was wired much more sturdily after all. Not that this could never be changed. This, it seemed, was another concept, and that was me.