I am stuffed with sushi. A small reward after a good evening run. The weather was perfect for it. My whites are in the laundry in preparation for Natasha's arrival tomorrow. One's clothing and one's bed linens can't be too scrubbed when one's significant other flies in from out-of-town. There's nothing like the love of a good woman for the cleaning-up of one's act. Otherwise I would have happily spent another night on soiled sheets. I am deliciously heavy with postprandial drowse and there's a good chance I'll get to see Springsteen and the E Street Band at the Garden in October (even if "Radio Nowhere" blows ass, I'll still pump my fist to "Badlands" and weep with the Jersey meatheads on "Thunder Road"). I am content. Everything is right. It could not be otherwise. I am a Zen master at peace with the world.
I gotta say, this long distance thing is surprisingly sweet. You get all the emotional benefits of a loving partner with none of the day-to-day bullshit that piles up between two people and makes them hate each other ("Are these your socks?" "Yeah." "What are they doing on the floor?" "Oh, uh, well, I don't know. I guess I was tired and...I just didn't think about it." "You didn't think about it." "No, I guess not." "*long sigh* Well then what the fuck did we buy that hamper for?" "What? Wait, hold on a sec there's only fifteen seconds in this quarter." "WHY WON'T YOU FIGHT FOR THIS RELATIONSHIP?!").
Which isn't to say this little arrangement we've got is preferable to the real domestic fish. It's not. But it does, I think, highlight an important component of cognizance: the perception of change. Our senses seem most adapted to perceive changes in sensation, as opposed to perceiving a stasis in sensation. For example, when I stare at something for an extended period of time, everything in my field of vision seems to dissolve gradually to greyness. If something enters my field of vision, or if I move my eyes, the scene snaps back into focus, as clear as it ever was (I remember learning in one of my Psych classes that the eyes are actually programmed to be constantly moving, ever so slightly, to prevent this grey-out from happening. It's actually really hard to focus the eye on one thing for an extended period of time.). Same thing with smell. My sense of smell becomes inured, quite quickly it seems, to whatever's in the surrounding atmosphere, be it a rose garden, trash dump, perfume store, bathroom, whatever. At first, the smell is incredibly strong. But, before long, I cease to smell anything. As with sight, unless a new olfactory entity intrudes on the scene, I don't seem to sense anything. Same with touch - I stop feeling my clothes after I put them on, stop noticing the temperature if its consistently mild - and hearing - I don't notice the drone of the air conditioner until it stops, and then I'm aware of its absence - and taste - if I had sushi every night for a week, I'd make myself sick.
So I wouldn't be too remiss in assuming that the same holds true for the perception of our emotional states. If one is consistently happy for an extended period of time, one stops sensing how happy one is. Think how unendurably vapid those acquaintances of ours seem who are always happy. Same thing with depression. After a while, the sadness ceases to carry the weight it once did and we can't really remember what it was that set us off in the first place. In order to experience happiness, we need to know its opposite, despair. "We are so made," writes Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents, "that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from a state of things." He goes on, in a footnote, to quote Goethe, "nothing is harder to bear than a succession of fair days." How true it is.
Which brings me back to Natasha. Her absence is crushing. I am never more destitute than when she's gone. Eventually, though, I pick myself up, get back into my "succession of fair days," and go on about the routine business of work and sleep and play. And then, either she'll come up here or I'll visit her in Florida, and I've never experienced such unmitigated joy.
But I'd never be able to feel such happiness were it not for the despair of separation. Anyone whose ever been in a relationship where distance is a factor can probably relate to this. I feel like the opposite, connubial domesticity, tends to curb the extremes of emotional vicissitude and from my past experience with long-term relationships, this is true. A couple becomes used to each other's presence. The highs cease being as high and lows aren't as bad. It becomes a middle ground where the oscillations between extremes are not only weaker, they are also and spread out over a longer period of time. Happiness here is not as acute as before, but it is much longer lasting.
I think this a more cerebral/emotional manifestation of how our senses are constructed: we feel a change in our emotional states more strongly than we feel a stasis. This is dramatically oversimplified, yes, but it helps to explain, at least in part, my state of being. It's a swell night because I've got everything to look forward to. Tomorrow will be the happiest day I've had in months. And knowing there's another one in store for me somewhere down the road makes the impending sadness of her departure all the more bearable.
Comments (5)
Andrew,
I cogent analysis of our addiction to "movement," so to speak. I like how you brought together Freud, Goethe, and your personal experience. True, there is nothing like anticipation to spice up a relationship, or anything else for that matter.
The Yoga Sutras say, "The senses grow skillful in their cravings." This is said in connection with the idea that desire is the root of all suffering. And that even when our desire is fulfilled, there is still suffering, because there is the knowledge that our pleasure will cease. Further, the more we get, the more we want. From this perspective, we get bored with the same pleasure over and over again, looking for the next good thing. A succession of good days can be boring if nothing novel happens, because "the senses grow skillful in their cravings."
Bruce rulz.
Posted by Maryellen | September 15, 2007 3:39 PM
Posted on September 15, 2007 15:39
I completely understand your situation. I have a similar situation in my own life.
Yet, even as absence is known to make the heart grow fonder, sometimes, at least for me, it doesn't change anything or does the total opposite. In other words, the absence, the pain of absence doesn't make me realize my own happiness (maybe I was already happy to begin with) or makes me realize how much I may detest the other person.
I know that I feel and realize amazing joy when I truly miss (and love, that's something that never changes, otherwise how can you feel joy in their presence?) something so much. But then again, like Maryellen says, sometimes my senses grow skillful by craving it so much that when I get it, I want more. Then absence becomes more painful, and the little time we are able to spend together becomes filled with bitterness. Then we stop becoming happy and stay bitter for quite a while (simultaneously sensing our pain).
Posted by Rebecca | September 16, 2007 12:58 AM
Posted on September 16, 2007 00:58
It is amazing how a woman can alter consciousness. I recently brought a woman up to my bedroom (and I admittedly do arrange my things as they land) but suddenly nothing was good enough to be seen. I had lived in this place without cleaning for several months, but right before she arrived I found myself hiding laundry under pillows, rearranging books on the shelves into categories, and frantically scraping dust off the carpet with the vacuum hose attachment (the vacuum broke as I was using it). If there weren't women around I think I would just go live in a garbage can like Oscar the Grouch. (But that wouldn't be too much fun on the weekends, now would it?)
Posted by John Rice | September 19, 2007 5:18 PM
Posted on September 19, 2007 17:18
I was in a long term relationship for awhile. My significant other eventually moved to Ny. He was living in New Jersey, but I didn't have a car, and with work and school, visiting time was limited.
Now that we are living together there are no more emotional extremes. Abscence really does make the heart grow fonder. I think back to when we lived 2 hours apart, and found that seeing him once or twice a month made our time together seem special.
He is still special to me, but, I don't quite feel the same way that I did when I saw him once a month. When he leaves the house, I know he will be back, and it changed the relationship. I guess too much happiness makes the ability to percieve happiness change.
Emotional rollercoasters can be fun for awhile, but after a few years long distance becomes difficult, and you begin to long for stability. I think that our emotions appear to dull the longer we feel something, because if they didn't, we might lose our minds.
Posted by Jessica | September 22, 2007 9:53 PM
Posted on September 22, 2007 21:53
Ain't nothing like clean sheets. I spent a few years dating a French farmer's daughter. We would take turns coming back and fourth between the countries. Those days still resonate in my consciousness. The distance made each moment together primarily important and so much of who am became later on was formulated in these years. I developed an understanding and I hope a discipline of integrity. While those times of exquisite romance linger on, they don't cloud my present. But it is a different intensity of love when you must see each other everyday. It is hard often to get beyond domesticity. There in lies the challenge. Continue to enjoy.
While I don't disagree about Radio Nowhere, as a Jersey Meathead, I'm trying to keep an open mind about Magic, though my instincts when I heard the name of the record, already had me concerned. For nearly a decade, I lived next door to Asbury Park and saw Bruce many times at Convention rehearsals and Christmas shows. He even came into a shop I co-owned and we spent a half an hour chatting about Southside Johnny's lawnmower and Southside's Dad's love of gambling and music. Couldn't get into tonight or tomorrows rehearsals but will be there at the Garden
"Mister I ain't a boy, no, I'm a man and I believe in the Promised Land"
JRCurrie
Posted by john | September 24, 2007 10:00 AM
Posted on September 24, 2007 10:00