Oct 27, 2009

On love and unhappiness

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1. Happiness: People versus places

When N and I became lovers, her husband asked her: why doesn't he move here in order to be near you?

This amused me, the here in question being Houston, Texas, and thus about the last place on earth I would ever set my foot in (except perhaps for Khabarovsk, Siberia, and Borkou, N'Djamena); let alone live there.

You see, my life where I was then -- living on the beach within the confines of a national park -- was simply too good to compromise for a day in order to be close to any woman: it is my considered opinion that we can derive much more pleasure from agreeable surroundings -- a nice apartment, a beautiful city -- than we ever can from the presence of another person in our lives, however wonderful. (Proof: when we find ourselves in nice surroundings, other people suddenly matter to us less: just consider how often we forget to send that post card).

For this reason, it is the first requirement of happiness to find a beautiful, agreeable place to live.

(And, indeed, I might add, the second requirement may well be to limit our dependence on other people, other people having several nasty habits, among the nastiest being the tendency to turn out to be less than we had thought them, to betray us, to leave us, and -- in the end -- to die).


2. How our lovers cannibalize our own happiness to assure their own

In time, the husband's question became symbolic of our whole relationship: N lived a life she hated, in a place she hated, surrounded by people she hated and filled with duties which made her dull and at times suicidal, while I lived an interesting life of leisure and adventure, not without its risks, and certainly not easy, but definitely not dull and definitely not unhappy. I liked meeting her, when we did -- she usually came to see me -- but I did not like being with her enough to want to compromise my interesting and beautiful life; it was always understood that she would have to go back to her miserable life at the end of each visit; I made it clear that I would never follow her there.

In time our partings became tiresomely tragic: about 48 hours before her departure she'd begin to grow somber and the pitch of her emotions gradually rose to tearful despair. I will miss you so much, she would say, sobbing; but that was, of course, only part of the truth; the rest, the thing she did not say, was that having tried my life, she simply could not bear thinking about going back to hers. Perhaps she didn't see it, either: perhaps she really did believe that if only she could have me in her life in her dull, vulgar, ugly and hostile Houston, everything would be fine: the city would seem prettier, more cultured, more interesting, and even the duties of her everyday life lighter.

And maybe so they would, but, of course, at what cost to me! And, importantly, they would only seem that way: that would still be the same hopeless, helpless life she's always lived, only that I would be miserable by her side.


3. How unhappiness is often the result of sloth

Now, on occasion, sadly affected by the story of her misery, I offered her some advice from my perspective; and good advice, too, because, after all, it was not very difficult to see what she needed to change in her life to improve it: move, if you can, redecorate, change the nature of your duties, do less of x and more of y, take more time off, etc.

Pretty much all my advice she deftly deflected: x was going to be impossible, y too difficult, z too tiresome and t -- well -- t was simply not done. If ever I tried to press the point, she bristled. Attempting any changes in her life seemed to her simply too formidable a challenge; to think about it alone was distressing. Her standard line was: I am in such a bad way, I have no energy left to change it.

I have since observed this phenomenon in my other lovers: unhappy with their miserable life, yet they would not only do nothing to change it but whenever our conversation turned to the topic they would go on and on and on about how there was nothing they could do and how all attempts to change it would be in vain, or naive, or impossible.

I don't quite understand this psychological mechanism; it strikes me as sloth; perhaps it is really a disease, a kind of mild depression. (The Matthew's effect?)

4. The usual

These other lovers have ever done as N has: doing nothing to change their lot, they instead launched onto affairs with me, seeking to find in love a balm for their misery. But this was always problematic: I will simply never sacrifice my own happiness in order to make someone else's life less miserable for the simple reason that the math does not make sense; and because I know that if I do, the sacrifice will only be temporary -- unlike most people, it would seem, I am not made to suffer a miserable life for any stretch of time, and sooner or later, usually sooner, rebel; and, finally, because I know that as a result of taking such a sacrifice I will only come to resent the object of such self-sacrificing love; and why would I knowingly want to do that?

So this is how it has ever gone since: the lovers reach out to me in the hope of improving their lives; I do offer them a chance to do so by giving them good advice and offering help if they follow it; but they don't, instead expecting me to make them happy by sharing more of their crap life, instead. And when I don't, they are bitterly disappointed, call me selfish, and worse; invariably, things come to an end in the usual recriminations, so well known to me that I know exactly every next word that is about to issue from their lips.

Come to think about it, every woman I have met these twenty years has been unhappy and miserable. I should wonder, perhaps, if there is something wrong with the way I pick them; or perhaps with the market: perhaps only unhappy women make themselves available for affairs. Or perhaps that is simply the way life is: perhaps with the few exceptions like myself, people really are by definition living dull, miserable, hopeless, unhappy lives.

Think about it.

Oct 26, 2009

A fable with a moral point

Several years ago, through hubris, foolishness, and lust I brought upon myself a disaster: my financial position suffered a severe set back, I became ill and severely depressed. In that darkest hour, I turned for help to friends and they all, to a man, refused. (Good honest friends, perfectly sensible logic: one does not back a losing horse).

Gradually, laboriously, I worked my way up from the depression; my health improved; and then, in the recent panic, I staked all on a wild opportunity. Like a hero in French nineteenth century opera, with blood-shot eyes and a sweaty brow, I gambled all -- and I won -- all.

O Fortuna, Imperatrix! Following on my darkest days, my best days have come. My health is not what it once was, but my life is comfortable, beautiful, and happy. It is a life of leisure in a beautiful place with a breathtaking view in one of the world's most magically beautiful cities; I eat and drink deliciously; surround myself with art and culture; and, in the afternoons, sit in stylish cafes amid blooming trees talking about love to young pretty things. Sometimes I pinch myself: am I not perhaps dreaming? But the pinch smarts: I am awake.

The best of it is this: had my old honest friends come to my aid in my darkest hour, I would now owe them in proportion to my subsequent success, ten or twelve-fold, a hundred-fold. But they didn't and I don't and my fortune is entirely my own.

I am unencumbered.

I am debt-free.

Oct 20, 2009

Mystery solved

One has always known that the IQ distribution in the society follows the Gaussian curve, but not knowing the size of the sigma, one didn't realize just how steep the curve is. It's steepness isn't much publicized, wikipedia for instance says nothing about it. Perhaps because it is a politically-correctly charged topic: wikipedia authors fall, I would guess, by and large in the 120+ bracket and simply don't want to be seen stating what that means. Perhaps, even, they don't want to even be reminded of it.

Well, I now realize why: because it turns out that it means rather a lot. The 120+ make up 2.5% of the population, which is small enough. But now, get this, the curve keeps falling from there: the 145+ are deemed 0.1% of the population. This means that by the time you reach 146, you have excluded 96% of all those who rank over 120. If you are 146, 96% of all over-120's are dumber than you.

Think about it.

Oct 17, 2009

Some cultural news from the BBC

Some East End gallery specializes in up and coming artists (buy it for a penny, sell it for a pound); some of these artists are then interviewed: one makes large installations of planes locked up in ice which then slowly melts (yeah, duude, cool, pass the sheesha); the interviewer asks her: you wear a chador (‘conservative’) but you make such modern works! She doesn’t have a damn clue, does she?

Meanwhile at the White House the What's-their-names are assembling a collection of borrowed art; it’s all modern (i.e. post-1950) of course, and American (probably has to be), including someone’s mediation on the square (!); except a DAY-ga (American enough when you pronounce it that way); except this last is judged risque (shhh… legs); but the former first lady was also cultured, we are told: she owned a de Koenig (along with hyper-realist representations of West Texas landscape). Ah, the uncultured me: who de hoeck was de Koenig?

Ah... upon consideration, don't tell me, I don't want to know.

An Algerian band in France plays, lousily, electric oud. You play such a mix of traditional and modern! gushes the interviewer. Huh?

Sorry, I don’t understand this language, though everyone around me seems to speak it.

Here, for instance, is Florian Zeller (who?) invited to speak at a kind of book fair in Egypt (probably because no one better would go), offering his cultural gems:

if the Islamic world generally had difficulties with the novel, it was because it was living to a large extent in an era that belonged to the period before modern times, bogged down in archaisms that were by their essence incompatible with the foundations of the novel: freedom, fantasy, complexity, the ambiguity of all truths and the suspension of moral judgement. In this respect, the novel could easily become the battle ground between two civilisations.

Freedom, fantasy, complexity, the ambiguity of all truths and the suspension of moral judgement? Has Zeller ever read any archaic poetry, either Islamic or -- European? And if so, which part of his anatomy does he use to think (and speak) about it?

The terrible thing: he thinks this drivel actually means something; and – oh, emperor’s new clothes! -- his Egyptian colleagues believe him! How's that for conversation: you pretend you say something meaningful, they pretend they make a meaningful response.

How do you explain to these grunts that the language they speak –which happily interchanges modern, western, good, inevitable, free, and sexually liberated is incoherent, that it is broken, that it means nothing, that it is impossible to say or think in it anything that makes any sense at all and that by speaking it they just bury themselves in some horrendous dark hole of the mind?

But then -- why would anyone even try to explain?

Oct 11, 2009

*

We have not seen each other two and a half weeks. When she asked how I have been, lost for something to say, I told her about Salwa, what a huge impact her book had had on me: the emotional turbulence I feel when I read her; the long pensive silences into which I fall when I do not. I spoke the truth: everything else which has happened in the last two and a half weeks has been by comparison -- irrelevant, immaterial.

She asked me why and only then I realized that I cannot explain it to her; and that therefore I should not have mentioned it in the first place.

Oct 6, 2009

salwa dit

le penseur m'a ecrit une lettre. une lettre d'amour. je me suis dit: comment peut-il employer le mot amour? je l'evite autant que je peux. avec lui comme avec les autres. je ne connais pas l'amour, je connais le desir. l'amour appartient a un au-dela qui me depasse, et je me refuse a lui courrir apres. le desire, le mien et celui de l'autre, je le connais, je le touche, je le vois, je le sens, je vis ses effets et ses metamorphoses. lui seul me prend par la main pour me conduire par vers mes espaces inexplores.

Oct 4, 2009

Lying about sex

Salwa al Neimi is the first woman I come across to speak the voice of Nehadeh; which is also my voice. (Perhaps Marguerite Duras also does, but I have not read her). Al Neimi likes sex, finds fulfillment in it, seeks it, and does not let other things interfere -- her whole life seems to be lived so as to maximize her sexual pleasure. (Love -- she says -- I don't understand what that word means; but desire, yes, I understand it).

(This does not mean that she's a slut: people like us -- sex-maniacs -- have a such a hard time finding good partners that we tend to want to hang on to the ones we have found -- firmly, and loyally, if not always exclusively. I know).

My past attempts to speak this kind of language with my lovers have invariably led to trouble: even with the really good lovers -- those not only adept but also clearly fulfilled in the act; they often seemed to have had that amazing frame of mind in which their ability to do it well and enjoy it somehow cohabited with the strong belief that the sex was not important, merely a means to an end, the end being e.g. lazy afternoon walks in the sun to nowhere in particular, for instance (i.e. comfort of being together). Hearing me speak that language, the language of Al Neimi, they were usually offended: I was somehow not respecting -- perhaps even castrating -- a part of them that was to their minds the truer and more important part of them -- the non-sexual part. Not to mention, also, that I was proving myself base, vulgar, and -- of course, the usual -- typically male.

Beh.

It is of course preposterous to me: lazy walks in the park can be done with a dog, one does not need a well-matched lover for it. I don't want a woman for lazy walks in the park; in fact, I do not want any woman who does not want me first and foremost in that way.

Stumbling upon Al Neimi has a perverse result on me: instead of delighting me with the discovery that there do exist other people who think, feel and talk like me, I am overwhelmed by the stifling, depressing, crushing majority of those who do not; with whom one cannot be honest; with whom one has to dissimulate.