Other peoples' love

What if a kiss can save the world?

This week was consumed by legal work to the detriment of my writing. So instead, I thought I’d share some of the best things I’ve read, learned, and listened to recently that happen to be themed around love.

After all, spring is a perfect time to reflect on and feel love’s power.

• “Love and the end of everything,” a poem by

  Christian Näthler
  . I’ve been following Christian since finding him through Griefbacon (RIP), so I’m proud to say I read this poem (and wept) before it got picked up by
  The Substack Post
  . Christian is a beautiful writer and you should give him a look. To paraphrase one of his commenters: my favorite genre is a man in love…

• The latest from

  Holly Whitaker
  that manages to both celebrate the anniversary of her relationship and speak plainly about preparing for martial law. Holly writes with precision and clarity, and reading about the early days of her romance made my heart sing.

• The Marginalian newsletter, recommended by a friend. This one on love and friendship contains many thought- and heart-provoking insights, including a summary of the evolution of types of love that I found particularly resonant:

The ancient Greeks, in their pioneering effort to order the chaos of the cosmos, neatly taxonomized them into filial love (the kind we feel for siblings, children, parents, and friends), eros (the love of lovers), and agape (the deepest, purest, most impersonal and spiritual love). After the Enlightenment discounted all love as a malfunction of reason, the Romantics reclaimed it and revised the ancient taxonomy into a hierarchy, under the tyranny of which we still live, placing eros at the pinnacle of human existence. And yet our deepest relationships — the ones in which we both become most fully ourselves and are most emboldened to change — tend to elude the commonplace classifications and to shape-shift across the span of life.

I love the distinction between the three types of love! It rings true to how I experience it and troubles me to think we’ve distorted our societal values by placing eros at the top. Friendship and community, perhaps alongside filial relationships, are the cornerstone of our collective functioning. Romantic love has the possibility to transform and transcend, but seems brittle and flighty without that stable base. Modernity ruined everything.

• This exploration of the familiar “love as the missing piece” mindset by

  Chenrui
  .

• “love is sad, heartbreaking, but beautiful,” from the

  Michael Rance
  archives:

I think in the geography of our lives there are these blank or foggy spaces, little absences left behind from the people that have moved in and out of our lives. I think of parks, and imprints left behind by people in grass; footprints, or the long flat indents left over by bodies when they’re sprawled out on the ground. When a person stands up from a lawn you can see their imprint briefly. It leaves an outline of flattened grass, lighter than the darker grass surrounding it. But then the blades slowly bend back upwards, straightening out until the grass looks the same as it did before the person sat down. Yet if something sits out on the grass for too long, it doesn’t just flatten the grass; it kills it. For days, weeks, months afterwards there will be a brown patch leftover in the shape of the form that made it. Eventually even the brownest patch of grass will grow back green and strong, if the conditions are right. But for a long time, all you can really see is the deadness, the absence. You can almost convince yourself that the grass will never grow back, there will be this person-shaped absence inside of you forever.

• “What if a good kiss can save the world?” - inanity shared with a friend on a sunny evening over drinks, before the conversation shifted to the looming constitutional crisis (as it does).

• Writing fiction scenes and in that way, shaping “other peoples’ love” with my hands. Enjoying the generative process of letting a conversation unfold.

• Relatedly,

  Jill
  ’s log that tracks her progress on her manuscript. Inspiring, beautiful, big congrats to Jill.

• Last week we welcomed another family member! Sending love to my brother and sister-in-law, niece, and the new baby Evie <3 <3 <3

• This teaser from Lorde and the related discussions around the return of “recession pop,” aka the songs of my youth.

Plus, I snuck down to Seattle for some Pacific Northwest spring. Behold, nature making love look easy.

That’s all, folks! It’s been a long month of work, and I look forward to a reprieve. Meanwhile, the world turns, the days lengthen, and I sit like a cat in patches of sun. Wishing you a lovely Thursday. Stay tuned for an update on the whale…