A literary review of a tower to something.

I love you. My love is plastered on everything I touch. These words on your screen are one of many; look to the night sky, pluck a dot, and observe it — there in your hands is a metaphor. Every dot is an “I love you,” and how cruel a construct of culture that the nature of abundance diminishes their value. No. There is no scarcity of love. Take your life, beginning to end, as a video. Admire it for a moment. Start from the beginning and witness it frame by frame, each a delicate portrait of your every thought and feeling, each a delicate version of you deserving of love. Yes, every frame is a version of you. Even the versions of you that haven’t happened yet and especially the version of you reading this right now. Zoom out, and take the life of everyone who has ever been, who is now, and who will ever be. Admire them for a moment. Every frame is a version of someone deserving of love. If love is scarce, then what a sad constellation of dots we have found ourselves with.

I love you. I’m flattered that you’re here with me today for another paragraph, and I would love the version of you that didn’t, but I admit that this is an easy love to express. I can’t touch you. I am the disembodied voice of a woman you may have never met, and if you have or will, then this is a version of that woman you will never have the chance to meet again, as she is a different woman for having written this sentence. She has been lost to time. This is an easy love to express. I’ll say it as many times as you need to feel it, and if I have done a piss poor job then so be it; nothing I can say, as poorly as I have, may diminish the love I have for you. It was merely lost in transmission between the layers that separate substrate from fruiting bodies. Love has been filtered by my words, your perception of them, our culture, and love itself. There are more layers but I’m not the version of myself that cares about them enough to tell you about them. Words are all I have to tell you just how much I love you.

I love you. Even if, at one point, I hated you. Maybe especially so. Overcoming hatred is an intense expression of love, and I admit this is a difficult love to express. I can touch you, not through the bounds of my finite body, but the infinite ripples of my every action. I may never see you again, and I may never have seen you at all, but rest assured by the sake of my name, a ripple in the waters, that my love may reach you at another time and another place by another person at the end of a long and limitless chain of causation. I was there and you were there with me, I always was and you always were. And should I transcend this body, decayed and decrepit, let it be known that I had done everything in my power to reach you, reader of words, walker of Earth. Thank you, for everything you are and everything you have ever been.

I love you.

Here, in exchange for my love (although you will receive it regardless), read for me this:

A version of me that was.

“Every night, my boyfriend dreams he's in a box. He can walk around and touch the sides and the floor. It’s black all over like a void and nothing would distinguish the box other than the smooth, invisible surfaces preventing him from leaving. It's rather small and there's nothing to do. It's about as real to life as a dream can be. He sees from his own perspective, his head on his shoulders looking down at his own body. He can think with remarkable clarity but he can't leave. He knows it's a dream but all he can do is sit around and think, and so he does until the dream is over and it's time to wake up. It's the only time and place he has to himself, truly alone.

What does he think of the dream? It's nice, he tells me. He can pace around and solve his problems, just like he does in the real world. He loves to pace. Half the time we're on the phone with each other, he's pacing around the room thinking about what to say next. I love him. But there's an indifference to his opinion. It's nice, but what's the meaning of the dream? There must be something. A dream is as close as a direct line the subconscious mind has with the conscious mind. Why can't he leave? Why a box?”

I wonder now with time and space apart, a different river and a different man, if he ever left that box.

And another.

“In tarot, the Tower represents a sudden destruction of beliefs, frameworks, and relationships to set the foundation for something new to rise from the rubble. In "a tower to something," the Tower represents that same destruction for the last person on Earth, who must decide what's worth building from what's left.”

That is what I wrote for an editor I would touch yet never meet or hear from again.

“A devastating assault and a vicious breakup left me pondering the point of it all; why did I ever climb the tower to begin with? What was it all for? So I started writing and writing and I couldn’t stop. I enjoy an emergent process, you see, so I started with nothing but a woman and a road and ended with an affront to divinity and a outline of my perception of self love. I showed my mother the story and she said, almost off-handedly, 'That’s funny. Last night I drew a card for you, for your protection. It was The Tower.' Ah, that's what it's all for. Love."

That is what I wrote for a reader that is, and was, and may never be.

One more.

“Rorschach tests never made any sense to me, although I suppose that’s what the inevitable results of a layman’s understanding of a complex and evolving field. Maybe it’s true that a person’s interpretation of a shape, and a proctor’s interpretation of their interpretation, says something true about the territory of a person’s internal state. But I always thought it would be more interested to interpret the interpreter’s interpretation.

Take a look at this website here. Here’s an interesting question for you. Why is every interpretation overwhelmingly negative? Look at Card 1: when the patient sees a battleship, the interpreter claims it’s a representation of their patients’ aggression, frustration, and anxiety. However, when a patient sees an angel, that means they’re involved in “morally unacceptable events.” There are a million interpretations of why a patient could see a battleship or an angel. A battleship could represent an overwhelming force overcoming a perceived threat, recognizing the need for tools to manage internal stressors. An angel could represent an unconditionally loving presence, recognizing the need for an external force to bear witness to the struggles they see in their lives. Or, a battleship could represent their personal history with warfare (active duty, movies, history lessons), and an angel could represent their personal history with religion. I can't help but wonder if love could bridge the divide between these perspectives. 

That has me questioning what forces are acting upon the interpreter to interpret these answers the way they do. My interpretation? I don’t know. How could I possibly know. And that’s the thing. I don’t."

Here we are, at the end of my Ode to love, and I have not much left to say. What do dreams, tarot cards, and rorshasch have in common? I have mine and you have yours. But it’s no matter, right or wrong, in agreement or not, love will exist regardless.