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.” How cruel a construct of culture that the nature of their 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 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 somewhere deserving 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 although I would love the version of you that didn’t, I admit that this is an easy love to express. I cannot 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 is a woman lost to time and 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 of separating substrate. My love has been filtered by my words, your perception of them, our culture, and love itself, and yet this is an easy love to express. 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 and is this a difficult love to express. 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. Hope as I have that I reach you, this is a difficult love to express.

I love you.

On dreams

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?

Written by a different woman from a different place, to the version of a man that no longer exists. I wonder now with time and space apart, a different river and a different man, if he ever managed to leave that box or if that was ever his intention. I guess I never asked.

On tarot

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.

Written for an editor she would touch with words yet never meet or hear from again, from a different woman who grasped toward validation, left wanting. I wish I could give her everything she wanted, but time and space have forced us apart, and all she had left was imagined.

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 an 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. This moment, and every other.

Written for a reader that is, and was, and may never be. Her.

On Rorschach

I never understood Rorschach. Maybe it’s true that a patient’s interpretation of a shape, and a proctor’s interpretation of their interpretation, says something true about the territory of that patient’s internal state, but I always thought it an interpretation of the interpreter’s interpretation would be a tad more enlightening.

Take a look at this website here. Here’s an interesting question for you. Why is every interpretation overwhelmingly negative?

10. Cards I-X, Card I: When the patient sees a battleship, the interpreter claims it’s a representation of their patients’ aggression, frustration, and anxiety; and when a patient sees an angel, it’s a representation of their involvement with “morally unacceptable events.” There are infinitely many interpretations of why a patient could see a battleship or an angel; infinitely many maps for an unknowable territory. Why stop there?

A battleship could represent an overwhelming force overcoming a perceived threat, recognizing the need for tools to manage 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.

What forces are acting upon the interpreter to interpret these answers the way they do?

Written for nobody in a locker of unfinished ideas, forced at the end to complete a 3-part stanza, from this woman right now, for you, a different woman too who sought to complete a delicate title. I wonder what she thinks of this now?

The End

Here we are, at the end of my Ode to love, and hold as I have three parts in each hand, I have not much left to say. What do dreams, tarot cards, and Rorshasch have in common? Something about love and interpretation but it’s no matter, right or wrong, this or that, in agreement or not, love will exist regardless, mine for you, and hope as I do, with yours for me; I love you. Thanks Keale, I love you too.