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begins with an explosion.
1
My great-great grandparents were making love and the First World War decided to happen. When they later found out of the nearby barrio blown into a million pieces, they were frantic for penance. They called to their gods, offering shrapnel, offering prayer, thinking people died because of how much we loved each other.
It meant: they would forever equate love with guilt.
It meant: they would never be able to control it. They had 24 children, 12 of which died in sickness or childbirth.
Their children grow up, another war takes place in some distant continent. The world sees for the first time what sadness means (i.e., the holocaust, or seeing your son die before you can even say his name the first time).
2
In a class on animal physiology I was taught that what we know of love is governed by the hormones vasopressin and oxytocin. The act of frequently caressing each other sends particular signals to the brain. The signals tell you: this is pleasure, this is what it means to be happy, and, yes, it is good; yes, more please. This is why people sometimes feel the need to touch themselves.
How strange:
Realizing that what has taken centuries to capture is within our own bodies.
Stranger, still:
A million dissections and experiments and tragedies later, we have no clear answers to why people fall in love. When someone says I have an answer, on the question of falling in love, someone else jumps up and says I have an answer.
I think that we like answers so much that we forget what it means to ask questions.
Like this one: what will it take to make you fall in love with me?
I have many secrets.
I will trade you 7 secrets if you will tell me what it will take to make you fall in love with me.
My mother keeps only 1 secret:
she cries once every 3 years. Each time I caught her crying I became more convinced that she discovered a way to measure sadness. I never asked mom why she cried. It’s something daughters know. Mothers and crying. Mothers, crying.
When I was 14 a girl told me she loved me and asked if she could kiss me. She wasn’t beautiful, but I liked the slant of her shoulders. I said No, not because I didn’t want to kiss her but because I didn’t want her. I was 14; I was sure I knew the difference between Yes and No. Like cat and dog. It took a few years later to realize what No meant. The second boy I loved said No when I asked to hold his hand. Do we measure happiness by comparing it to the number of times we’ve felt sad?
I remember his hands: his perfectly molded hands.
Slender fingers forming a hook, pulling at my chest each time.
I am a fish with my chest ripped open.
I am a mermaid learning to swim.
He played the piano with such grace.
3
Charles Dickens said that accidents will occur. I believe this is untrue. Many lonely physicists spent sleepless nights finding the perfect formula for the atomic bomb. I am convinced that because people cannot contain love, they find a million ways to destroy themselves. Ask my cousin. He killed himself 3 years ago. I can’t remember his name, we weren’t close. They said he did it because his wife was leaving.
My great-grandfather was the eldest of 12 surviving children. When he was young, his father gave him a gun to protect himself. When he was older, he killed 3 people with it: a single bullet each, right where their hearts were. When asked why he did it, he said I have an answer.
Another thing science has taught me: 83% of dust is made from human skin. The more we touch each other, the greater the chances of dust gathering at our feet. This is probably why mother forbade visitors from coming over after father left – it would take a long time to sweep memories of him away.
4
This is why people keep dead things in museums. We like to keep what was in the past but we avoid anything that tells of passing.
Some people think this is how we first learn to love: wanting, without the necessary pains:
- A butterfly is mounted in a case.
- The exoskeleton of a dinosaur is trying to tell us something: some things had to die so people would exist.
- Somewhere, in the museum a child dares to touch what is on display, even when the sign says No.
The bible was written in increments. Centuries, patiently letting dust gather around the letters. Before that people relied on their mouths to remember. When mouths started getting filled with what would later be called kisses, they had to resort to other body parts. Meaning: hands.
The world was young and so were our bodies. We had so much time to learn about secrets (i.e., the sunset, the sky, why people can’t fly).
So calligraphy, the art of controlling mind so it slows to the pace of hand, was invented. Leaf, parchment, skin – it was like the desire to capture yielded an explosion of canvasses, of empty spaces and voids we had to fill with ourselves. As if the world said: yes you may leave your mark now.
5
Vincent van Gogh cut off his left ear and gave it to a prostitute, saying keep this as you would a treasure. It is only human to give parts of yourself away when you’re in love. Legend says his last words were
La tristesse durera toujours
This sadness will last forever.
6
I have a theory that sometimes people are born empty – heavy hearts yearning for something to fill its vessels. A long time ago, everyone was beginning to understand what it meant to love, one mistake at a time, yet always the same question. Someone said it was more interesting than a horde of miracles, and this gave birth to the first of blasphemies. People soon realized that they needed a point of reference for love. Something was needed to fill the void –
- Figure 1: God.
- Figure 2: Somewhere: there is an apple, red and ripe.
It falls from the tree without effort. Without so much as making a sound, the apple plants itself on the head of a man who wanted to understand the world. Immediately he realizes I have an answer. It is not love, but it certainly felt like it.
In July 5, 1687, the world first learns of gravity.
323 years later, we are still trying to understand it.
If I come close enough for you to touch, and if I promise you:
my body will welcome the uncertainty of your fingers,
would you reach out?
7
Legend says Adam remembered the taste of the apple before the Lord took him back, erasing the stain that was sin.
Is that what it means to be loved:
turn to dust; forget what it means to be the first man to love? Be without a body?
Eve died later on, but while she lived she kept the apple beside her. Each night she would smell it, take tiny bites, reminding herself how Adam’s kisses felt, keeping with her the taste of what he had so easily forgotten.
Sin: what was to blame for a lot of things (i.e. love).
8
They say that love exerts the same force on our bodies as fear.
This means our bodies are telling us that being terrified and in love is one and the same:
- Pupils dilating
- Palms wet with sweat
- Hearts skipping beats more than it should
When I think of love and fear I think of mom and dad. One day dad woke up and realized what he really loved: himself; his need for other women. Mom modified her affections: they argued more, threw things around. Women never say what they mean. What she probably meant when she said you’re a monster was:
why can’t you love me anymore?
When grandmother, who was a doctor, found she had cancer, she asked why.
No one had an answer, not even her body.
She died, I started writing.
9
The dictionary is the only place where answer comes before question. It makes for a great joke, but no one laughs at this. Biology offers a lot of funny explanations: a squid has 3 hearts. You have 1 heart, quartered perfectly to accommodate your body. Why do you act like you deserve more?
10
We all have holes in us. In anatomy it is called coelom.
This means: it is natural to feel alone in this universe.
11
When you are swimming near a reef and the water feels warm, that means the corals are making love, cooing to each other in voices more fluid than water. A caveat: nothing in the sea knows how to love. That is why the sea is sometimes so dark, and waves find it necessary to crash against each other again and again. Water cannot hurt itself. We invented mermaids to forget this – we wanted something to complete what was already wet and soft and almost perfect.
Mermaids:
girls who can’t walk, who will not run away.
But mermaids are difficult to feed: their diet consists of eating people.
For this reason we keep pet fish.
12
What this says about us:
we only want what we can
contain, what we think
we can live with.
13
Imagine how the universe feels. Containing us and our ridiculous search for love. The universe does not have a void but is a void in itself. We are alive in this massive, empty cavity and yet I attach meaning to everything you do. The universe never asked anyone for an explanation.
I am now going to tell you how I don’t think it’s possible to explain how much I love you.
The first time we met was in a cramped room. I couldn’t catch the sound of your name. Later on you told me that you knew me from a year ago, a stranger. You didn’t know my name but my face stuck to your memory. I said you were funny. You didn’t find that amusing, but I could tell you liked my laughter. I thought you were sweet (on most days), but I never told you. Women never mean what they say.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t love you.
I don’t love anyone.
I just like thinking about how your hands held my shoulders, trying to keep me
when I said No.
All I wanted to find out was: how much you wanted me.
Or, maybe: how much I wanted you.
But, really: I would like to know what it will take to make you fall in love with me.
14
Someday we will both be parts of stars – all cosmic dust and dissolved memories. How sad that when we are closest we cannot even feel it. Today I try my best to plant fingerprints all over you. I do this so that when my face fades and my fingers stop their curious strokes, your skin – the first to become dust – will be familiar with me. I will have left you with more than enough.
15
This sadness doesn’t have to last forever.
16
Sometimes I think the universe endlessly expands to keep us away from the things we want.
Like how I could never commit
to memory: the way
grandmother said she believed in happy endings.
17
Here is a secret:
She died, I started writing.
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Tumblr totally sucks when it comes to format. I couldn’t even center the parts that should be centered. :<
