masks

I’d like to think that I’ll go on a date and this will happen: my date will be wearing a mask because he’s very responsible, and I will wear a mask but will remove it very quickly once we sit down because I’m quite eager to show people who I am. And after we have a drink and a salad, he’ll take off his mask and I’ll see someone perhaps a bit meek and insecure but quite interested in his interests and very kind throughout. We’ll laugh a rosy laugh and say “guess we don’t need these anymore” as we toss our masks over our shoulders like good luck salt.

But what seems to actually happen is that I quickly remove my mask after we sit down, raising my eyebrows expectantly as the server brings us our splashy wine and crab Rangoon. After we’ve finished our crab Rangoon and he still hasn’t taken off his mask, I say, “so what are you like under that mask?” And he replies, “well I’m probably not what you’re fantasizing” and I sigh-laugh politely, because I’m convinced that I have great instincts about these things. But secretly I worry that the longer he waits to take it off, the more detailed my fantasy of him becomes - “I bet he has really kind, sleepy eyes and just one dimple.” And when he agrees to take off his mask, I stare for a moment and then put my head in my hands, because it’s just a tragedy what’s under there. And the camera zooms out and we become a silhouette, me leaning over and crying into my hands and him sitting up straight and heartbroken.

hav·​ing dat·ed

I hate having dated

Hate knowing what could have been

If not for me

Or not their fire

If not for fire or lack thereof.

If not for me,

we would have dated more.

If not for him,

or him or him or him or

him

Now every hesitation is a portal to a scenario that worked with another

A complement to their shortcoming

Proof that I've made a mistake.

Now I look at my corpse sideways,

dead on arrival to a new fling.

I sing quietly to myself for just a moment.

Fear streams in me,

standards super-scored

to the detriment of my content.

Where will I find you

When will I realize you are but a shadow?

I open the closet door and look inside,

chasing my second half,

horns cast by counter-shadows,

vanishing with every other step.

I look and I look, and within I find more corners,

those that continue, shadows that continue, continue

can't take you

   back with me, because you do not exist.

They have all existed.

I've known many of them

and been known by a few

each of Us bore unique fruit,

fruit now weighing down the basket I carry

al·​pha·​bet·​ic·al di·a·ries

excerpts from a book by Sheila Heti

A radical sympathy with all people based on their integrity as becomings, not beings; as people who experience the potential freedom of their own souls, so to radically know that people experience themselves from the inside, and not one person alive has ever experienced themselves from the outside. All I ever wanted was to be an adult. All I want are moments and more moments. And at a certain point I will grow tired of writing like this, and that will be the end of mapping my insides. Because another person is not a tool for your own self-development. Been thinking about authenticity, and about how we have been done a great disservice by being taught that what we are to be authentic to is our feelings, as opposed to our values. But my task is not to love him, but simply to love - to be a person who loves - so to love him as part of an overall loving, not at the exclusion of everyone else, with blinders on, focused only on him, but rather focused on the entire universe, for the universe is my first relationship, the fundamental one; then beyond that, to love all of creation, which includes the man I am with. Checking my email felt so vomitous. Choose men independent of any concerns, apart from, is this someone I want to share my heart and my body and my friends and my family with? Claire's choices in life are like strokes on a canvas, decisive. Don’t get into relationships with men you want to fuck - just fuck them. Fear of not being able to justify myself, or of not being productive every moment of the day; an inferiority complex that manifests itself in the sense that I must always be justifying my existence by thinking. Fiona is very interesting, but of course she sometimes irritates and bores me, that's just the way people are. Hanif said, you must learn fear - when you meet a guy like this, sure they're attractive, but the thing is to feel afraid and run in the opposite direction. Haven't figured out how to have this new kind of conversation I'm after, perhaps because I only know what I don't want it to be about - me or the other person's life. He told me that after seeing my thigh that day, when I was reading in one of the common rooms downstairs and wearing my green skirt, he couldn't work for an hour or think about anything else - so that was pretty good. How bad could it possibly get if I rested for a time? I am absolutely not a shark in any way. I am still young, twenty-eight. I am thinking about giving up my crushes. I apologized to him, and now there is just the rest of my life. I denigrate my relationship in the face of other relationships I see, imagining mine is at the bottom of the heap. I don't mean this as a bad thing, but I just realized that nothing happens in a life. I don't want to talk to my friends about him, and I feel like I don't want anyone's opinion or thoughts on my life ever again. I have a way of reducing the humanity of the man I am with to a manageable size, and it is something I mustn't do - it is what I saw my mother do. I once said to someone, I know who I'm in a relationship with because that's the person I'm thinking of breaking up with. I saw how bring with a friend in a new city, you were still in relation to the friend, but being alone in a new city, you were entirely in relation to the city itself. I was always watching myself to see what kind of effect I was creating, to create the effect I most wanted to create. If part of what it means to be a human is not to have many experiences, but to have one perpetual experience of the self which never ceases, then it's best to stop performing to know who you truly are and look yourself flush in the face. It is an honourable thing and a wise decision not to speak about your relationships. It is clear that I have spent these past three years thinking about myself, and that I have a gap in my education three years long. It is perhaps my brother who I love with the least complexity. Know there is always an alternative to the situation, even being babyish and all alone. Lars only excited the female parts of me, while the male parts of me weren't into him, didn't like him, didn't respect him. My main wish for life right now is not to think about men all the time, but to ever more think about men less and less, and to look around at the world, and at my books, and at the books I want to write and the work I want to do, and get over my neuroses about everything, and stop smoking and feel my own will, which is my soul, and to have some control over how I react, and to be in the world in a more thoughtful way, and to come out of childhood and be a woman at last. My mind was racing with all these thoughts, and I asked myself if these thoughts were good, and my mind said no. No union is without its blank spaces. Nobody can promise that their feelings won't change. Not having to poll everyone before I do something, nor having to ask anyone for their permission. Not-smart boys are no fun to be around. Of course in every happiness there is a tremendous blindness. Only the artists change your soul - that's the only thing they change - but the souls change everything else. Perhaps I have never really loved anybody, or let myself be loved. Piper today, when I told her that I was going to give up on having crushes, said, oh, you are giving up your drug! Remember that there was so much I could never have felt with him, any real intellectual or emotional depth, and how exhausting it could be, and I just want to remind my future self of this - that any fantasies about Lars have nothing to do with him, but reflect a desire to be out of whatever situation I'm in, and the inability to deal with the intensity of being with just one guy. She searched herself and produced a tiny compass. She was the fresh air. She was the sort of person who saw lonely, solitary sadness, when all around her there was love just pouring forth, just gushing forth from every direction. Shopping is so stupid - you think about yourself in all sorts of important ways, and you're not so important in all those ways. So the first six books are all aspects of the seventh, but what is the seventh that the first six are not? Some of the most important and vivid moments I have had lately are when something happens and I'm reminded on a deep level of something I encountered once in art, which the thing I'm experiencing reminds me of, so the art tells me what I'm experiencing. The man on the airplane said that you can cause problems for yourself if you are always trying to find out the reason why. The story of Narcissus, who falls in love with his own image and is caught up in its spell - and what, does he kill himself? Then her grandmother started talking - she was single, and she was talking about some drama in a recently past relationship, clearly obsessed with it above all else, and I thought about how distasteful it was to see an old woman obsessing about her romantic relationships - and I saw it was possible; that a woman really could do that her whole entire life, and I realized how important it was to stop. Then I asked him what he thought the worst quality was for a person to possess, and he said, what do you think it is? and I said my first thought: being an intellectual. Then my mind freed itself of men and spun out this long, long movie which was incredibly abstract and brilliant, and it was my mind telling me what I would be capable of if I didn't think about men all the time. There is a great unity in a person, and all things work together, and you can't take out the parts that you don't like or don't understand or which feel inconvenient to you. To be able to look everyone in the eye on his wedding day and truly host the party because he feels no shame - just absolute certainty about having chosen the right wife - this was Lemons's greatest dream. To withdraw projection. Vig makes a point of never telling a story in the same way, always making it a little bit different in the details or the emphasis. We are unique little planets. We held hands the whole way home. We smiled at each other, me from in the street, and he from a window in his house. What's new with you? Claire asked, when I very well just told her in an email! When you look through your bookshelf on grey-soul days, on soul-overcast days, that's the book that you choose. Where is the gold coin he gave me, that lovely man? Yesterday was a god day until I checked my email, then my life suddenly became cluttered. You are nothing but slime, aspiring slime. You have had twenty-seven years of evidence. You need so much stimulation to feel so little. You see the ants and the birds and the squirrels and the clouds - they also have no aim.