On Revisiting Love in the Time of Drought

Or finding new forms of it.

by Marcello Cortese

For a long time, I have felt that being pleasantly sleepy is the best state to be in because feeling pleasantly sleepy is the closest sensation to being in love.

The two sensations are similar states of being. They share in blurry eyes, softened, starlike lights, stilled hearts, the slightest melody playing somewhere far off in your head…

The best way to feel this way, in my opinion, is in the early evening. Preferably a young summer evening, spent over lemon waters, or iced teas, and some sumptuous meals shared between friends. Or by your lonesome. Up to you. Some wine and dessert, that tender stroll home where, at any moment, your eyes could close entirely and the legs would just keep walking…

I’ve considered this as the state of love I prefer against many others, if only because it’s the one I derive the most pleasure and meaning from. It satisfies me the most, and gets me closest to a state of pure peace. But recently I’ve wondered again about the others. States, that is.

I’ve collected quotes over the years about love and this connotation it carries. The asterisk involved. Words by Woolf. Diamant. Hemingway. Balzac. du Maurier. Steinbeck. Lawrence. Dostoevsky. Shakespeare. Aligheri. Everyone, seemingly, has some take on this thing. A sort of vantage, always either above or below the subject of love itself. Always removed. 

In Dante’s case, it (love) is something that is continuously wept upon in the upper terraces in Purgatory. It takes multiple shapes, each a mystery. In Shakespeare’s, it is a creature that “hath twenty pairs of eyes” and winks upon homely objects. Woolf describes love as an unfinished act, interrupted by a thought. Balzac equated it to a measure of nobility. du Maurier considered it a fever. Diamant’s version was a drum and Hemingway’s was a bell. Steinbeck recognized it, nothing more. Lawrence considered it a fish (the proper fish) in a sea of mackerel and herring. And Dostoevsky, well, what didn’t he think?

Something that I keep coming back to, in this way, is the sense of apartness between the thing and the person. In this case, love becomes clouded over by metaphor and association. It is a result, or a process that results in something, or an object or a force that dotes upon objects, or a sensation that finalizes a moment, or or or. These sentiments are understandable and holistic, but there is an artistic generalization to them. The only of the aforementioned quotes that I can think of that truly gets specific is, “I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love.” 

That’s from Rebecca.

Yet, one quote about this very topic has remained indelible on my brain ever since I first heard it. And it wasn’t written by an artist.

Jacques Lacan once determined that, “Love is giving something you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it.”

I shall let this marinate just a second longer.

In order to really get to the meat of this sentiment, I have to do a little explanation. In university, I took a handful of psychoanalysis classes in tandem with my literary studies, as it was just too fascinating of a science for me not to. We read a great deal of Freud (obviously) as well as Foucault and then numerous lectures by Lacan. Where Freud was concerned with theories like the Oedipal complex and castration anxiety in a somewhat literal, biological sense, Lacan was more metaphorical. He focused a great deal on theories such as object a, the mirror stage, the signifier and signified, the “other.” He was more interested in understanding the subconscious as a linguistic structure.

The above quote has to do (more or less) with the mirror stage. What that is is essentially a hypothetical scenario of: baby/toddler staring into a mirror and looking at their own reflection, while mom/dad (usually mom) is standing behind them and pointing at their reflection, saying out loud, “That’s you, honey. That’s you.” 

The Lacanian thought is that this “moment” happens to every single human at a point in their babyhood, and it is important that it does because it is the point in which language “breaks” a person’s impression of the world, and moves them into the realm of reference and association. After all, what the baby is seeing is not actually “them”, it is a reflection of them. An impression. It would be impossible to see the actual self, since none of us can take our own eyes out to look at our faces.

But what does any of this have to do with love? Bear with me, I’m getting there. I promise.

So because humans become, inherently and unavoidably, creatures of language, there forms a kind of “lack” in the soul. When I say the word “tree” an image forms in your head, but it is not actually what a tree is. It is a reference point based on a sound that we have attached to this thing for the ease of reference. There’s no possible way to know which “tree” I’m actually talking about, so you use the generalized version—the idea of one and every tree—to understand.

This is the lack. The gap in communication. Something has become lost in the sequence and there isn’t anything to replace it. Not really. This is the inherent difference between us and the other animals. Language. It is responsible for all things in society. Politics, literature, art, religion, science and math, cartography, philosophy, you name it. All of these “systems” are built entirely on the structure of language, which we have already established is a structure of insufficiency. It never gets to the actual “thing” that it is trying to determine. The animals have no need for it because they exist on the plane of “Id” as Freud would go. They abide by the natural, cyclical rules of the food chain. Primal life.

And this is where the idea of “love” comes in. As humans are creatures of inherent “lack”, they have cravings and desires for more. All of us have that gap in ourselves, and yet we search for another our whole lives regardless. We crave someone else, who also lacks just as much as us, but in a way that we can bear to stand, and we consider that satisfaction enough. 

So, love is giving something we do not have (our inherent “lack” or nothingness) to someone who does not want it (because none of us want more “lack” in our lives, but we still exchange it anyway). And this is considered to be the tantamount act of selflessness, this exchange. 

It is like grief, in a way. One person carries the other’s pain and the other does the other.

With this in mind, love and death have both been on my mind (not the movie, the things) recently. As is natural for wintertime, I’ve been considering both in all ways academic, emotional, and surreal. I suppose as I’m writing this I’m realizing that the convergence of these two things is indeed grief. If love is red and death is blue, then for the past several weeks, my heart has been filled with purple.

In particular because the charm of this winter has been flavoured by all kinds of love. Both old and new. As we age, friends are getting engaged, and parties are being thrown to celebrate those engagements. People that I’ve fallen out of touch with have miraculously come back out of the woodwork. Years of forgetfulness, just effortlessly washed away with a few sentences over text, or a quiet catch up over dinner. And as much as most of the goodwill during winter is a matter of friction, there is something more satisfactory about the unfinished business of an old friend.

Like feeling your stomach widen pleasantly with sleep and still smiling softly when the dessert comes out for you. A dessert you’d forgotten you ordered.

I don’t particularly believe that there is a drought of love in society. I think that it has changed its form, is less about the simplicitude of snow or a child’s laughter, and more now about the stakes involved. That kind of damnation, heightened by the media we consume, that’s so seductive. The priorities of love invariably come to be dramatized. What with the impending spectacle of Valentine’s Day and its endless stream of roses, there is a kind of morbidity that has developed with this associated price tag. There is this push to “prove” oneself to another person in order to make your interest known. I just don’t think that’s very fair. 

Devotion has taken its place, and that’s just a word.

I’m not so sure that there is a single solution to this “chase,” since we’ve just discussed the nature of humanity as something ultimately unsatisfied. Nor do I think that this is a matter of fault, or a “bad” thing. It is a social shift. What I will say is that because of this shift, love has become entirely less tender of a thing. 

Balzac once wrote, “The kindness which knits two souls together is as rare, as divine, and as little understood as the passion of love, for both love and kindness are the lavish generosity of noble natures.”

I love that he described these two things as “lavish.” I suppose they are. What I love further about this quote is that he speaks nothing to the idea of romance, or chivalry or expectation, but equates something as grand and mysterious and misunderstood as love to the forgotten beauty of kindness. 

And that is where the drought comes in, I believe. The absence of kindness inside of love. Most of what we understand “love” to be in today’s digest is too mixed in with lust, or with drama, or with eternity. There are insurmountable stakes to it, and expectations that go beyond the scope of the modern capability. What people now describe as the “bare minimum” is essentially delusion or entitlement disguised as self worth, and it only feeds into the vicious cycle of dissatisfaction. 

I wonder why this is the contemporary definition of love—this exquisite pain—where the softened alternative of kind, sleepy eyes is just simpler overall to swallow.

I know it is too simple to say all this and try to be “right” about it. I understand that there are factors like heartache and missed opportunities, of yearning and of the blinding necessity for physical intimacy. Fear and exhaustion. All these things contribute to the drought just the same, but the kicker is that it still mostly ends up as self-flagellation. To be afraid of betrayal, or of heartbreak, or failure, is just as abject as cruelty. Except it’s done to the self, so nobody wins.

This is not a “lower your standards and stop being so picky” post. It’s just a consideration, and a revisitation, of priority. I think one of the things that has sustained me for so long (especially through this winter) has been this state of being pleasantly sleepy. Of staying within it as long as I can. I maintain that, for me, it is the closest I can get to a place of holistic, completed peace, even if only for a little while. It is a drug of gratitude, always delighting me in moments I wasn’t expecting it. So, the call to action of this post is this, I suppose: Try and find out what your equivalent is. T’would be a fun experiment.

And here are a few more words I’ve since collected about this topic:

“Sex is such a poor substitute… for sex, idiot.” -Zelda Fitzgerald

“Love, I would ban the word from the vocabulary. Such imprecision. Love, which love, what love? Sentiment, fantasy, longing, lust? Obsession, devouring need? Perhaps the only love that is accurate without qualification is the love of a very young child.” -Janet Fitch

“You’ll ache. And you’re going to love it. It will crush you. And you’re still going to love all of it.” -Ernest Hemingway

“Shall we just love and love?” -F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Love in Paris is a thing distinct and apart; for in Paris neither men nor women are the dupes of the commonplaces by which people seek to throw a veil over their motives, or to parade a fine affectation of disinterestedness in their sentiments.” -Honoré de Balzac

“Love is slipping off one’s petticoat and— but we all know what love is.” -Virginia Woolf

“Valentine: Why, lady, love hath twenty pairs of eyes.

Thurio: They say, that love hath not an eye at all.

Valentine: To see such lovers, Thurio, as yourself: Upon a homely object love can wink.”

-William Shakespeare

“To be kissed on the lips by your husband is the most decadent thing.” -Gillian Flynn

“There’s lots of good fish in the sea… maybe… but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you’re not mackerel or herring yourself, you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea.” -D.H. Lawrence

“I loved the earth they had polluted even more than when it had been a paradise, if only because sorrow had come to it.” -Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The love that—profligately—yields to that / is wept on in three terraces above us; / but I’ll not say what three shapes that love takes— / may you seek those distinctions for yourself.”

-Dante Aligheri

“Loveliness comes like a host / Of lean ships headed for a coast, / Every sail and every keel / Pointed at a common weal.” -Robert Tristram Coffin

“But other sentiments, too, had re-emerged, and these won the day; for here he was, sleeping beneath her protection, the abandoned hope: at long last, love.” -Salman Rushdie