Love, again.

[kitchen_kink]

"Why is the measure of love loss?....I am thinking of a certain September: Wood pigeon Red Admiral Yellow Harvest Orange Night. You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? 'I love you' is always a quotation. You did not say it first
and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them...."

-Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body


I have been on LiveJournal Hiatus for a few days because I have been furiously writing in my paper journal and in impassioned emails. (When did rhapsodic email communication replace the handwritten love letter? With the advent of that level of speed in written communication, do we fall in love faster? Progress the relationship faster?)

Once again those three words have invaded my life: 'I love you.' Each time I say them to someone for the first time, I am forced again to consider what they mean. Why are they so monumental, when they are so overused? Why are they the specific words that press at the back of my lips, bursting to get out, when my feeling for someone becomes overwhelming? And how does it change when it is expressed to more than one lover?

How is it possible, Winterson wonders (as do I), that the same three words can be simultaneously worn-out and fresh, that these words are the only words for that strength of feeling? 'A precise emotion demands a precise expression,' she says, 'and if what I feel is not precise can I call it love?'

To me, and ultimately to her, the very imprecision and yet total individuality of the feeling is what makes it love.

'I love you' is a place-holder, I wrote to both of my loves, a cipher standing inside our language, waiting to be filled with inarticulable feeling. One can say it to a hundred different people and have it mean a hundred different things, but the thing that links them, or should link them, in my view, is that the feelings behind the words are always complex and powerful. tafkar and I discussed the other night that there should be as many different ways to say 'I love you' as there are Innuit words for snow: 'I love you and you're my best friend.' 'I love you and I want you to be my life partner.' 'I love you, and we can't be together anymore.' 'I love you and if I could fuck you all day and all night I would.'

Yet we use the same words. Is this sheer laziness on our parts? Surely the phrase has suffered from people using it thoughtlessly, distractedly: the sleepwalking sign-off at the end of a telephone conversation. Still others use it to manipulate and abuse: a lame apology for striking your wife in the face, a trump card used to end an argument, like an expensive but meaningless bouquet of words.

But when it is meant and is felt, the words display a complex of emotions, each individual to the person receiving them. A mother might be saying to her son as he goes off to war, 'You are the world to me, I'd die for you, and please be careful.' An old husband might say to his wife of 50 years, 'Your presence in my life gives me comfort, and I'm so proud to have shared this time with you.' New lovers might be saying, 'Your body is like a temple in which I worship, I wish I could consume you, or crawl inside your skin, your touch sears me like a brand.'

But instead they all say, hopefully, tenderly, fiercely, 'I love you.'

I believe that these words are not merely a shorthand but a kind of prayer, an invocation, a phrase of power that calls forth the deepest ways in which we feel for another. Whenever I say it I feel a moment of being lost, as if what I have said has fuzzed over the precise feelings in my head, and a moment of crippling doubt where I wonder if what I have said is truly what I mean. And then I know that I've said exactly the right thing, because it is that sense of danger that accompanies those words that gives them power, the moment where everything I feel for someone distills, without defining and thus diluting itself, into a kind of song.

Fear, when it is named, described, and understood, dissapates, said the author of an erotic story I read recently. So too with love, he fears: when it is pronounced it loses its power. I think not. 'I love you,' said reverently, saves us from that. Not from examining our feelings and desires, which is important, but from trivilizing them by parsing them out: I feel this for you, but not that. I only give you this percentage of my heart, I legislate this love's boundaries. It is an offering, a way of saying, this I give to you freely, and without limit.

What are your thoughts?

Comments

[amadea.livejournal.com]

damn, you write good.

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

that level of comment is a great compliment from you, m'dear.

[nickodemus23.livejournal.com]

I miss writing letters...
real paper
real ink
real stamps!
*wistful*

[greendalek.livejournal.com]

Sheesh, talk about brain food...

Would you object if I shared this wonderful bit of pondering with my loves? I have a hunch this is going to prompt some (insert dramatic chord here) Meaningful Conversations(TM).

You've got a hell of a gift for word choice, by the way.

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

Feel free, of course!

Love is a many layered thing . . .

[water-childe.livejournal.com]

I think that as a subtext when I tell an SO "I love you" it means also "I trust you". I can't love someone that I don't trust. To love someone gives them a little power over you. Because If I love you it means that I am vulnerable to you.
Love to me is like a well forged knife blade.
When it's first being crafted the metal must be made red hot so it can be formed properly.
And if it's being created for strengh as well as beauty then time and care is taken to fold the metal again and again, tempering and quenching it each time. The more folds a blade has, the greater the strengh, and the length of it's life. It takes a lot of effort and strenth and patience to build a blade in this manner. And you have to be careful. If you overheat the metal then it could be spoiled before you've even begun the real process of creation. You could mistemper it even after you've spend long hours hammering and folding only to have it suddenly shatter when you next lift it to the anvil for shaping.
Forging as a craft is one of those skills that you learn by experience. Love is too.

[scottsch.livejournal.com]

Wow... such expressive prose, right here in my Live Journal! I'm impressed. I think you ought to publish this.


I think you're exactly right. Every love has its precise meaning: its unique causes, its rivulets in the mind, and its individually crafted impulses to action. But an essential part of love is simple, unqualified feeling, and to honor that part is to give it simple, unqualified expression.

In its expression, "I love you" fulfills always the same purpose. Its reception depends on a fundament of psychological visibility. If a stranger offers those words to you, like an offering to an Olympian god, you may receive them like a vegan offered a pound of bacon. He has his reasons: spring lightens his soul as he sees the way the sun illuminates your hair; or he eyes you at Manray and covets your flesh; or perhaps someone gave him a glimpse of your LiveJournal. Lacking insight into his head, your reaction is another three oft-repeated words: "What the fuck?"

Half of the danger of "I love you" is in the channeling of emotions into words. The remainder is in the reception. Will they be met by a smile, a blush and downturned eyes, a hungrier gaze? Or by a frown? His understanding reconfirms your love. It reconfirms a deep and essential reaction of your soul.


Thanks for writing that.

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

Hey!

Thank *you* for writing *this*!

You don't happen to know anywhere that publishes such pieces, do you? Sort of an essay/meditation/journal-thingy?

or perhaps someone gave him a glimpse of your LiveJournal.

Are you flirting with me? ;)

[scottsch.livejournal.com]

You don't happen to know anywhere that publishes such pieces, do you?

In fact, I do! I'm starting a student (mostly) publication at MIT (called Prometheus), and would love to publish this. Most of our articles are about student issues, but not all. We have a few articles about the use of language and one about the war (humor), and two other non-MIT writers.

Your essay is far from the kind of thing I would solicit, but our overarching goal is to publish well-reasoned and well-written articles, and your essay is both of those things in abundance. (As well as... well-intuited? What's the word I'm looking for here?) I think it would exemplify a dimension I intend for Prometheus, and I would be honored to print it.

As far as publications with actual prestige and ability to pay you... sorry, I can't think of any.

Are you flirting with me? ;)

Do I need an ulterior motive for stroking your ego? <lech>

[darxus.livejournal.com]

Wow. Thank you.

I've had problems with these little words, I'd guess more than average. The first lover I said them to responded by literally going into convulsions. I was recently reminded that the last person I said them to took me 6 months.

I'd like to think I've gotten much better at avoiding conscious thought when there are much more appropriate impulses to act on - and I trust those impulses. They have proven themselves. But while this subject might seem like one of those suited better to guidence purely by emotional impulse, I feel that concious thought still must have a say in the matter, because, well, it's complicated, and the possible results even more so. And above all, I want to be sure that what I'm trying to say is what will be heard.

So yeah, that was helpful.

[wabi.livejournal.com]

This is beautiful, Kam.

Here's my nerdy linguist response:

"I love you" is just like any other utterance--part of its meaning is derived from context. Yes, I can say "I love you" and mean "Your presence in my life gives me comfort, and I'm so proud to have shared this time with you", but I can also say "The cake was nice" and mean "You're a really good cook" or "The rest of the meal was terrible" or "Thank you for making a cake for me". Everything we say (and write!) takes some of its meaning from context. "I love you" is just a special case because of the emotional content of the utterance.

P.S. The Inuit don't really have 100s of words for snow; that's just a myth. Even by generous counts, they have at most 12 or so, about the same as we have in English.

Damn, isn't it annoying have a know-it-all linguist friend?

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

Hee.

I'd heard that about the Inuit, but it's still a useful little metaphor, ain't it? Anyway, I was quoting a conversation, and within it, I wasn't interested in arguing semantics.

I think I'm talking about more than context here, though--I'm talking about the words as a ritual, rather than just as a phrase, a shorthand, or a substitution for a specific feeling. Actually, see longueur's comment below, because I think ultimately, he got it better even then I did!

Of course, he's uniquely qualified to know exactly what I'm talking about. *blush*

Damn, isn't it annoying have a know-it-all linguist friend?

Of course not. I love you, you cunning linguist. ;)

Ritual

[longueur.livejournal.com]

Perhaps in our culture, it is not these words themselves that are so important. Perhaps uttering the phrase "I love you" in some contexts--i.e. after a long period of dating/whatever--is a ritual displaying a magnitude of feeling. One might argue that, quite often, acts are larger than words, and that saying "I love you" is an act more than a fragment of conversation. "I love you" in the context of not having said it before serves as an icon, it brings an avatar of a kind of immense connection that exists beyond words into the room. This is the only thing that makes sense to me. Why else would, say, telling someone "your very presence makes me strive to feel all of life, makes me desire to help you do the same, makes me burn with lust, and makes me weak with the desire to converse," or some such thing not carry as clearly, cause that flash of emotion and raw response, as the words "I love you." How strange that being held up and cherished, or being honored for being a saviour, or being a missing piece, or who knows what, is less powerful than these words. It can only be that the words are not words, but are a ritual. Just as we have weddings to mark commitment, even if that commitment was implicit before, or funerals to mark live and death, even though the death (one hopes) transpired before, we have the "I love you" ritual to mark and acknowledge change. Perhaps uttering these words is one of the few rituals of actual substance--a ritual close in power to those that the truly religious have--that we still have around.

Or perhaps it is simply that we have all decided to give the words currency, just like we have to paper money. Saying the words is so powerful because we all believe it to be so. For example, when I say them to my grandmother the words are a marker or a flag calling attention to a feeling precisely because they are difficult and awkward to say.