Kernel | All the Better to See You With
Metadata
Highlights
- When Rel finished, he looked at me expectantly. I’d said that I was close. I realized that I’d misjudged the time I needed, moved my hand faster, closed my eyes and found the quicker routes. I felt like an inconvenience when I couldn’t finish at the same time as him.
- We were so far away from each other. The best thing to do probably wasn’t to stay up and think about it, tonguing the wound, but I did anyway, and I wondered if Optimal Path would have prolonged the conversation, been interesting enough that he wouldn’t have been looking at the time, wouldn’t have let me go. This was ridiculous; he had work to do, and I was exhausted. It wasn’t that I’d have wanted him for longer, anyway. Just that I’d wanted — what?
- I said it wasn’t about kindness but expectations, and softening criticism, and that I gave her my unsoftened responses because I loved her. Love had diminished my sense of distance between us, and the knife-point of criticism I had previously reserved for myself felt, now, just as natural against her neck. She fell silent on the phone when I said it felt natural to criticize her as I did myself. Maybe this wasn’t good, I amended. I would try to think more about how she might feel.
- Mostly there was nothing I paid attention to so completely. At work I had three monitors and so many internet tabs the browser had stopped counting. When I was in video calls for meetings I was also reading. Lia complained that this made her anxious, how much I was learning new things all the time, how she worried she couldn’t keep up. Lia was filled with worries. As soon as I allayed one, another shot up. A lawn filled with dandelions.
- Although when she did I found myself hanging onto her, telling her a line from a play I’d read or relating a story from work I’d just remembered, and I knew she liked it, the hanging on, that we were both playing a game of brinkmanship with exhaustion, neither of us wanting to fold.
I wanted all of her attention, but the moment I had it, it was like everything in my life conspired to go off and demand me: my phone ringing, housemates setting off the smoke alarm, sink U-pipe leaking, boss emailing. When Lia and I called there had been times I’d said “I’ll call you back in a second” and it’d taken an hour.
- displayed joy in a way that took over her face, in a way really disfigured her, though endearingly. She didn’t care about seeming aloof and beautiful and unaffected, or maybe didn’t have the temperament to pull it off convincingly. Lia made fun of the face I made in the mirror, the one where I sucked in my cheeks a little bit and looked serious, almost angry. The me of that face thought I was brilliant. That I was better than most other people, who were slow and bad at technology and disappointing, not showing up for me in the same ways I showed up for them, letting the side down. That I could read much more and process information somehow faster than just about everyone I knew, that I knew more languages, was less provincial
- It was easy to be around Kathryn in a way it wasn’t with Lia, because Kathryn took up all the space she needed, whereas Lia made so much room for other people that it was almost stressful to watch her; we’d been at parties where she put on such a good face that I’d thought she was enjoying herself, only realizing how done she’d been when we exited and her whole expression changed, she slackened back into herself and looked ready to pass out, cry, maybe both at once.
- The hardest sentences aren’t violent, they’re monotonous. Life will begin to be harder than it is for them right now. She won’t get her writing published, he won’t get the promotion to senior researcher, the plumbing will break and friends will leave and parents need caretaking and kids, one day, and it’s not a failure that Lia loved him so much she thought it would be better if she removed herself from the equation but it’s a failure if it stays that way.
- Why did I want to tell Rel? There was no objective value to it, it wouldn’t teach him anything, wouldn’t hand him another citation for his paper. Still, my mind was filled with these start-stops, where I pulled out my phone and then put it right back.
- I care so much about being polite and palatable and speaking in I-feel statements like a good therapized girl because I know you love me when I’m sad but I don’t know if you can love me when I’m telling you that I need more — I fucking need more
- I think it’s your eyes, the way you see the world, the way you want to know everything, the way a night can last forever when we’re tripping down the street in a foreign city and all the bars and cafes and strangers seem made for us. It’s hard to try and explain what makes this good for me,” I said slowly, trying to find the right words, “not because it’s not there but because it would be like asking a planet to explain its orbit. How do you justify the inevitable?
title: “Kernel | All the Better to See You With”
author: “kernelmag.io”
url: ”https://www.kernelmag.io/2/all-the-better-to-see-you”
date: 2023-12-19
source: hypothesis
tags: media/articles
Kernel | All the Better to See You With
Metadata
Highlights
- When Rel finished, he looked at me expectantly. I’d said that I was close. I realized that I’d misjudged the time I needed, moved my hand faster, closed my eyes and found the quicker routes. I felt like an inconvenience when I couldn’t finish at the same time as him.
- We were so far away from each other. The best thing to do probably wasn’t to stay up and think about it, tonguing the wound, but I did anyway, and I wondered if Optimal Path would have prolonged the conversation, been interesting enough that he wouldn’t have been looking at the time, wouldn’t have let me go. This was ridiculous; he had work to do, and I was exhausted. It wasn’t that I’d have wanted him for longer, anyway. Just that I’d wanted — what?
- I said it wasn’t about kindness but expectations, and softening criticism, and that I gave her my unsoftened responses because I loved her. Love had diminished my sense of distance between us, and the knife-point of criticism I had previously reserved for myself felt, now, just as natural against her neck. She fell silent on the phone when I said it felt natural to criticize her as I did myself. Maybe this wasn’t good, I amended. I would try to think more about how she might feel.
- Mostly there was nothing I paid attention to so completely. At work I had three monitors and so many internet tabs the browser had stopped counting. When I was in video calls for meetings I was also reading. Lia complained that this made her anxious, how much I was learning new things all the time, how she worried she couldn’t keep up. Lia was filled with worries. As soon as I allayed one, another shot up. A lawn filled with dandelions.
- Although when she did I found myself hanging onto her, telling her a line from a play I’d read or relating a story from work I’d just remembered, and I knew she liked it, the hanging on, that we were both playing a game of brinkmanship with exhaustion, neither of us wanting to fold.
I wanted all of her attention, but the moment I had it, it was like everything in my life conspired to go off and demand me: my phone ringing, housemates setting off the smoke alarm, sink U-pipe leaking, boss emailing. When Lia and I called there had been times I’d said “I’ll call you back in a second” and it’d taken an hour.
- displayed joy in a way that took over her face, in a way really disfigured her, though endearingly. She didn’t care about seeming aloof and beautiful and unaffected, or maybe didn’t have the temperament to pull it off convincingly. Lia made fun of the face I made in the mirror, the one where I sucked in my cheeks a little bit and looked serious, almost angry. The me of that face thought I was brilliant. That I was better than most other people, who were slow and bad at technology and disappointing, not showing up for me in the same ways I showed up for them, letting the side down. That I could read much more and process information somehow faster than just about everyone I knew, that I knew more languages, was less provincial
- The hardest sentences aren’t violent, they’re monotonous. Life will begin to be harder than it is for them right now. She won’t get her writing published, he won’t get the promotion to senior researcher, the plumbing will break and friends will leave and parents need caretaking and kids, one day, and it’s not a failure that Lia loved him so much she thought it would be better if she removed herself from the equation but it’s a failure if it stays that way.
- Why did I want to tell Rel? There was no objective value to it, it wouldn’t teach him anything, wouldn’t hand him another citation for his paper. Still, my mind was filled with these start-stops, where I pulled out my phone and then put it right back.
- I care so much about being polite and palatable and speaking in I-feel statements like a good therapized girl because I know you love me when I’m sad but I don’t know if you can love me when I’m telling you that I need more — I fucking need more
- I think it’s your eyes, the way you see the world, the way you want to know everything, the way a night can last forever when we’re tripping down the street in a foreign city and all the bars and cafes and strangers seem made for us. It’s hard to try and explain what makes this good for me,” I said slowly, trying to find the right words, “not because it’s not there but because it would be like asking a planet to explain its orbit. How do you justify the inevitable?