the lost man chronicles
book two: the art of love


the lost girl chronicles 10: (muffled chuckle)

oh, nothing.

i just had to laugh a little as i read the following from Roland Barthes's A Lover's Discourse, during the wee hours of this mourning:

Fade-out

Painful ordeal in which the loved being appears to withdraw from all contact, without such enigmatic indifference even being directed against the amorous subject or pronounced to the advantage of anyone else, world or rival.

The other's fade-out, when it occurs, makes me anxious because it seems without cause and without conclusion. Like a kind of melancholy mirage, the other withdraws into infinity and I wear myself out trying to get there.

When the other is affected by this fade-out, when he withdraws for no particular reason except an anxiety accounted for only in these wretched words: "I don't feel well,"…(well, then, alas,) jealousy causes less suffering. _

thus, the self-aware, self-deprecating, effacing, torment of glee. you see, i told you it was all bound to be "the same old story," the glory of which i do not revel in now, as i realize, once again, my part in this universal joke, the ribald tall tale of love!

yet, i'm consoled by this funny sensation knowing it perturbs as ephemerally as the buzzing of a suddenly roused sleepy limb. and somehow, within the amusement of this foible, i am made all the merrier, as i accept that my follies are all too human.

so, brave dove, bravo! your performance was quite ordinary, indeed!

(by the way, i'm being half-witty—and not as petty as i appear, for my dear, we know it was all but a farce to begin wit'!)




the art of living the art of living the beginning the art of love the art of love


legal l.m