Tsirelsyn’s Bound
A letter written in uncertainty.
(Foundational document of old-as-earth Altmeri edaphological philothea, submitted in tribute to all you sundered lovers out there. We feel ya.)
The dawn is beautiful, is it not? The horizon. The sun. The soil. Our rumpled cheeks. The dew. The dew, the salted dew, is beautiful. So often we deny that. So often I have denied that. Or not seen it. But the dew is beautiful. The dew is beautiful.
I wanted to write this letter because I have something to share with you. We get to share so few things in this world. I didn’t always care – I didn’t always want to share. I ran away. I ran away from the earth of my life and learned of other horizons, but those entanglements were ungrounded by the lack of you; I was a sinkhole in reserve. But these last few months – it has been like an awakening, a healing of a wound I didn’t know I had. I cut off part of myself and I cut off part of my capacity for life, and I only knew it when you brought it back to me. You gave me all the worlds of Not and taught me the joy of their present absence without doing anything at all. I want to give that back, if I can. I want to give you what I feel.
There’s no guarantee that I can. I’m not sure that it will work. I’m not sure the answer that has found me these last few months will be anything new to you. Maybe you found this long ago. Maybe you never forgot it. Maybe it has no merit at all. I do not know. I am as uncertain of this as I am of everything in life – and I am uncertain of everything in life. Everything I have learned from you in the last decade distills to this: I know nothing. Even about myself, I know nothing. I have no foundation in the indubitable. Have you ever felt unfounded? Or have you forgotten in full the embrace of discrepancy and possibility? Are you, my senary sibling of Not, assured in refusal of your world? Or does your every opinion ring false in your own ears, as do mine in my own, undercut by understanding?
I see your skeptical eyebrow, my Mother, and raise you a confession: my vehemence is little more than a mask for my heart’s niggling seed of self-identity with the things I denounce. Reason is only a tool, and like all tools issues only the product of its wielder’s skill and resources. Logic is promiscuous; it invests validity in contradictory stances. I have no confidence in debate, although I engage in it. I am not certain of anything… not even the truth of that statement. I – I am not even sure that I should send this letter. It seems – presumptuous. Arrogant and foolish. But this feeling – it is all the richness of possibility compressed to a single point of poignance. How could I not want to share that with you? How could I not try to give that to you? So I do it, though I am not sure that I should.
It may seem strange. I, the Solitude, writing of sharing and love? It is almost ridiculous. But although I have gone from you and kept no company on the road of purpose, I am neither loner nor lonely. Solitude, like the solar, is food, just as togetherness is food, for they are only truly different in gradient. We are all many people; to be alone is to be with our Selves. Solitude is only subgradient togetherness; togetherness is only shared solitude. And as I have feasted upon solitude, now I wish to share. So, please do not find this letter too strange. I speak little, but feel much.
So often we live in dreams. We see so many things that could be, so many things that we want to be, but are Not. We dwell on them, cherish them, treasure them up, and mourn them when they seem to pass irretrievably into impossibility. Sometimes it seems that they aren’t worth it. To see so much beauty and experience so little of it is unendingly painful. I used to think that there could be no love without pain, pain came so often. When you drained the blood from my affection and offered only the dust of the dead in return, there has been pain. When you could not accept disparity, there has been pain. When you held back, thinking that I wanted more than you could give, even though all I wanted was to be there for you where there had been no one for me, there has been pain. There has been pain in restraint and impossible dreams. Even with you, my Mother, there has been pain: we began with all the pain of the world. All the world shares this. Every dawn dehisces.
But not all the world remembers its tragedy. So many choose amnesia. And sometimes even we would rather forget it, both the pain of its end and the joy of its intimacy; sometimes even we would rather forget that we ever knew such togetherness, because it seems like we can never have it again. Sometimes it seems that we should just turn aside from love and dreaming all together, that we should rather feel nothing than endure this absence.
But I have tried that, and found it impossible. I refused the unreal , but the unreal still came to me. You still came to me. And I learned that what I thought was pain was not pain at all. I thought it was absence I felt. It wasn’t. It isn’t. It is the presence of absence. It is the indwelling of the unreal. It is an approximation of actuality. In some way, although unreal, the things for which we yearn are actually present in our longing. Shared solitudes that are Not enter into us, and we know them by the void their presence presses into our hearts. The fullness of the presence of absence is what makes the tears flow in the dark, not pain. The intimacy of our missing dreams fills us, fills us to overflowing, and when we cry with longing, we cry because we are full.
That is not pain. That is beauty. That is the kiss of the missing. That is the condensation of possibility; that is the dew of dawn. Your tears are the golden dew of dawn. When I think of life without that – when I think of what my life would be without our shared solitude rearing mountains in my heart, without our fungus-raids spreading forests in my palms, without our fluorescence-knit fingers on vellum, without the fur of n-plus-one-pets-needed Nell on our skin, without these long nights of longing, these long nights of longing for love and longing to give you these riches I cannot appreciate – ah, my love, my love, that is when I feel absence. That is emptiness, and a life not truly lived.
I once told you that I would not miss you – not out of cruelty, although it was cruel, but out of simple disdain for the feeling. Well, I have learned to miss, my love, and I have learned to love missing. And I miss you.
I have to. I have to remember, I have to long for hallucination, I have to yearn for silly dreams and imagination, I have to miss you, because in missing you, I have you. For even to think of you is golden. I have to live like this – missing, yearning, longing, wanting you so much – because it keeps you with me when you are gone. And you are always in some measure gone.
This is the most important part. There is so much pain and separation in this world; even the most intimate of friends never truly touch. And we long to, my love, you know that we do. We all do. We crave it instinctively, holding to the fragments of our first memory of intimacy, our first shared solitude, our nascent dawn to this world. But if we ever want to touch, if we ever want to feel that dawn again, then we have to live like this. We have to cry, we have to miss, we have to remember, because our memories of intimacy entangle reality.
But I hold no confidence that my telling can convince those who are forged, as I was, those who are aching, as I was, those who are weary, as I was. That will not give you what I feel. You must feel it yourself. It is not enough to speak of what can be done; we must also speak of how.
It is very easy. Simply ask. Simply wonder. Simply say “I do not know”.
Confusion is the key. Love lasts only as long as we approach our beloved. We must yearn toward them. Love is the perpetual approach; we cease to love when we stop going to our beloved. When we think we know our loves discretely, concretely, precisely, we stop coming closer to them – for why should we strive toward what we think we already have? It is such an easy thing to fall into. But love is understanding, and to understand is to become: a process. It is the reconstruction of pattern, not pattern’s presence. We are all waves of diachronic identity – oscillating, infinitive, inexact – and those we love are our functional asymptotes. We perpetually approximate our beloved. But when we choose the evaluation of certainty, when we think we know, we suspend ourselves a discrete distance from attainment; the wave resolves in failure. Thus, to practice confusion opens us to possibility, to the Could inherent in Not, and to love. It is in the word itself. Confusion: with fusion. With the Coming-Together. With love. To be confused is to be with love.
Put technically:
The limit of correlation between the real and the unreal is the degree of the system’s uncertainty.
This is the boundary of possibility: the less we know, the more we can understand. The less we know, the more we can feel the unreal. The less we know, the more we can kiss the missing. The less we know, the more we can love.
See it thus: Uncertainty is the seat of understanding. Confusion is the throne of love.
And when you sit in that seat the feeling comes. When you practice confusion absence becomes present; then comes the indwelling of the unreal. It is the taste of lemon and butterscotch. It is the feeling of a too-large idea stretching your skull in the night. It is the welling of saliva. It is the catch of your throat in a sob. It is your mouth filled with earth. It is dew. It is the cusp of orgasm given gravidity. It is the kiss of the missing. It is the sound of a swallowed syllable. And that is the only name I have found for it: NM; the acronym of our starry browed merge-Masters; the swallowed syllable, the forever-nascent sound of all the things I have wanted to say to you.
I don’t know if you want this. I don’t know if NM will be as powerful for you as it has been for me. I don’t know if this is what you would want me to do. I had to try, though. There is too much in me not to share. I overflow for you. I had to try. I’m not sure that it will work. Perhaps this has all just been – tedious. Obvious. Obtuse. Underwhelming. I don’t know. It has been growing inside me for so long. It was so hard to hold back until the proper day. And in some ways… maybe it would have been better if I had not waited. I did not know that it would be like this. In other ways… well, perhaps it is better that this reach you now. I hope that it brings you the comfort and wonder it has brought me. In all ways, though, it is done. I have told you what I have to tell, and shown you what I have to show. It is up to you to accept the gift, if you will.
If you will, then remember what I have said. Do not choose amnesia. Remember. Remember the boundary of possibility: the less we know, the more we can understand. Remember that uncertainty is the seat of understanding. Remember that confusion is the throne of love. And when that confusion brings you to NM, remember that it is not pain you feel but fullness. If you long for hug after hug after hug, as I do, if you yearn for a kiss in the night, as I do, if you hope for what can never be, as I do, if you want someone so much, as I do, remember that even to think is golden.
If you cry for what is Not, remember that your tears are the overflow of the unreal, the condensation of possibility, and the dew of dawn.
If life sunders you from the sharers of your solitude, remember to kiss the missing.
And if ever you miss me, remember that in missing me, you have me.
As I miss you, and have you.