top of page

love. fragments.

date. 2020 - 2021

city. new york city​

Image by Jr Korpa

Friends

 

"It's about that time in your life

when your friends are your family."

-- David Crane, Co-Creator of Friends

I'm A Writer

I cannot say “I am a writer,”

I can only write it.

Once Upon a Time #1

 

Once upon a time
There lived a man
Who was no man at all

And the man
who was no man
lived a life
which was no life

Once Upon a Time #2

 

Once upon a time

A universe was born

 

At first it was very small

No larger than infinity

 

But it grew and grew

Until it could grow no more

 

And then

Just before it collapsed

Back into eternity

It wondered:

 

If a universe is born

And there's no god to see it

Did it ever really exist?

How Can It Be?

How can it be

That I want everything

In the world

While not wanting

Anything at all

 

The Now is a Myth

 

The now is a myth. Why not let it go?

 

Philosophy always takes the form of a question. Answers are the realm of theology.

 

Shakla v’tarya: the endless dialogue between philosophy and theology.

 

The now is always present. Questions cannot survive in presence; they require absence.

 

Thus far, society’s single greatest accomplishment is that it no longer offers any answers. But, by the same token, have we also ceased posing questions?

 

I’m convinced I’m living in the past

 

I’m convinced I’m living in the future

 

Past and future: but when is love?

 

Give and take: but how is love?

 

Here and there: but where is love?

 

I hate

to love

myself

 

Is it a coincidence

That dog

spelled backward

Is god

 

Is it a coincidence

That mom

Spelled backward

Is mom

 

Just as I cannot accept that any other moment was as alive, as real as this moment. I cannot accept that any other person is as alive, as real as this person.

 

Why do I write? What does the word mean?

I do not give meaning to the word. The word gives meaning to me.

 

By focusing on myself, I’ve learned a lot about others.

Often, I understand others better than they understand themselves.

Do others understand me?

 

I feel very sympathetic towards complete strangers, while lacking that same sympathy for friends and acquaintances. Perhaps I consider my friends to be additions to my egocentric life, while strangers simply have nothing to offer me.

F Train from 72nd to Delancey

Tonight’s subway trip from 72nd to delancey was populated (in this order) by a schizophrenic man puffing a cigar and arguing with himself. A gothic girl with pink hair and black everything else. An Indian man wearing two masks and a pair of lab gloves. A loving black couple just Netflix and chilling. A cold white man in a colorful polo shaking his head disapprovingly. Myself. A Chinese dad and his daughter who in the end turned out to be a Mexican man and his wife. A young professional (lawyer by the looks of her pantsuit) who propped her legs on the bench while she read a brief. Across this stage marched a solemn procession of beggars, live shadows of ancient Jonah calling on the people to repent.

 

Looking around and taking part in my subway car’s performance, I realize that I loved them all. We belong together.

 

Marriage
 

"Marriage isn't 50/50.

It's 100/100." - My Dad

 

How can I think of loving
 

How can I think of loving,

When I have yet to hold my own child.

I am free to love

I am free love.

I am free.

I am.

I.

 

You.

You are.

You are free.

You are free love.

If I could only

If I could only make love,

Like the Central Park saxophone.

 

Sucking in the world,

Filling my lungs with its sweet poison.

 

Carrying it through my veins,

On the backs of an army of blood cells.

 

Slinging it across the infinite leap of my synaptic junctions.

And then holding it

 

For a moment

 

Before slowly releasing it,

Back into itself,

In a rippling stream of music.

 

 

If I could only make love,

Like the Central Park saxophone.

 

Gently transforming the rhythm of the world,

Swaying to the current of our existence.

 

Locating the movement of stillness,

And the intimacy of isolation.

 

 

If I could only make love,

Like the Central Park saxophone.

 

Taking its place in the eternal orchestra,

Alert to the improvisation of all creation.

 

Never too busy for the present,

Forgetful of the past,

Nor impatient for the future.

 

 

If I could only make love,

Like the Central Park saxophone.

 

Lingering,

            Tingling,

                        Wiggling,

                                    Mingling,

Tinkering,

            Twinkling,

                        Rippling,

                                    Sizzling,

 

Love.

Lacan

 

“It seems to me that someone who reads the Symposium for the first time, if he is not absolutely dulled by the fact that it is a text belonging to a respectable tradition, can hardly fail to experience a feeling which can be described more or less as being stunned.”

  

“Love is to give what one does not have.”

 

“I mean that this Zeus, this Aphrodite, and this Eros, are the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This simply to allow you to imagine what is in question when Phaidros speaks in these terms about Eros. To speak about love, in short, for Phaidros is to speak about theology. And after all it is very important to see that this discourse begins with such an introduction, because for a lot of people still, and precisely in the Christian tradition for example, to speak about love is to speak about theology. It is all the more interesting to see that this discourse is not limited to that, but goes on to an illustration of its subject. And the mode of illustration that is in question is also very interesting, because we are going to hear about this divine love, we are going to hear about its effects.”

 

“Up to a certain point the gods, impassible, immortal, are not meant to understand what happens at the level of mortals. They measure as if from the outside something which is like a distance, a miracle in what happens as a manifestation of love.”

 

“You understand of course that this discourse supposes that the realisation of desire is specifically not the possession of an object, it is a matter of the emergence to reality of desire as such.”

 

“When we see that man interrogating himself not about his place, but about his identity, has to locate himself not at all within the limited enclosure which is supposed to be his body, but has to locate himself in the total and raw real with which he has to deal - and that we do not escape from this law from which it follows that it is at the precise point of this delineation of the real in which the progress of science consists that we will always have to situate ourselves.”

 

“Love is what makes you break down, it is what causes you to make a fiasco of things.”

 

“It is not enough in order to speak about love to be a tragic poet, it is also necessary to be a comic poet.”

Daniel Rhodes © 2024

bottom of page