Joan Armatrading Love Song

The love that love songs too often forgets.

There's Always Another Man

"I think that there is another man."
He laughed. "There's always another man."
"Not always."
"Always," he asserted.
"That's a ridiculous claim. There is not always another man."
"You think that you are not competing with some other man from the first conversation? The other man is the man she's somehow constructed in her mind. At any moment, he can alienate her affections from you. He's perfect. You're not. You, however, have one advantage over him: she can introduce you to her friends. As long as you affirm her desirability and don't embarrass her in front of her friends, he's the 'other' guy rather than 'the' guy."
"So, there's always another man."
"That's what I said."

Litany - as Recited by a 3 Year Old

Happy Friday



Or ...

Litany

BY BILLY COLLINS

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley,
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine.

Love is Ridiculous

This is an excerpt of a toast I gave yesterday. (Or, more accurately, what I thought I might have said.)

No one likes to admit this - particularly at weddings - but love is ridiculous. It is inconvenient. It is demanding. It makes you lose sleep and makes you think it is a privilege to do freely what no stranger could ever convince you to do for cash.

Love will end badly. That’s a given. And it does end. Even if you make it to the death do us part, one person has to … well, there is no graceful exit from love. You’d have to be a fool to say yes to love when it shows up at your door.

Actually, it doesn’t really show up at your door, like a package from UPS. It’s more like a baby crying in the middle of the night that you suddenly have to get up to tend. And one way it is like a crying baby is that you don’t respond because you think it’s convenient; you respond because not responding to love and all its consequent complications is to choose to be less human. You have to be foolish to answer love's cry but you have to be inhuman not to.

People have this belief that love makes you happier. They are not mistaken. It’s true, but it is only part of the story. Love doesn’t just make you more happy – it makes you more sad. It does make you more content but it also makes you more frustrated. Love is just like life only more so. Sure we choose love partly because it makes us happier. Mostly, though, we choose love because it makes us feel more alive.

Simply to be alive is to be inconvenienced. Think how much time we spend getting places, eating, sleeping, cleaning up … So, it sort of follows that if you are going to be more alive, you are going to be more inconvenienced. Love is ridiculous, demanding, inconvenient, unreasonable, and absurd. Which is to say, love is like life only more so.

It's also true that love is something that both happens to you and that you create. It is universal and also incredibly unique.

What is Stendhal’s line? "Heloise speaks to you of love and some ass speaks to you of his love, don’t you sense that these two things have nothing but the word in common?"

Two people can pretty quickly agree that they’re in love. It takes the rest of the relationship to define just what they both meant by that.

I think that when people fall in love, what they fall into is universal – the obsession, the delight, the stalking. But from there, what each couple creates is unique. And I think it mostly comes out of a dialogue. “Sure, you said that we were in love. But what did you mean by that,” is something we continually find ourselves asking when our mate does or says something unexpected. And it’s not a bad thing that we’re surprised. It just means that forgetting to engage in dialogue does to love what forgetting to water does to plants. Keep talking.

Love's Little Memorials

Yesterday, I was listening to live music from various friends and acquaintances, a delightful concert that featured about a dozen acts. So many of the songs were, of course, about love; love lost, love gained, love that could have been, and love that sits at the back of your throat as words you’ve never quite had the courage to utter. As the configuration of musicians and singers changed from song to to song, there were, at times, ex's collaborating. The unsung love song about relationships lost and realized in the real lives of the singers and musicians was at least as poignant as the lyrics we heard.

And as I’m watching this, two things occur to me.

One, we have war memorials to commemorate lives lost. Why not also have breakup memorials to commemorate loves lost? Why should the parks only mourn the dead? Why not the relationships lost and whole lives never lived? When someone turns away from love, something real is lost. And its worth mourning. Might it warrant a statue? Why not a park to commemorate lost loves?

And then a second thought occurs to me. We do commemorate lost love. I was sitting there listening to these love memorials. That is what so many songs are. No wonder we pay such close and frequent attention to songs. It’s not a statue, but on the other hand, nobody walks around the kitchen humming a statute.

If anyone ever asks you about the difference between a committee and a band, you tell them that committees commemorate war with statutes and bands commemorate love with songs. And nobody ever asks, Hey? What is that committee’s name?

Technology - the Opposite of Romance

From Yahoo:

A hacker attack Thursday shut down the fast-growing messaging service Twitter for hours, while Facebook experienced intermittent access problems.

According to comScore, Twitter had 20.1 million unique visitors in the United States in June, some 34 times the 593,000 a year earlier.

For Twitter users, the outage meant no tweeting about lunch plans, the weather or the fact that Twitter is down.

"I had to Google search Twitter to find out what was going on, when normally my Twitter feed gives me all the breaking news I need," said Alison Koski, a New York public-relations manager. She added she felt "completely lost" without Twitter.

Now that is a rapid move from obscurity to "can't live without it." Technology adoption patterns may be moving in an opposite direction of romance over the course of a life: we are moving from long-term commitments to fleeting, intense relationships with our technology. Of course technology is not left heartbroken when we leave it behind - only the investors in it.

Love on the Radio

Marconi, who invented the radio, thought that love was the equivalent of someone finally finding your frequency and “getting” you, someone able to really hear you.
Howard Stearn thinks that love is a matter of holding someone's attention - even if one has to do shocking things to keep it.
Rush Limbaugh thinks that love is a matter of being right. All the time.
George Strait thinks that love is something you lose, like your youth, that gives you a reason to drink later in life.
Laura Schlessinger thinks that love is something you can have if only you would just grow up and take some responsibility rather than blaming everyone else all the time.

Bernard & Maddie on Love as a Gale of Creative Destruction

It had been a long time since I'd seen Maddie. She looked bright eyed and greeted me with a wet kiss on the cheek. She had to be closer to 80 than 60, but her eyes shone in a way that made me smile.

"I have been thinking about love," her older brother Bernard announced in his inimitable way.

Maddie giggled. "Maybe if you hadn't thought so much about love you'd have done better with your three marriages."

"Well, there is nothing like being alone after three marriages to make a man think about love. Sometimes failure teaches you things that success can't," Bernard said a little testily.

"What have you learned," I asked curiously.

"Well, I don't know that I've actually learned anything. But in doing some economics reading, I found a phrase that sounded more like love than capitalism: gales of creative destruction. Schumpeter - an economist - wrote about how capitalism creates new industries like cars that destroy old industries like horse and buggies. Capitalism creates by destroying," he said. Bernard paused dramatically. "And I think that love does as well."

"You think that love destroys a person?" I said.

"The old you. Yes. You go into a relationship and the old you gets destroyed. In its place is a new you that works with this new person."

"That makes love sound exhausting," I said. "I think love is a very different thing."

"What?"

"I think we underestimate the power of getting to be yourself in love. I think that love is finding a person who gives you a place to be you. Love is comfort as much as it is excitement."

"I don't remember love feeling all that comfortable. It wasn't really a place where I could let down," Bernard protested.

"Well no wonder your marriages didn't last," I said. "That kind of love sounds exhausting."

Maddie laughed. "If you do it right," she said, "there is no conflict."

"Conflict between what?"

"The two kinds of love you're talking about," she said. "Love as a creative destruction and love as a place where you could be you."

"How does that work?" Bernard said with what I would have sworn was a pout.

"Nothing's more transformative than getting to be you. Getting to really be you," her eyes shone. "If you suddenly find yourself with a person who lets you be you, it does destroy the old you - the you that berates yourself, that spends more energy scolding yourself than enabling yourself. You think it isn't, finally, transformative to find someone who is the place where you can be you?" Maddie laughed at us. "You think that you are two are talking about different things?"

"Ron," she looked at me, "it is not that you are comfortable getting to be you. You make it sound like something comfortable, Ron, like as if it isn't a lot of work to be the real you. Or, I guess, you aren't left comfortable with the old you. Aren't left feeling comfortable unchanged. Love has about as much regard for convenience as gravity has for grace. You'll be happier. You'll be more alive. You may or may not feel all that comfortable."

"So you agree with me," Bernard asked with naked excitement. Bernard, like all of us, had this tendency not to be able to hear anything after he'd expressed an idea, except as it related to what he said.

Maddie looked at him with a tender smile. Her eyes seemed to water a little. She touched his hand. "Sure, Bernard. I agree with you. Love creates a new you by destroying the old you. It's not afraid to call the old you retarded or dis-associate with it. It feels a little destructive sometimes, but ..." she trailed off.

"So you've known this for some time," asked Bernard, quickly turning her agreement into hurt that she knew this even before he did.

Maddie laughed again. "Bernard, Bernard, Bernard," she shook her head. "I didn't know it the way you said it. But it makes sense to me, yes."

Bernard paused and then he asked her, "Who transformed you? It wasn't Jacob, was it?"

"It was me," Maddie said. "I finally learned to love me and that changed everything." She patted his hand again. "You should try it, dear. It would do you good."

Bernard on Love: Happy Valentine's Day From R World

"Do you think that love is something that only emerges out of certain relationships or do you think that it’s an impulse that looks for expression? Does it come out of interaction with other people or does it start from inside us?”

“Is love something that looks for someone as an excuse or is it something that seizes you by the lapels and shakes you out of your stupor? Is that what you’re asking?”

“Yeah. I guess.” Bernard had a way of making me wonder what I was talking about. Bernard was eating a cup cake. I felt a little self conscious just watching him and wondered if some time we might meet over something other than a meal. His eating etiquette did not seem to be improving.

“The Greeks were so much smarter than us. They had multiple words for love. We still don’t appreciate how much confusion we create because of our careless way with language. Rather than question our language, though, we just hire more lawyers.”

“Lawyers?”

“Sure. Almost always when we call in the lawyers it is because it turns out that the things said – even the things for which we’ve created a contract – were exactly different ideas hiding behind exactly the same words.”

“What?” I don’t know how Bernard did it. I started the conversation with a question and quickly lost the thread of what we were talking about.

“Two people say that they’re in love. And they are. That’s true. But then it can take them months or years to realize that although they were both saying love they were referring to different things.”

“One person is talking about affection and another about arousal?”

“Something like that. That is part of it.” Bernard rather ungraciously turned the cupcake paper inside out to chew the cake off of it. I glanced around to make sure that no one else noticed. “The Greeks had three or four words for love – words that loosely lined up with our words for affection, loyalty, passion, friendship, and desire. And even with that finer distinction, they had room for confusion.”

“So what is the cure, Bernard?”

“Talk your way into love. There should be a minimum word count before two people can declare themselves to be in love. There is a reason that the heart craves conversation and love letters.”

“So only poets should fall in love?”

“No,” Bernard laughed. “None of it has to rhyme. But relationships have to be defined with at least as much care as a house or a piece of electronic equipment. You start with a purpose and then you talk through design details for a house or piece of hardware. If those things are going to work, they’ve been thought through. You think that relationships are any different?”

“How do you start?”

“Start from anywhere and go everywhere. That’s the conversation of love. Stories from childhood. Discarded dreams and dreams that stick to your shoe like gum on a hot summer day. Fantasies. Fears. Philosophy.”

“That’s a lot.”

“That’s the risk of love. You have these conversations about love even before you are sure that their definition of love is the same as yours. And in the end, no two people ever share the same definition of love. We just need some overlap and respect for the rest. When you love someone, you don’t just share a definition of love; you let them keep what’s unique about their definition, what they love about their idea of love.”

“You need your idea of love to be the same but in the end you need to love them enough to let them hold onto their own idea of love?”

“Yes. If you love them enough, you feed that because there is nothing more vital to a heart than to have its idea of love loved in turn.”

“Why does that make sense, Bernard? You are saying that you have to share a definition of love in order for love to work and then you are saying that you have to accept the fact that you won't fully share a definition of love?”

Bernard frowned. "Did I say share a definition of love?" I nodded. "I guess I should have said, share a conversation about love."

"For how long?"

"Why the whole time, of course," Bernard said. And then he shrugged as if he’d suddenly lost interest. He had a child like expression as he looked around for the waitress. “I love these cup cakes,” he said with enthusiasm. “I think that I’m going to have another one. Would you like one?”

Love is Out of Control

The other day, a friend said, "Whoever loves the least has control."

Watching family and friends over the holidays, I'm always provoked to think about relationships. One popular couples' trap seems to be the retaliatory trap: you owe your partner a cold shoulder, a scold, or a rebuke because they are - by your accounting - one up on you. It is as much a struggle for control as justice.

And if control comes from loving least, the contest for control over a relationship is a contest to see who can love the least. That doesn't seem like a contest worth winning.

Just wondering aloud about the rugged individual's chance at love

Poets, mystics, and romantics talk about love as a loss of self, a transcendence of the ego.

On Geert Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions measure, the US has the highest Individualism ranking in the world.

The US also has the highest divorce rate in the world.

Just wondering about a connection. That's all. I have nothing more to add.

True Love & Gratuitous Socks - Allen Warren Guest Post

I had the good fortune to meet Allen when working with a client in Oregon. Allen is a full human being - compassionate, silly, thoughtful, principled and able to make a woman and three boys feel loved while working a job that would overwhelm the brains and patience of the vast majority of us. Allen is, quite simply an easy man to love and I'm delighted that he wrote a guest post here at R World, providing us with a perfect heart warming story for cooler weather.

I’d like to take a moment and share a story about a person I have the honor of working with, Sarah, a sweet lady whose actions constantly remind me of one particular scene in the movie “The Bucket List” starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. In the scene the two men were in Egypt gazing at the vista of the pyramids when Freeman shared the ancient Egyptians belief that when they come to the gates of paradise in the afterlife they will be asked two questions, the answers to which determine whether or not they are admitted. The first is, “Have you found joy in your life?” The second question turns out to be similar but more gripping: “Have you brought joy to the lives of others?”

Two months ago Sarah informed me her mother’s health, which I knew had been up and down for the last few years, was on the down side and wasn’t going to come back up this time. Sarah was telling me this because she was going to need to spend a little more time w/her mom getting her set up with Hospice and such.

2 weeks ago Sarah updated me with the news her mom would probably pass on very soon and therefore Sarah would probably be out a few days. But Sarah’s tone wasn’t sad or morose because Sarah’s mom had been physically suffering the last couple of years and everyone, including Sarah’s mother, was looking forward to the day when there would be no more pain.

I asked a fellow co-worker and good friend of Sarah’s, Deanna, what we could do for Sarah, her mom and her family. I didn’t want to send flowers because . . . well . . . whereas Sarah would think flowers were nice, that type of material sentiment isn’t her style. Fortunately, Deanna came through with a GREAT idea, just as she always does. Deanna spread the word among Sarah’s closest co-workers and the GREAT idea took off from there.

Below is the email Sarah sent to all of us upon receiving the “condolences”:

To all of you who were involved in the “socks as condolence gift operation” – thank you. J It was soooo amazing to return to work and see – not flowers, not cards – but socks. I can’t tell you how much it means to me – and how it reinforces the idea that despite all of the challenges we face, sometimes, this really can be a Great Place to Work – because of the fabulous people.

A couple of you have asked for a bit more of an explanation of the socks.

I’m part of the community at a nondescript place on 6th & Burnside (in Portland, OR) - the Downtown Chapel of St. Vincent de Paul (www.downtownchapel.org). There’s a tiny Roman Catholic parish there, but most people in Old Town know our little corner for the hospitality services that are open to absolutely anyone as guests or volunteers.

When I began volunteering there ~5 years or so ago, about 25 people would come on an average morning for coffee, donated shampoo, or perhaps a change of clothes or help with a bus ticket home. On the day my mom died, 107 homeless people (many of whom are also mentally ill) came to morning hospitality. About 125 people each week come to get a bag of donated food (some of which comes from the Oregon Food Bank). Five years ago, we gave out perhaps 20 bags of food per week.

About four years ago, a volunteer began a once-weekly foot-washing ministry for 2-3 people per morning who wanted to experience it. After carefully washing their feet, she would give them a pair of clean, dry socks. Another volunteer quickly noticed that for people who live outside, foot-care can often provide a very inexpensive and non-threatening means of assessing health. Now, three mornings a week a room is full of nursing students from the University of Portland or Linfield College’s School of Nursing. They wash the feet of many, many more guests, and also have diagnosed diabetes, broken bones, systemic fungal infections, and even gangrene. Through this simple intervention and the relationships that are built between our guests and regular volunteers, we’ve been able to help some people get medical treatment they wouldn’t have sought on their own. And yes – everyone who comes in can get a free pair of dry socks, which are so essential in this climate, especially in the winter.

My mom may have passed, but the socks that y’all donated are a bridge from my work family to my family on the streets – two groups of people who mean a lot to me. The socks are a very, very special gift – and I thank you all so much.

When someday Sarah stands at the gates of the afterlife, I have every belief the 2nd question will never be posed to her as the answer will have been long-ago filled in.

Bernard on Where Life Is

Bernard sighed.

“How is it going, Bernard?”

“I’ve been spending too much time alone,” he said.

“That’s not all bad, is it?” I asked, trying to point to the positive.

“Ha!” he said. “You and the tiresome optimism.”

“Well, alone can be restful,” I said.

“Left alone we’re animals,” Bernard muttered. “Our brains are too big for us to live alone, big enough that they become just an annoyance. When we’re made a part of a community, our brains have a place to be.”

“Yeah, but in community you can so easily feel outnumbered,” I protested.

“Sure. Sure,” Bernard surprised me by agreeing. “But that’s because we look at it all wrong. Everyone is made to feel ineffectual. Even the president, the leader of the free world.”

“Meaning?” I raised my eyebrows.

“Well, we don’t acknowledge that we only exist in relationships. All of our thinking about the world imagines the oddest thing – it imagines that we exist in isolation from each other. If your model of the world is wrong, you can't be very effective.”

“Why?”

“Well part of it is the issue of reductionist thinking – the tradition of analysis in Western thought that loves to pull apart things to understand them, as if communities and markets and people were watches. But it is more than that,” Bernard took a sip of his coffee. “We get alone to think and then we make that assumption – this matter of being alone – the default assumption about the context. There was a reason that Socrates did his work in conversations. He knew that philosophy outside of a community was meaningless.”

“But they killed him.”

“Sure. But that was because what he did impacted the community. They wouldn’t have executed him if not for the fact that he actually had an influence.”

“So, what truth do we miss when we’re thinking in isolation, Bernard?” I knew he had something more to say.

“A hermit has no opportunity for love or compassion. Life comes out of interaction – our own lives get defined by our relationships. The quality and intensity of our relationships determine the quality and intensity of our lives. Your relationship to people you love or hate, your work or your play, the ideas that swirl around you. This is what you you experience of life. When loathing or contempt or apathy comes creeping into your relationships, that is what you experience of life. If your relationships get defined by love or engagement, that too is what you experience of life.”

“Wow.” I shook my head. “What’s in your coffee?”

Bernard smiled as warmly as I’ve seen him smile. “It is not a question of what is in my drink but instead, who is at my table.” He reached out to squeeze my hand, a gesture that suddenly felt oddly intimate, and said, “Thanks for giving me a place to be today. I needed this.”

"We all need to be," I said stupidly.

Bernard's Big Idea About Relationships

Bernard had a spark in his eye. I looked up from my morning paper and saw him looking at me with a grin.

“What?” I asked, wondering if I had crumbs on my chin.

“I’ve had an idea,” he said with a flourish of his hand, as if he were about to pull a rabbit out of his sleeve. And at that very moment, Maddie arrived, breathless and excited. Bernard seemed pleased she’d be here to witness this.

“You two already started?” she asked.

“He,” Bernard pointed at me, “never waits. In the morning it is all I can do to make him wait until we’re at a restaurant to eat. He wakes up hungry.”

“And you?” she said, “why couldn’t you wait?”

“I’m a social creature,” Bernard shrugged. “He eats and I eat with him.”

“What’s your big idea?” she asked. Bernard smiled, like he was about to lay down a royal flush after throwing in all his chips.

“It’s about universals in relationships.”

“You mean like alien abductions,” I asked. “Relationships across the universe?”

Bernard scowled. “No, you idiot. This – this I’m serious about.”

“Okay,” I folded up my paper. “Tell us.”

“Okay, it occurs to me that there are three universals across any kind of relationship – business, family, lovers.”

“Why three, Bernie?” asked Maddie who was now stirring one package each of splenda and sugar into her coffee.

“Why do you have five fingers?” Bernard gestured. “I don’t know why three. It just works out that way. Can I talk?”

“Sure, sure,” she said, looking for her waiter.

“Three universals: responsiveness, empathy, and inspiration.”

“That’s it?” Maddie said. “That’s your big idea?”

“Well let me explain,” Bernard said, drawing himself up. “The better a relationship, the more responsive two people are to each other – or a group is to each other. But it is not enough to respond. You can respond all wrong. You have to have empathy as well. Your response has to work for that person, show you know who they are. And ideally, in a relationship, someone inspires you – makes you feel more alive and more acutely aware of what great things are possible in your life. They respond to where you are now and have a sense of - and might even play a part in getting you to - where you could go with your life.”

Maddie and I chewed on this for a bit. Finally, Maddie spoke.

“Bernie, you are always abstract. What does this have to do with anything?”

“Relationships have to do with everything,” Bernard said.

“Well what relationship are you talking about, Bernie? How has this helped you?”

And with that Bernie looked deflated. He crumpled into his chair. Suddenly, he looked about 15 years older. He teared up.

“Maddie,” I said, starting to rebuke her.

“No,” Bernard waved her off. “She’s right.” He stared at the table cloth.

Maddie reached forward and touched his hand gently. “Bernie, hon. Ideas about relationships are not the same as real relationships. You might want to trade in your idea for a person. You think?”

Bernard just nodded. Sometimes ideas are kinder than the truth. I kind of wish that Maddie had just let him be, but then I realized that she couldn’t. She didn’t have that kind of relationship with her brother. And maybe that was the real lesson – our relationships never transcend who we are. Relationships are not things like responsiveness or potential as something that lies in the gap between us. Relationships emerge out of who people are and that might just be why we spend so much energy trying to change the people we’re in relationships with. Bernie did seem to have a good idea. The thing was, it wasn’t obvious that Bernie or Maddie or me or anyone was ever going to exploit that insight.

Sandi the Guest Blogger

I’ve high jacked Ron’s blog to post the 25 (of the many) reasons that I love Ron for our 25th Anniversary.

To have and to hold (the best of the promises)
Connecting spiritually
Life long learning
Life long dining adventure
Jordan
Blake
Involved parenting
Laughing at yourself
Jokes
Making me laugh
Skin
Saturday mornings
Beach walks
Exercising together
Reading out loud
Touching
Giving helpful feedback
Love letters
Gorgeous legs
Spooning
Private road trips
Acknowledgement
Talking
Being “fordy-seven”
Being a hero to my students (and me)

Wow, that is 25 already. I barely got started! I am absolutely delighted to be with you Ron. Here’s wishing us many more years (and reasons) to be together!

I love you dearly,
Sandi

Work or Play - Musings, Part 2 in a series

She wanted to work on her relationship with him, which was a pity, really, because it kind of missed the point. She was playful and if she wanted the relationship to thrive she wouldn’t work on it – she’d engage him in play. He had enough work during the week and didn’t need to couple that with working on his relationship. If she hadn’t tried so hard to work on her relationship, she might have seen this.

Love & the Fallacy of Economics

Bernard let out a sigh as I approached the table.

“How are you doing,” I ask rhetorically.

“Maddie is explaining to me again why my marriages have failed.”

“There is no sense in it,” Maddie said disgustedly. “In his relationships, Bernie always starts out as a romantic and ends up as an accountant.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” Bernie said.

“And that’s part of the problem,” Maddie said. To my surprise, she turned to me and said, “Didn’t you get a degree in economics, Ron?”

“Yes,” I said. “Two of them.”

“You have a PhD?” she asked.

“No, just a BA and MA,” I said.

“So explain economics to Bernie,” she crisply requested as she bit into her salad.

“Uh, okay,” I stumbled. “I guess the idea behind economics is one of opportunity costs, of tradeoffs at the margin. You can spend more money on guns or spend it on butter, and depending on which way you go, you’ll either create more or less happiness.”

“Ha!” Maddie said. “See, Bernie! That’s what you try to do.”

“What?” I asked.

“You can't make choices at the margin in a relationship,” Maddie spit out. “You either choose to be in it or not. And you do that, Bernie, at the start. You choose the woman.”

“Well, yeah,” Bernie said, obviously as confused as me. “I guess. I mean, if she’s interested.”

“But after that you turn into an accountant, Bernie. You want reciprocity at every turn. It’s like you’ve turned a relationship into a series of transactions.” And then Maddie did something really remarkable. She spoke in a full paragraph, obviously inspired by our confusion on this topic.

“This economics fallacy might be why men are so good at business and economics and so bad at relationships. You have this tendency to turn relationships into a series of transactions, doing your marginal analysis at every turn, looking for some way to get the most for the least.” She leaned into Bernard’s face and said, “Bernie, relationships are not like that. Shouldn’t be like that. If you want a real relationship, you play a different game, you work out a different equation. You give as much as you can because you realize that you want your life to be as much as it can be. You are never more than your relationships, Bernie. Don’t turn into an accountant once you find yourself in love. Love is not about cost cutting.”

I couldn’t really think of a response. Apparently, neither could Bernard.

At this point, Bernard and Maddie’s grandnephew spoke up. Delbert is about 19, as near as I can tell, but that facial jewelry and body piercing make me a little squeamish. I could not be sure about his age because I’ve never looked at Delbert for long.

“Yeah, but I think that the marginal thing is right,” he said.

“You do?” Maddie said icily.

“Yeah,” he continued, deaf to her tone. “I mean, think about kissing or making love to a woman.”

“As if you do anything else with your imagination at that age,” Bernard muttered.

“You kiss her once, say, and it’s wonderful. You kiss her the tenth time and it is nice. You kiss her a hundred times and it’s almost tiresome.”

I could not help myself, staring at the bolt that went through his lip. “Some woman has kissed you a hundred times?”

“Dude,” Delbert said disgustedly. “I’m just saying. It’s a marginal thing. Love, kisses, they are a marginal thing. After awhile, you put more in but you don't get that much more out.”

I did not want to admit it aloud, but I thought the kid made a fairly decent point.

“No,” Bernard said wearily. “She’s right. Even a kiss is not a marginal thing.”

“No?” Delbert raised his eyebrows.

“A kiss might be like a meal. Sure you get full at one setting, but you get hungry again. And a favorite food is a favorite food. You long for it even more when you can recollect enjoying it in the past, when it becomes the part of layered memories. The food becomes something you love for its own sake and also for the memories it now has wrapped up in it. A kiss is like that only more so.”

“But you got tired of kissing the same woman, Uncle Bernie. Eventually it doesn’t have the same oomph, right? For a kiss to wake you up, it needs to be new woman, no? Some new technique?”

“No. The woman is everything. Technique is vastly over-rated. A new pair of lips is not the point. A kiss at its best is an expression so thick with meaning, appreciation so keen that it can never be expressed in a mere handshake or simple hug. A kiss is inevitable once you feel a particular way towards her. The mouth,” Bernard’s eyes clouded over as he stared at his drink, “the mouth is the place from which we breathe, taste the world, and express ourselves. If you’ve fallen in love with a woman, how could you not want to melt into her at that very spot, this small opening into her being? How could you not want to kiss her?”

He paused and took a sip. “You don’t manufacture this feeling by starting with a fresh pair of lips. If you simply kiss a woman – no matter how good your technique – there is no guarantee that you’ll feel this kind of adoration and desire, this pleasure of getting to be one with her, this realization of what it means to be a part of someone so splendid. She’s right, Delbert. It’s a whole thing, not a marginal thing. That is, if you want to feel whole.”

“Oh Bernie,” Maddie touched her brother’s shoulder. “There might be hope for you yet, honey.”

“You don’t think it’s too late,” asked Bernie, his big eyes and old face looking so vulnerable.

“No,” Maddie said kindly. “It’s never too late to learn how to love.”


-------------------


This month, I’ll celebrate my 25th wedding anniversary with Sandi. It was 26 years ago that I first kissed her in, of all places, a Denny’s parking lot.

There has never been anything marginal about a single one of your kisses, Sandi. Thank you for loving me.

Love or Something Like It

I'm going to miss Thomas at "Living Next Door to Alice." His computer was taken out by lightning and he decided to use that as reason to stop blogging. Thomas had this delightfully unique blend of outrage and whimsy, idealism and practical that inevitably made me smile when I stopped in to visit. And he found gems like this:



Thomas, I hope that your travels beyond the Internet off-ramp treat you well and I'm glad that we got to be neighbors for a time here in the blogosphere.

The Fragility of Female Happiness

Maddie was giggling about something when I sat down.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“What’s up? It’s just a concept,” replied Bernard. “If we were in Australia, it would be a completely different direction.”
I stared at him, but he was not volunteering. “Maddie,” I asked. “Why are you laughing?”
“My brother here,” she said, touching Bernard on the shoulder, “thinks that he understands happiness.” She giggled again. “Tell him what you told me,” she said.
Bernard almost looked like he was pouting. “No.”
“Oh come on,” Maddie laughed. “Tell him.”
I could tell that Bernard was both pleased with what he was about to say and also felt more than a little inhibited because of Maddie’s reaction. His pride won out. “I was saying that happiness comes from alignment, a sense of integrity.” He began to motion, gesturing to his head and torso, “when your thoughts and feelings – your head, heart and gut – all line up, you feel happy. When you have conflict between those, you are not happy. It seems pretty simple,” he finished with a small thrust of his jaw and lower lip.
“Oh but it is,” says Maddie. “It is!”
“So why are you laughing, Maddie,” I asked.
“It makes sense to you, too, doesn’t it?” Maddie giggled again.
“Yeah,” I said hesitantly. “It does.”
“That is such a guy view of things. You consult yourself and determine if you are happy.”
“Well, yeah,” I said.
“That is so self contained, so self absorbed a view of the world. Your happiness comes from whatever is going on inside your skin.”
At this point I could begin to predict where she was going and I sat glumly, waiting for the indictment from her.
“Before a woman can be happy, she has to assess lots of people. Are the kids happy? Is my husband happy? My best friend? My sister or brother? My mom? A woman doesn’t know if she’s happy until she knows how the people she loves are doing."
“Men love too,” Bernard said, petulantly.
“Love? Really? Until your happiness is mixed up with the happiness of other people, Bernard, you don’t really love them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s possible for you to feel happy even when your wife is feeling punk?”
“Yes,” Bernard said hesitantly. “Well, my ex-wives, I mean.”
“Ex-,” Maddie said. “Of course they are.”
Bernard stared at the wall. “So this is why women hate men?
“Because we love you?” Maddie said. “Yes.”
“If that is true,” I asked, about three points behind, “then how are women ever happy? I mean, if everyone in their network has to be happy first?”
“Female happiness is a fragile thing,” Maddie said. This time she was not laughing. She looked wistful. "Happiness for a woman comes from a web. A broken strand can ruin it.”
“Well, why don’t you adopt my philosophy,” inquired Bernard, obviously pleased that he could offer a solution. “It would make things simpler, no?”
“Why don’t I think like a man?” Maddie inquired. “Sure, Bernard. I’ll do that. And why don’t you grow wings?” And with that she began to giggle again, making me wonder if female happiness was so fragile then why was she the only one of us who did not look glum.

Happy Birthday Sandi & Jordan!

It is an odd and inexplicable Davison family tradition. My great grandfather married a Canadian. She had a child on her birthday. My own grandfather married a Norwegian (skipping out on the Canadian tradition for one generation), but my uncle married a Canadian who had a child on her birthday. I, too, married a Canadian and 21 years ago, she had a child on her birthday.



There is no one who knows Sandi better than I do and there is no one more impressed with her. She's not perfect, though, and I exploited her poor judgment, convincing her to marry me.

Jordan is the girl that any father would brag about. I exercise an excessive amount of restraint by doing so only rarely. In the quarter just ended, she delivered her first university lecture (right brain vs. left brain) in the cognitive science class she worked in as a TA - a nice milestone for a junior. She very convincingly announces that she's going to be a professor of cognitive science. I believe her. It has been an extraordinary privilege to watch her become an adult from this front row seat.



We celebrated for Sandi and Jordan with nearly 40 friends and family, food enough to feed probably 100, live music, a speech, games and conversations. Given it was Spring Break, we even had some Canadians join us - friends from when my wife was in diapers.

Here they are - in various stages - my two favorite women.