Equations: Dialectic Form (2021)

#35
Lisa is as close as I’ve come to completely mastering someone. Lisa’s
ambitious; she comes from a working- class background. She sees all the
middle- class status symbols around me and feels she must serve me, even
though my moods and need to create seem obscure to her. Moreover, I
am a status symbol for her at her place of employment — I actually do
shows, perform regularly in a major metropolis, record my music. The
glamour of this rubs off on Lisa, but also intimidates her. I learn from
Lisa the kind of smallness that some people feel about themselves and
their lives. It’s not just that Lisa doesn’t have many large thoughts; it’s that
she deliberately limits her thoughts to narrow avenues. Yet this is not
from lack of brain-power; Lisa scored higher on the SATs than I did. It’s
just that large thoughts carry with them the vertiginous unease of the
sublime. This willful sense of limitation carries over into our bed— Lisa
instinctively makes the same moves every time we make love. Lisa makes
herself easy to master because she makes herself static; and she does it to
please me. Her equation presupposes that what I want I will always want.
How much in human relationships can be reduced to habit?
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