Equations: Dialectic Form (2021)

#61
If you let your mind wander and hit a vertical patch, it becomes easy to
see that solitude and sex presuppose each other’s necessity in an examined
life. I’ve just learned, from a reliable source, that a woman (many years
back) was taken from me by slander and gossip. It was during one of my
promiscuous periods; in the midst of such an epoch, one trots from
flower to flower, trying to pick everything, place everyone in one’s buttonhole.
This particular woman was forced by a social context to reject my
advances. In my current solitude, I find some richness in having been
deprived— it is a reminder that most social contexts are predicated upon
fear, insecurity, desperation, desire, and treacherous self-interest. Now, my
life has been reduced to Jade-and- I, or I alone. When I do these little
phone dishes with figures from my past, I’m stunned to find how easily
stung I am, how many situations I botched, people I misread. The
verticality of this is all in the realization that it must happen again. No
artist can afford to live for prolonged periods above the fray— there is
too much in an individual consciousness that flattens out on vacuity if
preserved in isolation.
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