Fish In the Afternoon

ἐπ᾽ εὐτυχίᾳ τῇ μεγίστῃ παρὰ θεῶν ἡ τοιαύτη μανία [sc. ὁ ἔρως] δίδοται

Plato, Phaedrus

Uniques join together in patterns of inhabiting, unfolding over one-another in love. Love orients our attention, allowing another to disclose themselves to us through focus. Love may dance between many but it is never directed to all at once; love directs-towards in directing-away. Each attending is an affirming, each act of love is an act of faith, and in each there is an attending to the unfolding of that which it is for. Romantic love, for instance, is love for a partner, love for a lover, love for the closely-intimate. To attend to one’s lover is to attend in a way which is ever-ever closer but which does not consume the other, an act of theosis with the beloved, unfolding-together like the patterns of a quilt. In this attending, lovers imagine multiple futures together, echoing-forward many intertwinings, some planned, some unexpected, some hoped-for. Romantic love is an ellipsis in time that opens-up the future, even in loss, the un-concealing of time in the present. This un-concealing is reified in the sharing of intimate rhythms, in closely-attending to the patterns of life that incarnate the unfolding. Lovers sway-together, becoming one flower, the petals of a spacetime rose.

These intimate rhythms, however, are not the only rhythms shared between lover and beloved. Each form of love is a sharing of rhythms, a pattern of attending. This extends from the particular to the universal. In loving God, I attend to the Many-in-One who inhabits the world, whose being grounds the world, attending to her by attending to creation. This attending reflects the nature of God-in-creation: perichoretic kenosis, or indwelling, self-giving love. I dwell in patterns of inhabiting with the world and in so doing I dwell with God, giving myself to the world in love. The pattern of my love for God thereby becomes universal and agapic, an unconditional love that grounds all other love.

We love the particular through loving the world in which the particular resides, eros growing out of agape, not as something secondary but as its fulfillment. Erotic love moves from the world to the Unique. It is a form of formlessness, directing us away from the Idea towards the impressions of the beloved, the way-they-are without abstraction. Eros is dwelling-with the Unique in sensuous recognition. Though eros dwells most readily in romantic and sexual love, it spreads out through many-loves, grounding the connection between love-for-the-world and love-for-another. The intimacy of eros is grounded in the eternity of agape, but the transcendence of agape is only fully-realized in the immanence of eros.

Love for one’s friends is another type of particular-love, or love-for-another. It is love grounded in chosen companionship, the sharing of common interests and patterns of social life. Friendship is affectionate solidarity in the activity of living. This close attending emanates out into neighbor-love, a love for one’s community, formed from a network of friendships, neighborhoods, communities, and families, patterns of affectionate solidarity that unite everyone in the Gemeinwesen. Neighbor-love means attending to the good of those in your community by being-with them, knowing them, learning from and teaching them, and acting in solidarity with them, while friendship localizes this neighbor-love and forms a dwelling within that community that patterns one’s everyday.

Friend-love and neighbor-love each take place in the context of place-love or land-love. Though neighbor-love ideally extends to all the world in some sense, supporting the unfolding of each being in its own lifeway, there are also forms of neighbor-love that are particular, that are about living-with others in an enlanded community. My love for those around me requires attending to the act of dwelling-in-the-land and to the good of that land on which I live. In dwelling, my good is intertwined with the land and my neighbors, requiring attention to how these goods interrelate. Ultimately, each form of love supports the others, so that the good of each part of the whole is recognized and attended-to. In doing so, we attend to all through attending to the Unique and attend to the Unique in attending to all.

The Unique is itself-in-itself and irreplaceable with any other. It is what Max Stirner calls the creative nothing, the “nothing out of which I as creator create everything.” I as Unique unfold my being-in-the-world through being-with-the-world, articulating a Unique together, a dwelling or inhabiting. What was left out of the loves above was self-love: love for the Unique that you are. Though love for the world acts as the universal unconditioned limit of love for others, love for one’s self is the unconditional particularity that allows for one to become an attending-subject. Love for others emerges from both world-love and self-love, from both the One and the Unique. Philosophy is loving-wisdom, but loving-wisely means wisely-loving each Unique in the world as the Unique that they are. To do this, one must start from self-love and world-love – learning to love oneself as an unfolding Unique and to commit oneself to this unfolding as a life-project, as a directing of the will, as a leap of faith into one’s own Uniqueness. This faith then grounds the Unique in itself so that it may love the world unconditionally – directing the Unique towards the all in wisely-loving.

I want to return to love by returning to myself, by being-with myself so that I may be-with others and -with the world. I want to sit in the silence of the Unique and attend to my unfolding. Self-understanding grounds world-understanding, and self-theory grounds theory proper. From self-theory comes the understanding and self-articulation of the community. Uniques Unique together and in this Uniquing they form the Gemeinwesen. Community is a patterning of self-love unfolding into other-love, a network of loving-attention and affectionate solidarity. But to arrive at this community, one must start from the Unique. Philosophy begins from self-theory. What do you affirm? Which way does your body lean? Where do you find joy? Who and what do you love? Who are you? Who do you want to be? How do you want to live your life? How do you want to move? Where do you want to dwell? Who do you want to dwell with? How do I stop wanting to kill myself?

Start from the Unique and the world follows. Uniques Uniquing together. I’d like to learn to see myself as valuable, to see myself as real. I’d like to unfold as the I that I am and in that unfolding find joy. I’d like to breathe and sing and sit in silence and let that silence speak. I’d like to feel the earth and let the forms recede. I’d like to be formless again.

ash/cygnus. any/all/none. myself-in-myself and irreplaceable with any other.

The enemy of a love is never outside… it’s what we lack in ourselves.

Anaïs Nin, Diaries

Image: Bouquet with Flying Lovers by Marc Chagall (1947)