Cosmic Cancer Dustballs on Valentine’s Day

I’m in love. I’m a man in his prime, (eh, sort of?) and I’m in love. Today, being the most holy of consumerist holidays that celebrates/exploits the concept of Love, seems like a good day to talk about it. The following is an entirely over worded and intellectualized piece that attempts to put a Valentine’s Day spin on the Cancer Perception ideas that I’ve been trying to develop with Cancer Trolling. Expect more thinky thinky than lovey lovey, but also know that I am currently getting my hospital room ready for a “make due with what we have” Valentine’s Night with Liana and it’s going to be the sweetest thing the circumstances can possibly provide. Maybe you’ll hear about it tomorrow, but maybe you won’t. 🙂 

We say “I love you” a lot. The words carry weight, anxiety, joy, pain, comfort and existential security… but what are we really saying? What do we really mean when we tell somebody that we love them in a modern romantic way? Do those three words imply more than a literal vow of relationship commitment, (“I won’t put my hands on her boobies because I put my hands on your boobies”) or is there a greater perspective that we are glossing over? 

The concept of Romantic Love and our perceptions of it are constantly changing. Centuries ago (in western society) you got married because of some weird socio-familial pact that your fathers established for the advancement of social wealth, or you married the first farm girl with big enough hips to pop out as many cow-milkers possible to keep the family fed. It was a social/economic/reality based on the practicality of life. Then there was the “romance” that we consider to have come of those Age-of-Enlightenment perspectives of Shelley, Keats, Cooper and even Austen. Even back in this Romantic period, “love” seem more like a practical concept than an all encompassing spiritual blessfuck that has been bestowed upon us to save our empty little sentient molecules from the dark abyss of cold quantum physics….

When social, practical, and philosophical perceptions of “love” are put together, it’s hard to even see if there is an actual timeline of evolution of the concept. I can’t seem to perceive a linear thread of the perception/concept of love. Here’s my rudimentary/pseudo anthropological timeline of the concept of love and relationships:

 

Main Flea Picker:

The ape that would eat the most bugs off of you. The grossier your skin, the fatter the parasites, the sexier you were. BOOM, LOVE

Cave Warmer:

Best to snuggle up next to the fattest one in the cave to keep your sack of skin and bones as warm as possible during the ice age. BOOM, LOVE

Tribal Bone Holder:

 

Tribal societies are starting to organize and that means certain tribal bones are going to be more coveted than other tribal bones, due to internal status and strength. BOOM, LOVE

 

The Sunny Fielder:

This is man/woman whose damp flesh would reflect the sunlight just right out in the field, enough to catch your eye, stoking a fervent desire in you to break away from the rest of the tribe and build your own independent hut system and start your own little bio-unit, whether it be in a greater settlement or out in the empty wilderness.

I suppose we’ve come upon an important split in the timeline now. Here at this point in the neolithic revolution we make the class split between industrial and agrarian relationships. The majority of the lovers had to toil in the muck just to maintain a roof whereas the industrialists were left to loftier devices of family raising, education and home establishment. Both of these, though, are existing concurrently in the timeline that I’m establishing.

We have now entered the “Romantic Period.”  I have allowed our top scholars at the Wikipedia Institute of Mass Culture to define it for me:

“Romanticism” is a period, movement, style, or genre in literature, music, and other arts starting in the late 1700s and flourishing through the early 1800s, a time when the modern mass culture in which we now live was first taking form: the rise of nation-states as defining social and geographic entities, increasing geographic and social mobility, people moving to cities, the growth of the middle class, new technologies including power from fossil fuels, individualism, imaginative idealization of childhood, families, love, nature, and the past. The Romantic era is the historical period of literature in which modern readers most begin to see themselves and their own conflicts and desires.”

 

So that’s the “Romance” …But where does the LOVE come in?

 I think we’re starting to see glimpses of the burgeoning Love concept in the last line of the explanation of Romanticism: “It is where we begin to see ourselves, and our own conflicts and desires.” This statement implies self awareness, self reflection, introspection into our own psyches and intellects. No longer are we ruled by our practical carnal desires of genital and family smooshing.

The concept of “Love” developed from our own awareness of ourselves, and thus we invented it with our own intellect. It was a conscious awakening. This modern idea of “love” is something that we have designed by our own subjective perceptions of ourselves and our reality. As a self defined subjective concept, it is obviously different for each of us. Thus there is no “TRUE LOVE” or even an overarching common definition, meaning or value for love itself. There just can’t be based on the idea of subjectivity. What an awfully Un-Valentine’s Day thing to say…

Sorry, I’m about to warm it up. We are entering the Modern Era of Romance and Love!

Esther Perel is a modern relationship therapist who made a pretty big splash at a TED Talk last year on Valentine’s Day. I will be using her quotes to help frame my ideas about Modern Love. Her background extends beyond many cultures and she employs techniques and ideas that challenge standard psychological and therapeutic models. I’m obviously no expert in any of this, I just think it’s fun to think about on a level that goes beyond “Honey, I’m home! Give daddy some of dat sugar!”

“Modernity has ushered in marriage as romantic arrangement where commitments are built on love. Trust and affection have become its sustainable energy source. In the west romance and passion are at the center of the marital plot, this holds for gay couples as well as straights boomers and millennials.” – Esther Perel

 

This is basically her standard mission statement for Modern Relationships/Love. That’s the straight forward practicality of why we fall in love and get married in modern times.

 I want to take a step deeper though and examine this Modern Love idea through the lens of existential subjective perspective, and how two separate subjective perspectives can exist concurrently in the same reality while maintaining a pragmatic need for their love…

What do Individual subjective perspectives, or PERSONALITIES as they will be heretofore known, (because lighten the fuck up, Jason) get out of modern love? 

“Many people believe love is a merging of personalities. Merging is only one piece of the story. People confuse intimacy with the fusion of two individuals for the unified identity of “the couple.” We long to connect with and to be recognized by another person; to feel that we are seen and heard.” -Esther

This is still surficial relationship practicality. She’s talking about literally being acknowledged by another human, being seen and heard and touched. Spending so much time together that our personalities meld, and we stop thinking of ourselves as individual egos because it’s less practical to do so.

Imagine two clouds floating in the vast emptiness of the cosmos starting to swirl around each other, like the clash of two galaxies. Notice how you’re looking on these two things from away, implying that they are being perceived from a third subjective observer. This third subjective perspective gives definition to the personalty meld that’s happening by merely observing it, but it is doing nothing for those dustballs attempting to transcend their previous existential aloneness. It is just the two subjective cosmic dust balls TRANSCENDING THEIR EXISTENTIAL ALONENESS. Why be existentially alone when you can fucking transcend it? Exactly. 

With this cosmic dust merge, though, we start to encounter some rules of physics. Matter bumps into matter and causes energetic reactions. Energetic reactions cause things to blow up, resulting in all sorts of chaos! These are two distinct clouds, remember, and they always will be. Regardless of the merge of personalities they are still TWO DISTINCT SUBJECTIVE PERSPECTIVES so there are things we need to be consciously aware of while this love merge is happening, otherwise we’re talkin’ stink-eyes and nights on the couch. So what kind of “rules” do we need to be aware of? 

So whatcha thinkin about? Penny for your thoughts? You never tell me whats going on in there. I feel like you’re shutting me out….

“It is not a right to know another person’s thoughts. it’s a privilege. It’s not something we’re owed; it’s something we’re granted based on trust.”-Esther

Even post-merge, we are still separate perspectives, separate subjectives. It is literally not possible for anybody to perceive reality through your subjective lense, and thus it is literally not possible for you to perceive reality through theirs. Our separation of thoughts and perceptions is actually all that we have that make us unique, so we need to always keep that in mind when we’re trying too hard to GET IN THAT HEAD OF YOURS AND SEE WHAT’S MAKING YOU TICK. It’s not something we deserve just because we have entered a relationship commitment, but instead being allowed in is the greatest gift we can intellectually give to somebody. The desire, willingness and ability to share our unique subjective perspectives with another human is my idea of true love.

 “In cultures where intimacy is not equated with transparency, people believe certain things are better left unsaid. “Secrets protect the couple” goes against the attitude that I should be able to tell my partner everything, even if I hurt him or her in the process, because these are MY feelings.” -Esther

She’s echoing my point from a cultural level. Our unique perspectives are sacred to our subjectives and when we just go tossing them around all willy nilly to all the other subjectives then we’re diluting them. Intellectual mystery goes a long way in maintaining desire...

Speaking of desire…I’m halfway through a heavy chemotherapy treatment which has left me a pale, bald, sack of loose diarrhea. One month ago I contained at least thirty five extra pounds of prime-of-life masculine bodysex mass. This morning I almost fell over when I tried to change my underpants because my atrophied hamstring threw a bitch fit. Let’s talk about desire!

 LOOK AT ME:

I’d be lying to you if I told you that there wasn’t a part of me that was terrified of the fact that Liana will never be able to compensate her (alleged) intellectual/romantic desire for me with my current physical state. Thankfully I’m secure enough in us, and in her, to realize that this is a silly thought and I have nothing to worry about (right honey? We’ll hike that 14er late in the summer after my muscles grow back, I promise!)

But maybe that sad image above, and this cancer thing in general, is a good thing for our mutual desire?

 “Desire needs space like a fire needs air.” -Esther

Distance making the heart grow fonder, delayed gratification, Mike Huckabee Christian Abstinence (wait, not that one)… these are things that Liana and I have to practice every day during my Cancer Quarantine. I haven’t been able to see her mouth in three weeks, let alone being able to caress each other’s skin… so there has been some literal distance. This isn’t all bad though.  We are fortunate in the fact that I am in this amazing facility receiving such great care that we can afford some distance. She doesn’t have to care for me physically, so she doesn’t have to compromise her lack of desire to touch my gross, sick body with my need for care. We only have to focus on each other in terms of desire, need does not play a role in this equation, thankfully.

 “There is a difference between neediness and desire. Being desired is great, but being needed shuts down.”-Esther

If she were my actual physical caretaker, like my lovely RNs, then that line between need and  desire would be crossed in a way that that would probably do subconscious harm to both of us in this relationship. I’m not just speaking physically, I’m referring to psycho/intellectual desires and needs, too. Despite the fact that I’m going through a massive life changing traumatic experience, I feel very secure in my lack of neediness, thus leaving more room for desire. I feel this is a very important piece of the puzzle when considering how to maintain a healthy Modern Love relationship while navigating the depths of trauma and tragedy. The victim needs to be aware of these “neediness boundaries” in order for the relationship to survive. Yeah, I’m the one with the fucking cancer, but that doesn’t make either of our needs more or less important in this relationship!  That’s why they’re called NEEDS!

Believe it or not, all of this has been working toward putting a positive spin on being in a relationship…. on Valentine’s Day…. while having Cancer. YEAH IT’S GOD DAMNED POSSIBLE, AND YES I AM GETTING THERE.

 My Cancer is “the shadow of the third; the other”

 From the highly esteemed Wikipedia Institute of Collective Consciousness:

The “Other” (or “Constitutive Other“) is a concept of the identity of difference that is discussed within some works of Continental philosophy and in the social sciences, such as across the taxonomies of anthropology. The state or characteristic of “the other/Other” is “being different [from] or [alien to]” the identity of self or social identities.[1] As such, the “other/Other” is perceived as dissimilar or opposite to being “us” or the Same. The terms the “other”, “Other” and “Otherness” refer to who and what is distinct or separate from the the Symbolic, the Real, aesthetic and/or political norm, from identity, and from the self. The “Constitutive Other,” using Hegel’s construct of “the relation of essential nature to outward manifestation [is a point-of-view of the binary nature of the essential and the superficial where each is the inversion of each other] in pure change, … to infinity, [where the difference], as inner difference, … [is within] its own self

Basically, my Cancer is filling the role of the movie bad guy that the Hero and Heroine are teaming up against in the grand romantic comedy farce. It is playing a very powerful role in uniting us.

“In order to not be alone, you need to be two. In order to be a couple, you need to be three. The couple is defined by the fact that it separates itself from the third”-Esther

In our current case, this third is the cancer. Us vs. Cancer. We obviously would be better off without it, and though we obviously are doing everything we can to resist its intrusion in our lives/relationship it is still there defining us from without. It creates anxieties and insecurities in the relationship on a real life practical level, because it is a threat to our freedom. 

 “A partner’s freedom is threatened [by the shadow of the third] because its a reminder that he or she also has the freedom not to love you. from the moment you fall in love you know you could lose this relationship to death, illness or to another person.”-Esther

 So just like everything else, we reconcile these two sides of light and dark with balance. It’s a balance between denial and delusion versus acceptance and growth. Instead of denying the anxiety of the Cancer Shadow, we use it to fuel and aid our appreciation for each other and our relationship. A little anxiety in the dark is useful if you shine the right light of perspective on it.

I will always see my cancer trial, with all of the hardships, sacrifices, tears, and growth it has forced into our relationship, as a reason to never succumb to complacency or laziness in my love for Liana.

It will always be a part of our definition as two subjective cosmic dust balls.