object and device

Carli 2022-12-08 17:45:45

If there's one thing I can't do right now, it's seducing girls. I don't know what to say, I can't find a reason to talk to her, I don't ask her, what can I say to her? But I feel like marriage is surrounding me and taking my rights away. I want to escape. The desire for quiet pleasure stretched endlessly before me, bringing depression. I find that I miss that time, not too long ago, when I also experienced the excruciating pain of anticipation. I dream of a life that consists only of first love and last love. I know that is fishing for the moon in water. I don't envy others. When I see lovers, I think about them and their future more than myself and my past, so I love cities. People appear and disappear, you don't see them getting old. What makes the streets of Paris so enchanting is the frequent and fleeting appearance of women that I almost certainly won't be seeing them. It's enough to have them there, indifference, confident in their charm, happy to test it out on me. It's like I test my effect on them with a small smile, or an inadvertent stare. I feel like their seductive power hasn't succumbed to it, and it didn't alienate me from Helene, not at all. I said to myself, these passing beauties are just an extension of my wife's beauty, they enriched her beauty and got some of her beauty. She is a testament to the beauty of a woman and vice versa. When I hug Helene, I hug all women.

When the other is no longer an object, it exists as an instrument with the moment of arrival as the initial life. He is an extension of my thoughts and my desires. Why is the beauty of passing beauties an extension of the beauty of "my" wife? When "I" hugged Helene, why did "I" hug all the women? The unity of things tends to be rough, single, and lacks the review of life, while the diversity of objects is vague and indeterminate. I, who devour others without materialization, are nothing but a tool, pouring desire into the core of the other under the perception of proprioception, making it beautiful, making it indifferent, making meaning pass through her, and shining out virtue. A more profound awakening is that the "I" under the appliance finally descends into nothingness, accompanied by the initial state after various collapses, returning to singleness and loneliness. After a long period of groping about the boundaries of the other and the other in different vessels, I was left with me—the same place, empty echoes and stares.

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Extended Reading

Love in the Afternoon quotes

  • Frédéric: [voice over] I love the city. The suburbs and provinces depress me. Despite the crush and the noise, I never tire of plunging into the crowd. I love the crowd as I love the sea. Not to be engulfed or lost in it, but to sail on it like a solitary pirate, content to be carried by the current, yet strike out on my own the moment it breaks or dissipates. Like the sea, a crowd is invigorating to my wandering mind. Almost all my ideas come to me in the street.

  • Frédéric: I like seeing the streets full of people. That's the charm of Paris. Nothing's worse than afternoons in the suburbs. I can't tell you how depressed I get.

    The Colleague: Really? You dread afternoons too? Even in Paris, I don't feel quite right until 4:00.