Wow, one second…I have a visual in my head for this.
In the past few months, a set of visuals has been continually surfacing in my mind. They’ve come from texts and voice recordings to friends, from reading and writing, from summer in the city, from novelty and familiarity, fear and constraint, acceptance and contentment. They’ve felt like, and I’m calling them, visual meditations –
In ways, I feel tangential
People I’ve met recently are passionate and driven – interested in something. It’s a huge part of the appeal of the city. With everyone pacing in their own curiosities, I’ve been sitting with this feeling of tangential-ness. I’m thinking of tangentiality like a side note in a conversation, derived from the mathematical concept where a line merely touches a curve. Imagine this concept with just a bit more fluidity. Imagine being that tangent and just touching the curvature of another’s life, especially to their interest(s).
Think of when she literally lights up talking about academic writing. Recall the other day when he went off about the emotional intimacy he feels with his guy friends.
To this equation, add contagion and gravity. People with drive and aspirations have a gravitational pull. I’m drawn to them and seek them out (and am intimidated by them). I feel more energetic when I’m around these people. For a moment, I can give my attention to the things they love. But when they are out of sight, the intensity is lost on me. My passions are not theirs – and theirs not mine. In a handful of these moments, I’m left feeling tangential to the fire, the drive.
I’ve been visualizing a water-like movement. One that feels like the movement by someone or a group(s), like being an outsider, like just passing by.
Stepping back a bit, this visual could also be what it’s like to have people in one’s life for seasons if the seasonality of relationships is anything like us living parallel and tangential lives to each other. Us drifting, rafting, racing down our own river, maybe changing each other’s currents with our gravity.
Venn diagramming our dynamics
We’re familiar with the Venn diagram. We can relatively simply map our similarities and differences.
This is the overlap in our taste in food. We have a 93% match in our Spotify blend. We both find this comedian funny.
We know who cooks the meals and who cleans the dishes, who invites the guests, and who entertains better amongst different friend groups.
I know that I enjoy spending time with you because we share similar hobbies, but I know that I can’t always go to you for emotional support. I can never quite find the words to communicate to you to make you see me, but I know you’ve seen me share comfortably and fluidly with others.
I recognize that he brings out your play and I bring out your introspection.
I recognize that we can just spend time in each other’s presence, but with another, both of us would be attentive to how we are perceived.
My gosh, the dynamics. They dance, they rise, they grow, they sink.
I was having difficulty fully capturing the richness of interpersonal dynamics, so for now, I’m imagining a Venn diagram consisting of two multifaceted parts.
“We live in a society”
I first drew this grid with a curving path running through it on May 27th and wrote
settle the mind.
finding my path. frameworks made through time and thinking and writing.
I was considering the structures, institutions, expectations, and narratives we live by.
Study hard to attend a prestigious university and climb the corporate ladder.
Be an elegant woman, laugh often, and brighten the room.
Eat well, maintain fitness, and live a healthy lifestyle.
Have a digital brand – or multiple, gain a following.
Move to the suburbs with a partner, be a good parent, and raise functional children.
Etcetera, etcetera.
It’s more than likely that we grew up with different expectations and institutions too. Regardless, these narratives create boxes and clearly defined paths. There are these carefully, and at once haphazardly, designed trails for us to trample down and traverse up. I can find comfort in certain parts of the path – structure can be good. It’s nice not to have to make a decision about everything (as in, the people in power have given us a guide). However, there are ways of living that I would love to define for myself. Two at the tip-top of my mind are – one, I’m riding this wave of elevating my friendships, while also searching and striving for an “aspirational relationship”. Two, I’ve been chipping away at my Western identity, trying to reconnect to the roots of my heritage. More on both of these at some point later.
Lacan’s ballerina
Six months ago, I was living lightheartedly, then my friend J shared an article about Lacan’s theories…ever since then it (me) has been cooked.
In Lacan’s theories, there’s this idea of “objet petit a,” which is an unattainable object of desire that drives our motivation. We are searching for the light at the end of the circularly looping tunnel, but we are left with just more darkness because the light is unattainable.
It’s a bit ironic actually that, in ways, I’m here ruminating on visualizing objet petit a, and all I can reach is a visual representation of our experience with objet petit a. This visual meditation is also not an original one, I’m borrowing it from the article linked above. I’ve drawn this ballerina in my notebook a few times now, and I feel like ”I could draw and redraw Lacan’s ballerina.”
These are the days when I over-intellectualize. Behind every decision, craving, and movement I make, I wonder what’s driving me to go. In Lacan’s theories, it’s the different shades of darkness that constitute the space beyond the spotlight, like loneliness, disconnection, and discomfort. It might be the muddling of those feelings that I desire because the thing, person, or place in front of me is probably not what I am really looking for – it is not and they are not objet petit a.
All the meanwhile, I feel acceptance that I will never stop desiring. However, I am nervous that that means I might never be satisfied, only content. The beauty and allure of the ballerina will never overtake the darkness that surrounds the spotlight.
On this set of visual meditations*
I’m in my mid-twenties and so is much of my community. The quarter-life crisis is rampant – the symptoms include strong feelings of uncertainty, breaking up, larger purchases on whims. When I was moving from Seattle to New York, a friend prompted a question in a goodbye letter – how do we live in our twenties? I think these visual meditations capture my process toward answering that question.
Seeing these visuals on paper, gathered together rather than spread across pages, napkins, post-its, and Digital Touch sketches, it’s a bit clearer how I am living in my twenties.
I’m connecting and disconnecting.
I’m being more honest with myself. There is this quote from a source I can’t remember that says, in paraphrase, “Humans uniquely have the capacity to lie to each other and themselves.” I would like to fool myself less and less.
Though it feels chaotic and crazy, I imagine myself as the eye of the hurricane – relatively calm.
I want so much to end this piece with a smiley face because it’s true and it’s visual, and I think I will.
:-)
*Also, I wish there was an odd number of diagrams, but alas I scrapped two of them.