Words&Dirt

“The modern philosophical theory of love as emotion can be enhanced and informed by what biologists tell us concerning the reason for the existence of human emotions in general and the emotions accompanying love in particular, as well as what they say about the mechanisms of emotion.  Shakespeare famously asked (in As You Like It): ‘What ’tis to Love?’  Neither biology nor philosophy will ever be able to substitute for the first-person experience of feeling what it is like to be in love, but they certainly give us plenty of ideas and empirical evidence to begin to answer the Bard’s question in a broader sense––and hence to use our new knowledge to further enhance our enjoyment of a purposeful life.”

––Answers for Aristotle, by Massimo Pigliucci, pg. 172

“He placed a dish carefully in the dish rack, lining the circle up with the bent wire.

‘Do you ever think about leaving?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she said.

He turned to her.  His eyes were bright.  ‘Sometimes I do,’ he said.

‘Do what?’

‘Think about leaving,’ he said.

She shook her head at him, confused.  ‘But you can’t leave,’ she said.  ‘You’re the devoted one.’

His eyes were kind, and sad, at the sink.

‘Are you leaving?’ she said, and her voice rose, sharp.

‘No.’  But there was a softness to his tone that implied a question, or the very first hint of a question mark, and she could see, suddenly, that they were on their way to leaving already, that this conversation was only a walking through a door already open, and once those eyes left they were not going to return and the clothing would be no barrier at all, nothing, shreds, tissue, for all the pain then rushing in.”

––”The Red Ribbon,” from The Color Master, by Aimee Bender, pg. 26