1. Friends as mythic heroines
My Friend is a lens that helps me see myself more clearly and I am the Eye that beholds her beauty. My breakfast in the morning is an amalgamation of external influences. The beet smoothie, the oats with a pinch of salt, the sunflower seeds, the caraway, the raw cacao, the chia, the chai mix in a ziploc bag from Carbondale, the lavender syrup rose water matcha late… I’ve invented nothing, I just blend it all together, and remember with each ingredient: The moment you have shown me your particular ways is the moment I’ve changed mine. It’s so obvious at breakfast time. It’s much more subliminal in the ethereal waters of Being, how you’ve changed the ways I’m seeing, how you existing in my orbit adds an invisible structure to my days that keeps me anchored in my center.
All of this to say, I wouldn’t be who I am without you, Friend. Wouldn’t stand on my own two feet so firmly. Wouldn’t be so sure about what to eat for breakfast. Or if I’d spur myself into motion without sensing the reverberating echoes of your incredible life being lived by none other than you. Specifically. It’s a miracle to know and be known by you.
I see us like a constellation of celestial bodies attuned to one another’s evolution. And my bowl of oatmeal as a devotional practice. I know how that sounds. And I know you understand exactly what I mean.
2. Dating as Odyssey inward
I try to figure out the shape of who you are. And sometimes I focus so intensely I forget I am also a part of our meeting.
On dating apps I’ve seen dozens of people announce they’ve got their lives in order, they are just looking for that last puzzle piece to complete the picture.
I look at the shape of who I am. These natural borders, irregular like dried up river beds from tears, corners bent and chipped away, craters from meteor impact, broken up and sewn together with light from the stars. Nobody with their life ‘in order’ has the type of puzzle I could possibly fit into.
And anyway, Love doesn’t allow herself to be reduced to a puzzle piece that completes an image of a comfortable existence. Whoever keeps such a fantasy has never known Love, or really just wants a static prop for the theater production of their life. Love will mess up your whole puzzle to leave it unrecognizable when she’s finished, she discombobulates the scene, table and all, up in the air in irreverent enthusiasm. Want order? Do not fall for her.
I trace your outlines with my finger. Imagine your expanse. Somewhere our puzzled eyes meet and even though our maps are written in entirely different languages, our landshapes wrap peninsular limbs around one another. Already changed by your borders and boundaries. Already shape shifting to reveal more of who I am. You imagine my expanse and the Earth quakes under my feet.
Yvet Youssef 