Theme: Love

What happens when one names another, when one draws them into language— is that the moment in which they disappear?; when they begin slipping away, into nothingness.Read more

Almost without fail, on the fourteenth day of February, one is bound to hear numerous complaints from just about everyone (besides florists, perhaps even them) about how Valentine’s Day is mere commercialism. The nay-sayers among us who maintain a soft spot for Karl Marx would proceed to call it the commodification of relationships; those who prefer the gods would claim that the sanctity of relationships has been profaned; the gender theorists would note how the fact that males — or those playing, performing, male roles — buy the gifts only serves to highlight the unequal power-relations between the genders.Read more

Mr. Hindley came home to the funeral; and—a thing that amazed us, and set the neighbours gossiping right and left—he brought a wife with him. What she was, and where she was born, he never informed us: probably, she had neither money nor name to recommend her, or he would scarcely have kept the union from his father.Read more

When I was younger, in college and grad school, I'd read that someone my current age had won the lottery, and it just seemed so pointless. What would they do with twenty years of money coming in that could possibly make their, or anyone's, life better? There they would be, beaming out of the front pages of the New York Post, their slovenly decrepitude accentuated by the big checks and grins so appropriately transfigured into the harsh half-tone dots of the giant photo.Read more

Despite their disembodied engagement, dating simulations nevertheless underscore an affective interaction with the artificial intelligence (AI) of the game engine. As Dominic Pettman contends in his paper, Love in The Time of Tamatgotchi, these are moments whereupon the most “‘human’ of experiences — intimacy or love — is increasingly being mediated by the technologies which link one agent to another’.Read more

I remember when I was a pre-teen and they moved into a loft across the street from me in Tribeca, where I lived. And an older neighbor friend told me they were living in her building, on the top floor. I saw him at my corner deli, and on the street smoking, but never her. At night, I sometimes looked up at their windows and saw their lights on. He was not very impressive in person. Cute, but no big deal. Read more

Until recently it has been said that the Chinese do not have a word for loneliness. China remains the promised land of the group. Family, classmates or colleagues, the village, and other more or less involuntary groups are the decision makers for who one is and how one should behave.Read more

I came to this city in love and with everything I owned stuffed into three bags — it was San Francisco, so six people in a three-bedroom apartment seemed like something that could work. But when a week turned into a month she said maybe I should try Craigslist; then she told me sure, no problem, McCoppin Street wasn’t that bad, see, your room even has a window.Read more

Ye jovial boys, who love the joys, The blissful joys of lovers, And dare avow wi' dauntless brow, Whate'er the lass discovers;Read more

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Peter Orner reads a passage from his latest novel, Love and Shame and Love.Read more

Sometimes a person’s most fleeting glance, a throwaway comment, or simply their presence, can become fixed with significance, freeze-framed in the memory like a panel in a comic, there to revisit and linger over. Read more

They went in late September, starting out on I-5, which she handled by staying in the right lane with ample braking distance, keeping her hands at 9 and 3 on the wheel, and disdaining speeders and tailgaters. Read more

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Marx's more human aspects have been played down by both his detractors and his supporters. Some Marxists, Gabriel notes, went so far as to try to suppress knowledge not only of certain scandalous aspects of their idol's history and conduct.Read more

My sister, Isa, speaks English and Tagalog. But one word, she could say in many languages: koigokoro, beminnen, mahal, amor. “It’s the most important thing,” she used to say, “the only thing. L-O-V-E. Love.” Read more

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparationRead more

The correspondence between the young Sigmund Freud and his fiancee Martha Bernays stretched over 52 months, from June 1882 until their marriage in September 1886.Read more

One night in March, entering a café grinning uncontrollably, as he almost always did at this point in a new relationship—two weeks after kissingRead more