Infinity at the disposal of poodles
Posted by iqbalicarus on 12-20-2007 in Marriage vs. Cohabitation'Hymen, Hymenee, why do you tantalize me thus? O, why do you last only for a single moment? Why can you not continue? Is it because, if you were to last beyond that moment, it would surely kill me?' (The Goddess of Marriage employed as a synecdoche for the Supreme Communion of the Self with the Self; All Love is an Allegory of Masturbation).
It's a bit of a banality, nowadays, to presuppose a distinction between Love and Lust; that difference is a Vapor. Your Libido has as much to do with your 'transcendent' relationships as your Soul, or your Mind. Love between Strangers cannot begin without the interest (whether sublimated or explicit) of the Flesh (the Body being the provenance of our Dreams; thus spake the First Meditation of Renee Descartes). In order to sustain that love, moreover, one always requires the presence of an erotic Vitality (By this, I allude neither to the 'copulations of Lady Chatterley' nor to the diagrams of Vatsayan; The theatricality of the relationship, its aesthetic beauty, has to be maintained). When it comes to Autonomous (as distinct from manufactured) persons, I do not see how anyone can disagree with Marcello (8 1/2): 'I don't want your sticky, maternal love. It's not love. It's brutalization.'
I don't know what, precisely, Batman could mean when he writes of 'a higher understanding of love.' Is it superior to Shakespeare's understanding of (fleshly) love?
'My mistress' eyes are nothing like the Sun,
Coral is far more red than her lips' red,
If snows be white, why then her breasts are dun,
If hair be wires, then black wires grow on her head'
Love has to be apprehended as an Antithesis, the Beloved outside of Consciousness, outside of Mimesis: Pure Negation.
There is no place for experiential reality when it comes to relationships amongst autonomous beings; there is only theatricality. The motivations are simple: the relationship has to be kept interesting. The dialectics of Marriage/Cohabitation (the two relationships are precisely the same) always have to stress the Devourer, not the Prolific. And Creative Energy, as everyone knows, originates in one's phallus. What Batman describes is Angelic Love, love amongst the unsexed; he forgets that Angels are inferior to Men. You are a mammal, sir, and an embodied Self. Spirit, for us, is always a Bone.
In response to: A Higher Understanding
Wow--that seems like it was a personal jab, kwidge--let's keep it professional. How I spit my game in my batcave is not the issue at hand.
I'm not trying to make cohabitation seem like something crass--I'm just saying that love, which is a quintessential human emotion, should not have to be justified by a document. Love is much more than that. Although I found your automotive analogy quite interesting neeru (because you don't seem like a car person), I actually feel that it is you and your marriage devotees who have the greatest insecurity. You refer to the "the idea of being bound" and the need for contracts to keep the community together. I can understand documentation for a land deed--but love? It seems that those who need marriage are insecure about their love and need something more to justify it. Cohabitation seems to imply a higher understanding of love (if treated with care--not regarded for its "temporariness")--that love supersedes some concepts of humanity. Maybe only those who have this understanding can cohabit.
Thus, sex could ultimately happen when those individuals have reached that level of understanding of their love. Hopefully most of society will continue to teach abstinence--and for most until marriage---but for those select few--