Friday, November 17, 2006

Paris and love

This afternoon was the meeting with Quentin Bajac, the curator of photography of the Centre Pompidou. Because this is a public log, it is not wise to report on this meeting. Anyhow, the results of the meeting will become known in due time.
By now this weblog gets about 80 visitors a day. And readers respond, by adding a comment or by sending Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski an e-mail (info@szulc.info). Of course, responds are very welcomed. One of the loyal readers was mailing an intriguing comment, after Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski revealed he suffers emotionally because the person he wish to be with decided to go to India.
Loyal reader G.L. wrote:
"It is my feeling, that the only person who is really important to love you, is you yourself. No matter how close we may get to another person, are we not yet alone with ourselves?"
This is a very philosophical approach and obviously it had thoughts centrifuge in Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski's mind in between his appointments and conversations today. It is an unfamiliar concept to Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski to see yourself as the most important person loving you. For him, this is close to narcissism. Looking to one's image in the mirror and being stunned and absorbed by one's beauty. Because nobody else is involved it is the ultimate subjectivity. In Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski's concept love is something to give to others. Not to keep to oneself. As is explained in the Kabbalah: " You are not to own, but to have". "Own" is forever yours, "have" is temporary. If you do GIVE love, love will come back and it is this returned love, from others, which confirms one's reason for existence. The love coming to us from others is of a higher level than the love someone manages to produce for him or herself. It is social love versus selfish love. My love or our love. It is more easy, simple and convenient to love oneself. It doesn't involve anybody else and of course the self-loving person agrees with and enjoys the generated love. But to love other persons requires a lot of skill to drop one's ego, abandoning selfishness and opening up to others. That is no easy descend on the slope life seems to be.
The second part of the statement:
"No matter how close we may get to another person, are we not yet alone with ourselves?"
Isn't it all about how we decide to perceive things ? Why would we like to think we are alone even when in a relationship with another person ? Isn't that creating a philosophy self-furfilling ? Isn't that a fundamental negative approach to life excluding any harmony between two persons ?
An Oriental wisdom is the yin yang concept. Nothing is only black nor white. Black is black because white is white. They depend of eachother. In a relationship it is not that we are alone with ourselves permanently. Sometimes we may be, often we aren't,
but this only when we are able not to look in the mirror to see ourselves all the time.
In Milos Forman film "One flew over the cuckoo's nest" Jack Nicholson organises gambling sessions. One is about being able to lift a washing basin from its pedestal in the communal bathroom. He bets he can do it but is unsuccessfull. Although he looses the bet, he explains: "At least I tried".
That is an essential line applicable to life in general. Or you do nothing and you have nothing, or you try and you have at least the experience of trying.
Wanting to be with someone is making yourself vulnerable. It is trying. And that by itself is a life-experience enriching.
Alert moviegoers know what happened next in "One flew over the cuckoo's nest". Nicholson is operated on his brains and becomes a zombie. His friend, a huge Indian, gets so upset about this that he walks to the bathroom, lifts the basin from its pedestal and uses it to throw it through the bars of the window giving him the freedom he wants, needs and deserves. Nicholson's courage to at least try, eventually results in Indian friend obtaining freedom.
Feelings of missing someone, longing for someone, dreaming of someone is irrational and maybe stupid and senseless.
But it is living life as optimal as possible with all its delicate, exciting, disappointing and wonderful and painful aspects while seeing Narcissus in the mirror is an experience of seeing Narcissus in the mirror of seeing Narcissus in the mirror of seeing Narcissus in the mirror of seeing Narcissus in the mirror... Never to feel Marta away in India.
This morning, Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski was informed, that during the night, he had been screaming.

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