6 Comments
24 hrs agoLiked by Laeth

That's an interesting idea about men and women. I think I thought something similar. I saw my wife as someone who with me could be soft in the right ways, and without me would either get rolled over or become hard and brittle to survive. As for the other half, it was much harder to stand up for myself against women than it ever was against other men, in the sense that I didn't automatically fight as hard to keep who I was and not be subordinated.

Expand full comment
author

i tend to think in very concrete terms, because i believe that physical reality and spiritual reality are inextricably linked and we can learn about one by looking at the other. so, what i had in mind for that one was a very trivial observation about physiology - in very lewd terms, women make men hard, men make women wet and flexible. and indeed, i think there are quite a few spiritual and psychical lessons in this.

Expand full comment
21 hrs agoLiked by Laeth

I was wondering if you meant it more literally. But I thought surely you wouldn't be so Mediterranean!

Expand full comment
author

ahaha. well, the portuguese really aren't mediterranean - not geographically and not temperamentally. but yes, i meant it literally and figuratively and symbolically and spiritually and philosophically. i don't see any meaningful separation between these spheres. an idea must make sense in all of them at the same time as far as i'm concerned, or it is not in accordance with reality.

Expand full comment
17 hrs agoLiked by Laeth

I might need to diagram those categories to understand how a concept translates between all of them

Expand full comment
author

go for it

Expand full comment