Understandably there has been much fuss over great men like Voltaire, Rilke, Nietzsche, Freud, Descartes, Prophet Muhammad, etc. But when I read about their lives, what always distracts/strikes me most are the women they fall in love (or at least interact) with.

“… I lust after this kind of soul” - Nietzsche on Andreas-Salomé

Both Rilke and Nietzsche felt a deep connection for Lou Andreas-Salomé, who was 17 when she decided to get educated in theology, literature, the works. Over her lifetime she challenged the roles of gender with the combination of her indifference to moral conventions and insatiable intellectual curiosity. At 21 she met Nietzsche (who was 37), 36 she had an affair with Rilke (who was 14 years her junior), and later Freud in her fifties. She won the hearts of all three, and carried correspondences with them, famous on the literary map.

How could anyone express what took place between us? We made up for everything there was never time for. I matured strangely in every impulse of unperformed youth, and you, love, had wildest childhood over my heart. - Rilke, in To Lou Andreas-Salomé

At 24, Elisabeth von der Pfalz (or Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia) read Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy. He had heard of her and wished to meet her. At 25, she wrote to him saying sorry they never got to meet, and proceeded to exchange letters with Descartes for years until his death. She spoke six languages, was great at math, and was the person who would pose to him the famous question of the mind-body problem, debated and unanswered till today.

“Although in your metaphysical meditations you show the possibility of the second, it is, however, very difficult to comprehend that a soul, as you have described it, after having had the faculty and habit of reasoning well, can lose all of it on account of some vapors, and that, although it can subsist without the body and has nothing in common with it, is yet so ruled by it.” - Elisabeth, 1643

Émilie du Châtelet was 28, Voltaire was 40. She wasn’t pretty, but was fluent in Italian, Greek, German, and Latin by 12, studied literature and science, danced, sang opera, played the harpsichord, and was also an actress. She studied mathematics with Maupertuis and Clairaut, translated Newton’s Principia into French with her own commentary included, and published a paper with formulae successfully disproving Voltaire and Newton’s theories. But she usually wrote in secret, as men always overshadowed women in academia.

“Judge me for my own merits,” - Du Châtelet

She received a higher rating than Voltaire in a French Academy contest with an essay on the physics of fire. She was absolutely smitten with Voltaire, and him with her, and although she was married, she took him in as a lover, a practice accepted by France at the time. They lived in a chateau at Cirey. Together they wrote Elements of Newton’s Philosophy, an extremely influential book, which caused the French to abandon Descartes and pledge allegiance to Newton instead. Voltaire eventually got disillusioned with her once it became apparent that she was smarter than he would ever be.

In the chateau at Cirey, they did not spend their time cooing. All the day was taken up with study and research; Voltaire had an expensive laboratory equipped for work in natural science; and for years the lovers rivaled each other in discovery and disquisition. They had many guests, but it was understood that these should entertain themselves all day long, till supper at nine. After supper, occasionally, there were private theatricals, or Voltaire would read to the guests one of his lively stories. - Will Durant, Story Of Philosophy

When reading excerpts like these, I always end up putting my book down and going on tangents to find out who these women were. Also, reading things like these make me all the more inspired to conquer my insanely daunting calculus textbook.

I haven’t written poetry in what seems like ages. Not even in my paper journal. I’ve just been swimming in physics, organic chemistry, calculus, biometrics, swimming too deep to feel anything, let alone inspired.

He singles you out, and while he’s struggling to think of something to say, you fidget and carry on small conversations with anyone else in the room. This way, there’ll be more time for the two of you, and a chance for the director to notice any potential chemistry.

Besides, everyone else here scares you, and you think this serves you right for wanting to try out something new, where you aren’t the loudest voice in the room. Just a plain girl. You finish off yet another introduction, thinking that if this room had the last oxygen supply in the world, it would be finished in fifteen minutes without any amazing things said. Most of the oxygen might be used on sobbing alone, since it is a theatre crowd.

“Is this your first audition?”
He’s finally decided to say something.

“Yeah. You found the audition virgin.” Lame.

“I could tell… I go to auditions all the time and I’ve never seen you before.”

“Do you actually get any roles?”

“Sure.” He continues at length about his most recent character, inspiring you to kick yourself & check if your gaydar has malfunctioned. “But I’m so tired of playing gay men.”

“Oh. Because… you’re not?”

“No. They’re a hit with the crowd though aren’t they. Always gets their attention. But it would be nice to play alongside a girl for a change. But I know the director, he mentioned he’d put me into callbacks to test me out with other guys he has in mind. I guess he’s auditioning me for a gay couple.”

“He called me too. At the first audition he already told me he’s bent on making me play a lesbian.”

“How many couples are there supposed to be in this play anyway?”

“Quite a lot. But the rest are straight ones, I think.”

“Oh.”

You’re both on the table, and you dangle your legs to cut through the silence. He dangles his legs. He doesn’t need to look to know that you’re scoping the rest of the room as well.

“I wonder who I’ll get paired up with.”

“Me too.”

You both give up cutting through the silence. It’s comfortable. He closes his eyes, still hanging onto your last syllable. You don’t want to scope anyone else. You turn the spotlight off.

The director is in the next room.

It has glass walls, but he doesn’t notice the table at all.

for rocket

.

That man I saw at the bus stop doesn’t bother me anymore. I only saw him once and I never saw him again. I didn’t tell anyone about him, but I called my mother, because he scared me that much. We never talked, he didn’t even look my way for more than a few seconds. But he terrified me. Not in a horrorshow way, but more like something out of a Hollywood romantic drama.

In fact, I felt reduced to a prototype of a character surrounded in orchestral strings, in a movie that flunked at box office opening.

He was blushing, looking cute. Posture at the ready, he was dressed right for my character. I (characteristically) looked like a walking corpse with haggard updo, right after the menial errand the script demanded I do in order to bump into him like this, a man with a bag, coming and heading for nowhere. But he (characteristically) didn’t seem to care, also caught offguard. A small smile, a handful of frames per second, that perfect slow motion where the sun made him look like a hero. We’re moving in time with the script, but its unscripted, so I get scared.

His shy eyes met mine for a few seconds, then away, as if to say “Oh man, are we in this scene?” Then mine interrupted “No, I can’t be in this movie right now,” and I walked right off set, into my car and drove home. I’m glad I never saw him again, glad I never talked about it after that day.

But of course, as I drove away, I turned around one last time. He was hailing a cab.
He waved. I waved back.

We were always fine without each other.

I don’t know how to be social, or someone who is considered fun at random. The truth is I was brought up in a very serious environment full of books and mythical landscapes. I lived in the narratives of others in different countries and timelines. Some of that has moved from pages to real life people– I like being their surface friend because I don’t think I have what it takes to go deeper in without ruining everything with my hasty clumsy approach, my childish excitement & neurotic paranoia. I forgot how to be young so I couldn’t be fun, I had to grow up fast and go deep. I retrieved a fair bit but must learn to live with the fact that most of it never came back. This isn’t a disclaimer, but I suppose it could function as a sort of explanation, or a warning. Above all, this is a reminder for myself to not try so hard at being what I’m not, and not to get carried away, since I dislike the extra attention.

He never speaks to me in English. But one night, when I was crying all night in his arms over another man, he added to our silence with this. “So you think you don’t deserve love. Maybe my type is those who don’t deserve love. Maybe that’s why you said yes to me. Because I still can’t believe you said yes to me.”

The silence after that only got better.

pot of gold, poisoned apple, beanstalk.
an unread message.

how this kiss
feels like the first.

the birth of a stickman.
how we begin.

the line of an axis, where you and I
intersect at the point of origin.

a candle in a cupcake.
a signature signal to leave some party

and discover the favourite number
of our clumsy limbs.

your island on my speed dial.
365, 24, 60,

the crocodile has time in its belly
but it’s aching to bite.

your name is ticking in my throat
to a phone call I wait for every night.

you find a costume
for your sticky
skin, for
the club and last light to travel in
your eyes, red like
lasers for the camera
love in those
explosions, of people
colour laughter hot white
flashes and rainbow lights, love in
tangles of sweat and hair
you’re laughing all over, sometimes
you forget to smile in a picture
you’re drunk on everything, or just not sober
maybe you don’t
remember how you get
home.
someone is next to you, sleep
twitching. and you wonder about
love like that in everyone, tired
but still dancing.

I don’t blame you. That girl was made for hope.

A cruel gift unleashed on the impatient. She turns her head to you with the velocity one only gets from being romanticized by a million fools a minute. She doesn’t run. No one can catch her. So you decide to try. You give her your number. Wish your phone lit up and sang as easily as a cigarette. But she won’t call. That girl is a catalyst. And you are the impatient. If you didn’t know how to wait, you will. If you didn’t know what it’s like to be tough, someone’s got to break you so you can try again, right?

Suit yourself. But don’t call me for help anymore. You think you have trouble waiting? People I fall in love with, they walk up to me. Start conversations. Call me every day, my phone lights up and sings. My heart lights up and sings. But I learned patience, because they are only looking for a shortcut to her. Her, her, and always her.

I’ve been staring at my grandmother lately.

When I’m home, I sit near or around her, sometimes behind her. She sits all day in a wheelchair, asking for people alive and dead, forgetting things. And I’ve been trying to feel a connection with her because I know it’s important to have something tying us together that isn’t our failing memories. That is still a project in progress but this was a recent dream I had from all that staring and thinking grandmother thoughts.

—

I dreamed that my grandmother died, but not only that, my grandfather was alive and died too for the second time. I was the wife of a governor, burdened with obligations and recited to people who sat in front of a classroom for the class open day. My friends wanted to sit in the front but they couldn’t. I had to learn how to sing a song called Glory by holding an infant toddler and having him recite the lines to me.

We were in a school because the family had moved to the canteen. All of us. Then all the women in the family found out their children smoked, cousins and all. But my sister and I were the only girls who did. We decided to leave in sets of convoys.

In the car she was in (a truck actually), my grandmother tried to open a tin of biscuits. She opened it wrong, jolted, and the truck she was went into a manhole. The manhole caved in and the truck sunk underground. It was a smoky mess. I put my face into the manhole (it was suddenly only big enough for my face) and screamed out for my grandmother. I remembered thinking my grandfather was okay because he had died before. I only saw my cousin’s daughter walk out and look up. It’s the daughter that looks a lot like my father’s sister, even though it’s my mother’s family I’m dreaming about. She’s only a toddler. I knew the others were dead. She was crying, but her mouth was shut. Her eyes never left me.