(no subject)

She had a theory that leaving certain areas of her body, ones a wanted he would want to see, just partly uncovered would both remind him how much he wanted to see them and make him put effort into guessing about those stretches he couldn't yet perceive. The effort was the key. We have, she held, a certain allowance of moments we're given that we can spend on fleeting impressions, revulsions, amusements - most anything. But whatever takes us beyond this becomes real to us, is something we are now invested in. She called it the five second rule, but it was its inverse: since the goal is to get on the menu, climb onto the table, you need to earn a person's attention for more than five seconds. We all have a few family members we actually think of as family, a few friends who we categorize as our real friends, as well as a few crushes, a growing roster of enemies, some idols, and a few uncategorized persons who seem to represent something to us - though we may not be sure just what - so are capable of entering our unfrivolous thoughts, of earning entries in our mental index. Push past that five second interest threshold and you're of that number, she insisted. To attract was not enough. Attraction is fluid, associative, metamorphic. After years of further refinement she added to her theory, and practice, that only one carnal fascination should be cultivated at a time, one point of focus provided for eyes that, allowed to roam, would never open. Showing cleavage? Wear drab, loose-fitting jeans. Baring midriff? A closed jacket and a long, pleated skirt. The fashion magazines were probably onto this notion, may even have given it a name of their own. It was her commitment to this practice that was striking, her self-consciousness. To the point where if you earned more than five seconds of her own attention (something she was usually quite careful to withhold) she seemed to feel it was her duty to bring you into the heart of her life to see what sort of place there might be for you there. I don't mean she wouldn't speak to non-intimates for more than five seconds, of course. She would have said that most of a conversation was not about or even directed toward the other person, but at the topics raised, feelings evoked, wordplay aroused. I do think she felt that eye contact counted, as she had a tendency to suddenly, daringly, stare straight into your eyes at the briefest socially permissible distance then immediately look directly away, an in and out movement not unreminiscent of ballroom dancing. I could never tell if this behavior seemed so unnatural to me because she was incorrect, or had gotten the timing or some other crucial element wrong, or that it was instead entirely normal and had simply been rendered eccentric by the unusual closeness of my attention to it. So strange do we become after seeing just a part of what we are.

(no subject)

Some Twin Peaks 3.6 observations:

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