I was supposed to design this house for you. I was supposed to put the pieces together, make the exterior flow seamlessly into the interior, bedroom right next to a lofty bathroom, a walk-in closet with miles of shelves for my dresses and even a little hanger for your Ohio State hats. I was going to plan it all out down to the tiniest details, create a beautiful house of our dreams. And we would live there, like two tiny mice running around a maze, searching for that huge chunk of cheese in our peaceful bliss. I wanted to do it all for you, just as soon as I got your approval.
But you would have none of it. You brought chaos into my life and you laughed at my floor plans. “What are these lines?” you amusingly asked about my carefully drawn drywall partitions. You questioned my closet sizes and smirked at the location of the patio overlooking the ocean. You found me to be a joke, and so did you find our life together equally as laughable.
But this piece is not about you, and definitely not about me. Certainly, William S. Burroughs and Bryon Gysin weren’t thinking about encapsulating the very personal dilemma of the difference between male and female dynamics in a relationship in their illustrations for their book The Third Mind in 1978. But both, their approach to writing and putting together the book and their methodology in showcasing their unique style can remind all of us of the often irrational and emotionally charged battles that we all incur in love. Cutting up texts, rearranging unrelated sentences, making phrases fit in a way that only one person can see the method to the madness is how we can often feel when we are in a midst of a fight with a loved one.
We think we can understand our lovers down to the nitty gritty details. We think we can read their minds without uttering any words. As we move through stages of a relationship, we evolve together with our partners, growing, challenging and syncing up with each other along the way.
But when we get into that one, fatal, brutal, hurtful, stomach-hurling fight, all lines of communication break down. Suddenly, the person we held so dear to our hearts becomes an adversary. Before we know it, we are hurling insults at one another, bringing up minor mistakes from the past, completely unrelated to the current fight. We rearrange the facts, embellish the truth and ignore the obvious – all of this just to come out a winner at the end of the fight.
But do we really win in the end, when we irreparably hurt the ones we care about the most? Where do we come to that turning point where our partners’ mistakes are no longer forgivable? And are we willing to live with the consequences that might haunt us forever?"
"Design Delirious"
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