The Cambridge Chronicles
http://artdeadlineslist.com/rlg/tcc/
Official notice: all the words, phrases, and ideas presented in this writing came
from the brain of the writer. There is not necessarily any connection between
any of those words/phrases/ideas and the actual, real, living world. They may however,
correspond to words, phrases, and ideas found in your brain--and may even have some
correlation with your actual, real life.
The photo is of the author (the one on the left) and his dog, Cassady. You can find more
pictures of Cassady here. Some people think she's a very beautiful dog. Who am I to disagree!
Recent Writing...
October 30, 2002
Regarding your recent column:
Significant others
I love my other and my lover.
He loves his wife and me.
Can this all work out?
http://salon.com/sex/col/tenn/2002/1...wed/index.html
and your doubts that it can all work out:
Here's a thought experiment:
1) make a list of all the couples you know (or limit
it to 1000, for simplicities sake)
2) make a second list of each member of the couple
(or limit it to 2000, for simplicities sake)
3) looking at each person on your second list you
note that EVERY SINGLE RELATIONSHIP they
participated in, before their current relationship,
FAILED (discounting those where one partner may
have died, or where it was the very first relationship
for that particular person)
4) going back to our original list of 1000 couples,
we can wait a year and discover... some of those
FAILED
5) waiting 5 years, and going back to our original
list, we find that even more of them FAILED
6) waiting 10 years, etc...
Don't think me an advocate of the polyamorous lifestyle for presenting
the above thought experiment.
Don't think me against it because it doesn't "work". Who is to say
with any certainty that the fixed couple relationship "works" when you
consider that real life is nearly exactly reflected by the above
thought experiment. One or the other may "work" for any given couple
for some length of time.
Then there is the argument that "I know a couple where the two people
involved had only one love their entire life". Don't get me started
on that, but my experience is that they solve the need for "more" with
some combination of lying and cheating during parts of their lives
together. I have yet to find a couple, including my grandparents,
about whom lifetime fidelity is a certainty.
Let me say this about the problem of the fixed couple relationship
(apologies for the purloined prose):
"My opinion of such crystalline formations is that they are inherently
unstable, given the way stresses multiply in the interstices, and how
the supports are not reinforced by the structure but, on the contrary,
tend to be weakened and stretched even thinner. There will be crucial
moments of stress, such as that moment when your other needs you
urgently and" you discover yourself unable to meet their needs at that
moment--and you have FAILED them. At that moment you find yourselves
"realizing that the grass" WAS "greener on the other other's side of
the street," in some areas "and tears appear in the fabric of the
face." And both partners begin rethinking the value of their current
relationship and whether they should split--and find somebody new,
stay together as a monogamous couple, or look around for someone to
fill that unfilled need--even if it has to be done on the sly.
Sounds just like real life, doesn't it.
The likely reason for all this
life-as-a-bunch-of-clothes-in-a-clothesdryer tumbling is that nature
found this to be a way of diversifying our genes to find better
combinations of immune systems.
As an absolute reductionist I can live with that--but I'd still like
to have more sexual experiences.
Enjoy your column. Read it all the time.
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