Of course, even the paragraphs I read as being addressed to me are not, in fact, addressed to me. But I learned long ago how, in the absence of explicit reminders of my ineligibility, to contort myself to gain entry where I wanted, when I could. This is a metaphor borrowed from the psychoanalyst, the way creatures under threat will rearrange their bodies to minimize pain.

Minimizing pain must be distinct from maximizing pleasure, but when it comes to reading for identification—for recognition—there can seem to be no air between them. In the best cases, when you read something, you feel like you’ve known it forever. In the best cases, you feel like it read you first.

The first time I read Pensées—or any number of books, of stories, countless examples come to mind—I understood the fact of this small sword of exclusion; I felt it, and yet I wanted, still, to love.

I imagine this scene and its aftermath: love swipes at the sword of exclusion with its bare hand, bleeds, scars over. Partial recall, its attendant insecurity and doubt, is the aftermath. Partial recall: the difference left when recognition is subtracted from love.

Remember this when, soon, we ask the capitalist about the peakend rule. Remember how I calculated this difference for you.

When I say that I wanted to love—Pascal, or other books on the originary stack—I mean that I wanted, that I needed, to be addressed. And I was outside the field of address.

When I say that the swiping away of the sword results in a scar, I mean there is a numbness that arrives on the scene. Researchers at the intersection of psychoanalysis and brain science have documented the damage that occurs to children who are not sufficiently, routinely addressed. A blurring occurs that is dysregulating, that is dangerous.

Once this damage is located squarely in the past, the scar itself can be measured, tended to. The lingering blur is less frightening to look at, but is also harder to understand.

The blur may offer a way to think about having a bad memory.

We know it from our everywhere screens, how a swipe leaves a smudge.

MORE SUBSTITUTIONS

I can’t stop thinking about S.

Instead of writing to them, per se, I email an excerpt of my notes about the husband and the wife, with cameos from the capitalist, the anarchist, and the rest.

I have no expectation that S will write me back, but I find that I am having thoughts about them, and that the thoughts are, categorically speaking, more erotic than filial. I find that there is something very specific about having erotic thoughts concerning a person whose appearance is so wholly unknown to me, who is without, among other things, a communicated gender.