I once met a mathematician at a party who told me her field was intuitionism. I couldn’t understand what little explanation she attempted to offer that night, over the music (Prince) and the wine (boxed). When I looked up the term, later, I found this:

“Intuitionism is based on the idea that mathematics is a creation of the mind. The truth of a mathematical statement can only be conceived via a mental construction that proves it to be true, and the communication between mathematicians only serves as a means to create the same mental process in different minds.”

Emphasis mine.

Now that I am able to observe my own (limited) practice of mediation from the compromised vantage of the cartographer, I can begin to wonder about the outsize role description plays in the process. All of the labor, all of the back-and-forth between parties, is successful only to the extent that the parties can agree about how their feelings, and how their relation, should be described.

Even in the best-case outcomes—again, my sample is small, six or seven cases, but varied—the relation itself rarely changes (enemies don’t become friends, or ex-partners reunite). The feelings don’t change, either, though sometimes they soften.

What changes is that in place of two divergent, conflicting realities, an extended process of triangulation has produced a single description about which—no matter how much regret and pain it contains—both parties can agree.

The same mental process, created in different minds.

What Bobby Kennedy actually said, in the senate subcommittee hearings on LSD, was, “I think we have given too much emphasis and so much attention to the fact that it can be dangerous and that it can hurt an individual who uses it … that perhaps to some extent we have lost sight of the fact that it can be very, very helpful in our society if used properly.”

While Pablo and I were talking, about drugs and about love and then about the anarchist philosopher of science and so on, we left the space of another person between us on the couch, as if reserving the space—though it was cold in the room and we are both inclined toward touch—for my absent friend. This despite very low levels of duration and frequency between Pablo and me.

The night after my conversation with Pablo, I received an email from the capitalist.

It was not addressed solely to me: it was a work email, planning for the upcoming series of events that I had been recruited to cohost. The capitalist has a breezy way of communicating, as if his global citizenship came with a magic coat of belonging.

In Anti-Love, several sessions ago, we talked about internalization and regulation. It occurred to me, as the terms Q & A format, tech needs, and learning outcomes passed across my screen, that I had a growing desire to seduce the capitalist, to extract every ounce of pleasure he contained, then throw him out.