levels of abstraction

Hello,

I went on a date earlier this year, and the guy asked me if I think of myself as a particularly observant person, someone aware of their surroundings. I had to tell him that no, I tend to go through life preoccupied with my own thoughts or the thoughts of others — the abstract.

I’m self-obsessed that way, subsumed by the cloud of daydreams. My physical surroundings are incredibly secondary to what I’m doing at any given time. I can stay in the same tiny studio apartment for days with nothing but books, music, and my own fixations for company. When I get in these moods, I don’t even notice how long I’ve been missing from the outside. I look up and suddenly a week has passed, and a spider has made a home in the corner between my refrigerator and the wall.

I compare these periods where my non-presence intensifies to a ladder of abstraction. At the bottom is reality, the actuality of my life, and the more I retract, the higher I move on the ladder until I reach the dizzying heights of a fantasma. I can build worlds in my head far greater than what I have before me.

Obviously, there’s no way to truly detach from your reality. It informs everything you do or think about, but sometimes I wish I could detach entirely, forget food and drink and other ugly mortal functions, the creeping of time leaving me behind. I’ve always been a big fan of escapism, and I don’t know if that sentiment stems from being an only child or from a fundamental temperament issue. I’m unsure whether to call it introversion or avoidance. Whatever it is, when I fall into the throes of this mood, reality and the physical become minor concerns.

Anyone who knows me knows that nature bears almost no draw for me. It doesn’t hold my attention for long, so when I do descend the ladder of abstraction, I tend to become fascinated by the calyx of cityscapes. As much as industry and development have tried to eject the forces of natural time from the movements of urbanity, we still feel it. Cities still move with the changing of the seasons, and I’m not merely referring to the trees. Street lights shift their emergence with the lengthening and shortening of days. The summer beckons forth terraces in cafes and restaurants, altering the features of a sidewalk. Certain places are more popular come wind chills than they are in baking sun.

Walking is a good activity to draw me out of these moods, forcing me to pair my meditations with the fixtures of a street. It’s good to see how clothing adapts to the seasons, how menus change occasionally, how the sun moves along the shapes of rooftops and facades. I especially enjoy walking at night. There are less distractions, so everything else becomes amplified — the real and the abstract.

Cities at night act as an angiogram, revealing the insides of a well-lived heart. You can see with the passing of midnight which locales remain as beacons for those still wandering, which streets continue to burn alight, which bridges bear the remnants of daydreams.

Identity by Milan Kundera

It only feels right to pair this with a story that occurs half within a dreamscape. Two lovers grapple with love, jealousy, betrayal, and the unrealness of assumed identities. The writing, even in translation, propels you with the couple into a vat of confusion and refuses to lift you out at the end. Probably The Unbearable Lightness of Being, also by Kundera, would be a better fit, but I haven’t read that one yet.

This is, like, my third letter that talks about the connection between cities and some abstract thing. I never claimed to be original lol.

Do you think of yourself as an observant person and in which sense? Are you primarily concerned with your physical surroundings on any given day?

As always, I hope the universe remembers to treat you with gentle hands,
Jessie