The Companionship Equation

Excruciating isn't it, to be in ones own life?

(this email is a little long and might be cut off, things here always end with a love always Chloé so if you don’t see that click the banner!)

Someone coughed from an upstairs apartment. 

They must’ve had their window open, it was that kind of a noise. The kind that you’re aware is not in the same space as you but instead is spilling out into it. The quality of the sound having the clarity though of being close, close enough that I looked toward the ground floor windows thinking I’d find the source but saw none open. So of course it came from above, some unreachable room, but for a moment walking down First Ave it was not that kind of thing. It was not two opposing boundaries, but a place.

I was very close to everything I wanted—someone close by and even if they occupied a building I was outside of, the barrier between us dissolvable where the noise of our lives met. What I had was different: two people far from one another, and no possibility of omitting the wall between us, an afternoon rising into the atmosphere beautifully, the city’s muted liveliness, Labor Day weekend a letharge. So I was still searching for it, I concluded, the too-brief reality that had just vanished. Not yet ready to go home and not disappointed, the circumstances were hardly difficult to replicate: two people, a shared space, and a sound.

I made it to a bar not far from the initial cough, the potential for closeness seeming ever-present, legitimized by every turn of my head or glance at a stranger. Our eyes followed each other longer probably than most people like, but my desire for connection and the prickling sensation in my stomach of its proximity seemed a promise. That if the circumstances were indeed difficult to recreate, then what we already had would be enough to animate the material all on its own. The possibility even seemed half alive already. I would’ve sat there all day for it, and indeed I did.

But that is for later. 

When I first arrived I was sat at a small table and told the waiter it would be just me. He took the second glass and poured me water. The whole bar was really windows. There was not a table there that wasn’t in some way caught in the cross breeze of everyone being open. My own, sitting to the right of a panel of them swung wide at bar level, and in front, a whole wall missing looking toward a street corner, busy and bleached by sun. 

I was, then, aware of the limitations of the day at hand. No one I knew, none of my friends, were around. Upsate or across Brooklyn, in other parts of the world, or just busy with their lives. Which is to say I was alone. And to put it all very simply, I’d left my apartment that afternoon because all I wanted was not to be. I’d known it when I woke up, that the confines of the weekend and other people's plans that had, for the days previous, been a gentle hand of solitude, had taken its nimble fingers and plucked a thread of loneliness so that it hummed along my inner ear. 

But it was a different loneliness than the lack of people. I found instead a ripening of the loneliness of before. Of the time when I was young, where no one was ever there, where all I had were strangers. There are people in my life now, but they are not always available to me. Something different separates us than space, than walls. A collection of milestones now lies between us, that is only becoming larger and more enormous, weighing the scales so that one person is growing in momentum. And I’m not catching up, not anytime soon, so we will meet when and where we can. Said aloud, however, this idea felt easily obscured and unfairly simplified to a sense of being left out and behind. So instead of saying anything, I said nothing. But the right words seem obvious now: I don’t feel behind, I just feel far away from you. The plot points don’t matter to me, I’ve never had a plan. It's just that, there used to be a time I believed the distance between us all would remain constant, and I know now it doesn’t work that way. The constant thing is sometimes me. People get further, the channel of access thins. Which is sad only in the way that change, for better or worse, can strike us blue on a beautiful day because no one is close enough to share it with you. 

So as it were, some difficulty existed, in part because having what I wanted relied almost entirely on strangers. But there seemed plenty, all of us together in that one place. Most of them already laughing, already joyous, their noise and chatter blowing through one window out the other, brushing against my temple on the way. The thread of loneliness and sadness pulsed with steady intensity that required a reprieve. Which meant when my wine was delivered I opened my book and prepared to pass the time. 

The sounds of this world briefly penetrated the other world of the author's making, prompting me to look toward the street corner, to follow the lead, but I found always nothing. The promise of earlier seemed to dwindle with each look rather than remaining constant, rather than seeming closer. Like it were in a retreat, a slack wire gone taut with a new premonition, that at any point the cord would snap and what was on the other side would forever be lost. A factor missing it seemed, sound and people alone couldn’t save me. Like the cough, some boundary was between us and I was looking for the opening.

In certain desperation and disappointment, I placed my book page down on the table, turning my head in search of what had gotten far away. The initial ease gone, the prickling sense of possibility returning, but with a new discomfort that seemed only to worsen as I sat waiting for the reveal. Stranger after stranger, passing through and not looking, not ever looking. And the want for conversation growing, the want for relief from this long stretch of being alone. This endless present and long past where no one was there, where no one ever anymore seemed to be there. Such a feeling that prompts you to shift in your seat, to roll your neck, close your eyes, anything that might put space between you and your circumstance.

Excruciating isn’t it, I thought. To face your own life. 

“Excuse me,” a man to my left said and I turned.

As easy as it is, as the hanging up of a phone, of putting something away carefully in your bag, to meet someone one must be reachable. Mutual acts of living require some mutuality. But the wards we put in place rarely ever appear to us as thieves or jailers. We have no reason to believe otherwise, that these two things can coexist, as each is often the antithesis to the other. But we know that two things can be true at once. That that which connects us to the larger world robs us of our small portion in it just the same. That even a cell can have a window. A book seems, for all the world, a beginning. As prompting as an invitation, but it can be as much a barrier as distance. 

The difficulty with strangers, what I had not yet known when I first heard the cough and found my companionship equation, was the factor missing. Two people must be open to connection for there to be connection. Real connection, the kind that came as such a relief when at last someone spoke to me, requires the shared burden of living of meeting where you are, especially when where you are is not where you wish to be. The remedy is almost comically tragic, but not quite, on account that it is escapable. 

So at once I escaped, the loneliness silenced and the closeness now reached. A breeze blowing through the open window, two people, a space made to meet, and sound. Living in the same place and thus companions in it by nature. No, not alone, not at first glance or even at a distance. It was never about catching up, just about making space. So we will meet again, when we can, I think, of the friends who are not available, as they sit on lawns and in apartments, in different counties and across state lines. I feel no longer sad, no longer far from you. What follows connection is only more connection. Things are different, our closeness is different, but it was always meant to be that way. And in this new place there exists a secret happiness, more precious than the life before. That your life getting better makes my life better, and for however sad I get, I know I can make it out and back again. The barrier between only difficult to dissolve, but not impossible. 

“What are you reading that you were underlining so furiously?”

I looked down at my purse, “Acts of Desperation.” 

“Acts of?”

“Desperation.”

“What is—sorry to be bothering you—”

“No,” I said, turning to face him head-on. “No not at all.”

Views from the Letharge September 2nd, 2024 1:51 PM

The Iliad translated by Emily Wilson

“Here was an actual life, a real life, which I had walked into, dragging the mud of myself with me. I had never felt so unlike a human being, so disposable and flimsy and built purely for function. He called me a cab to go home and I knew I would never hear from him again and I never did.” Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan

The explanation being, simply,, that there isn’t one. You know things you can’t know. It happens. We move on quickly. I wanted to know how I knew this probably because I wanted to believe that something united us cosmically. Of course this is true in the way I didn’t want it to be. That is to say we were supposed to meet and we had met. September 2nd, 2024 2:58 PM

And that’s a nice thought isn’t it, that the home can be left and new home made with our hands for what we have expelled. September 2nd, 2024 11:22 AM

And I needed something even if that something was really nothing. August 31st, 2024 9:49 PM

But he is here now. And it won’t fix anything. It will make it only, momentarily, survivable again. August 20th, 2024 5:43 PM

Before we go I just want to say that next month will be the 4th annual Yearbook. Surprised is not the word, nor is elated, perhaps more astonished. I don’t know if I’ve stuck with anything this long in all my life. All this to say, the breif normalcy we’ve returned to will again be interrupted but the yearbook is a tradition and so it is normal but in a different way.

If you wanna see what a yearbook entails, here are the ones of years past, free of charge as always.

This must be the place of our companionship, meet me at the mood board let’s leave the loneliness behind.

If you missed me so dearly and can’t let me or this theme go, feel free to join us not this Friday but next, for the paid newsletter. Which has a lot of good stuff, obsessions and other things.

If not, I’ll be seeing you soon.

That’s all this month! If you enjoyed the little conversation we had let me know! Save, share, and tag @chloeinletters

Here is My Twitter and my Instagram is @chloeinletters  where the DMs are checked, cared, and loved for.

My Goodreads where I sometimes write reviews but keep updated is right here where more of my library is contained as far as books go. 

My website is where you can check out my portfolio and contact me 

My email, if you want to cut to the chase, is letterstochloew@gmail.com where you can let me know what you think or ask me a question about what you saw here! 

Here’s to coffee Fridays, the space where we are meeting, and the dropping of barriers

Love always,

Chloé