“‘This, my dear Socrates’, said the stranger of Mantineia ‘is that life above all others which man should live, in the contemplation of beauty absolute’”.
Plato, Symposium
Music: Like Someone in Love, Bill Evans
There was a girl in my class, back when I was a younger man. Back in the cold classrooms of high school my eyes would often roam. A young man’s focus on geography is limited, a young man’s gaze travels the world. My eyes would travel through the room. Then, they met hers. Carefully at first, a gaze afraid of being unwelcome. Yet our eyes would come together. Somewhere in the middle of a second floor classroom they would meet. An embrace, in the middle of class, unnoticed and uninterrupted by our teachers.
A rush. A romantic rush only rivaled by the overwhelming experience of a first kiss. It is a rush which drugs can’t deliver. Tough, it is, perhaps, more addictive. Our eyes would meet often. As someone wandering home, our eyes would wander to each other. Then exploring the other, together.
Alas I am no longer a younger man. Ah! At least my eyes haven’t aged.
There is a woman in the library, where I am, now. The library is an impressive building. The main hall, with its high ceiling and occupied people, it is a great place to look around. Often I sit here, fits of focus interrupted by the will of my eyes. They enjoy traveling trough this hall.
Then came this woman. Her elegance alone would draw my eyes. Beauty, I won’t attempt to describe her.
When I came in this morning she was outside making a phone call. I believe she saw me. I certainly saw her. Yet we didn’t see each other. Now, in the library hall, we sit. Separated by ten meters or so, more importantly, separated by our laptops and papers. Separated by our focus. Even so, eyes take breaks and on each journey trough the hall, they visit her.
Her eyes. Our eyes. We meet. That old feeling, that fear of being unwelcome. But as I avert my gaze I feel, they are welcome. Desired to be there. There, in the middle of the hall, there with hers. It is a sort of touch. An embrace of a couple seconds. We smile. You, yes. The rush of a younger self. Like the whole world is folded up into one feeling. Just for a couple seconds.
It ends.
One look, such a simple thing. A thing we do for nearly all our waking hours. Something we do to almost all things. Often nothing more than something practical and yet, now, still, so powerful. One look and it changes your whole goddamn day. The focus I was trying to find has been lost in that embrace. I am back in geography class. My body still partly in the experience, and a focus so limited, that it isn’t.
The girl from class would eventually drag me into an alley. Demanding I make a choice. Either kiss her right there, right then, or stop my eyes from wandering into hers. I stopped looking for her. Young and foolish I was. The woman in the library won’t be kissed by me either. Happy personal circumstances keep me from doing so. In all likelihood, we will never see each other again. One might call it a Platonic look.
Platonic love, idealist though it might be, is deeply physical. The physical and the metaphysical are not entirely separated from each other. Perhaps nothing resembles Platonic love better than these moments. As if the eyes meet, not only in the library or classroom, but also in something metaphysical. A world of ideals. An embrace in two worlds. Ever accompanied by that rush. That feeling of unity with and outside reality. Something approximating beauty absolute.