Domination, not love, is the essential mood of science and technology.
                                                         Jacques Ellul (paraphrased)   

Love Potion Number 9 was really a philtre.

Philtre: a concoction of wine and something else (dog’s heart, bear fur, hummingbird beak, star fruit, orange peel shavings).

Philtre: something created in order to make someone feel helplessly and hopelessly in love with the first thing they see.

****

I drank the love philtre / love potion with full knowledge of my actions this time.

In the past I inadvertently drank philtres that put me under a magic spell.

At the time, I was not sure what was happening. Was I in love with being in love? No—I wouldn’t go that far.

The state of “in love” is neither one of becoming nor of arrival. For me, it has often been one of self-erasure. The self-erasure is a choice made probably because it is so much is easier to self-erase than self-actualize. “Becoming” is hard, and establishing stable “beingness” is even harder.
When you drink the philtre, is it real love? How can it be? You fall in love with the first thing you see. The other person becomes irrelevant when it comes to a love philtre.

So, I uncorked the tiny bottle. It was labeled just like the tiny energy drinks they sell at convenience stores next to the cash register—the kind you mix in with your Big Gulp Diet Coke. However, this was no energy drink. I knew better. It was a love philtre, and thought I was ready to fall in love.

The day was full of dark clouds, cool wet breezes, and then sun shining through the clouds, bending white light into the component hues of the full spectrum, from purple to blue to green yellow orange and finally red. It was, in short, a bold, clear, and wet red.

The sight of the rainbow made me hold my breath—if just for a moment. I got into my car, turned on the radio, and listened to the audience-pandering rants of a talk show host who, somewhere along the line, had decided that arousing “righteousness” and “moral indignation” was something that made him feel wanted and needed in the world.

The talk show host was battling leukemia.

Across the parking lot, a man with a bad back gingerly opened the door of his new SUV. It still had that “new car” smell. It gave him a sinking feeling. Time folded in on itself, and he remembered when the idea he could buy a new car filled his skinny post-adolescent body with robust adult pride.

Whenever the leukemia-suffering talk show host had a bad day, and when the doctors told him the chemotherapy he had just gone through was not quite effective in the way they had hoped, he turned to his fawning listeners and assured himself that he was loved in the world.

The talk show host’s wife loved him. She loved him when his listeners did not. She loved him when they thought he should just go ahead and check out, give up, stay silent.

She loved him even when his listeners tired of his relentless interrogations of the assumptions that defined the age they lived in: self-worth is measured in dollars; life is as long as you want it to be; new is better than old.

The talk show host thanked his lucky stars his wife was a helpmate and lifelong companion. It was amazing. She was better than the people he met. She was from another age. She believed in duty and honor. She would never embarrass him. She would never let him down. Sometimes she was a little distant, a bit automaton, but he had learned to accept that, and to appreciate the consistency.

If only he could believe in it…

I touched the elixir to my lips, tipped back the tiny bottle again, and drank deeply. I thought about the talk show host.

Somehow, somewhere, he had learned to judge sincerity by the depth of passion he felt flowing from the person.

Duty without passion was suspect.
Love without passion was derelict.

I was waiting for the philtre to kick in.

I was waiting for someone to catch my eye. That person would be the person I would fall in love with. The quixotic nature of the entire endeavor appealed to me. It also made me nervous. Part of me wanted to simply close my eyes and avoid seeing anyone. What would she do if she fell in love with someone who had repellent attributes? It happens. Even without a love philtre. Even without a toxin that strips you of your free will.

********************************

The tax attorney wanted his wife to feel passion for him. He did not want her dutiful gestures. He wanted spontaneous rage, lust, longing, questioning, sadness, grief, horror, delight, joy.

He did not want her measured, precise, logical smile.
He did not realize that she simply mirrored what he delivered to her: a precise, logical smile, and very detailed an precise expectations.

He read somewhere that technology could help you keep your love alive. So, he text-messaged his wife at least 15 times per day. He left voicemail messages. He emailed her quirky links and messages. He sent her personal emails, and he left messages on Facebook.

What was the point?
He was willing to marshal all the technology available in order to preserve the sense of discovery and fresh arrival that so strongly characterized their first few years together.

Technology either harms or helps.
Why did his wife strike him as a hard, cold chunk of techne?

The instant he thought that, he felt regret. Shame. Perhaps even humiliation? No. He could not go that far.

His wife: where was her passion? Where was the fire smoldering in her loins?

He knew, somewhere in his heart of hearts, that it had not gone away. But, he wondered what he had done to make her afraid to reveal herself. Where had she gone? Where was her heart these days?

He knew she loved him. Where was the passion?

Blackstrap molasses on dry oatmeal. Sweet hot syrup for lips.

Something had happened to him over the years. Phone conferences. Complicated points of law. Ambiguity that someone had managed to turn into an entire practice. Laughter behind his back. Laughter in his ears. Sadness. Ambitions. The tedium of receptions, networking, dinners, conference calls, meetings, position papers. Years of thinking about survival—about himself, his bottom line—and simply assuming she was in the mix.

She was.

She wasn’t.

That’s what happens after twenty-something years of “happily ever after.”

Somewhere along the line, the wife made a calculated decision to formulate a philtre. It was profoundly unethical, but she was okay with that.

If it gave her an unfair advantage, which was precisely what attracted her to it.

She needed to talk to him. She needed to hold his hand and look into his eyes. Everything she imagined that could be possible, would be possible—if only the potion would work, if only the philtre would perform its magic.

**************************************************************

Tristan and Isolde. In Wagner’s opera, Isolde is outraged when she learns that Tristan has killed her kinsman. Tristan is accompanying her to Ireland, where she is to marry a much older man. After much drama about honor and retribution, Tristan offers his sword to Isolde so she can kill him. Instead, she asks her lady in waiting to prepare a drink of “friendship” using the potions her mother has prepared. Isolde thinks she is requesting something like hemlock—something that will poison them both. Instead, she is handed a drink that contains a love elixir—a love potion.

Tristan and Isolde drink the elixir. It does not kill them. Instead, they fall deeply (and doomedly) in love.

They are not fated to have a happy love.

Isolde marries the stranger to whom she has been betrothed. Tristan moves away and marries someone with a similar-sounding name.

They are miserable apart. To make a long story short, when they finally do reunite, they end up dying.

Question: Was the love philtre / elixir tantamount to poison? When they drank the potion they thought was poison, it might as well have been. Yes, they fell in love, but their love was probably worse than death. They were miserable—in a living hell.

Question: Suppose they did in fact drink poison. Did the love constitute a dream? An altered state? Something that approximates heaven, but which is characterized by unattainment. Think of Tantalus—horrible thirst, horrible hunger—what could assuage the misery always out of reach. Satisfaction never happens. Slaking one’s thirst is never possible.

Fairy dust? Pansy juice?
In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, under the spell of the philtre, a perfectly sane person fell in love with Bottom, replete with donkey ears, replete with whatever else the individual might need.

What is it about philtres that we need to know?

The state of “in love” is not one of becoming, nor is it of being. It is that of self-erasure.

Being “in love” is glorious. We do not have to take responsibility for anything.

****************************************

The night was dark. The tendrils curled where I had expected them to be. I wondered how and where I had made the decisions about my life that had resulted in the way I happened to be today.

It was not easy. I had to constantly remind myself that I was living my life exactly as I had chosen. I wanted to be able to show the person my love, but I was nervous about the vulnerability that was required.

The power of the love philtre evaporated while I was waiting for someone to catch my eye. The elixir did not work. However, I did catch a glimpse of myself in the reflection of a plate glass window as I walked by a Goodwill thrift store. The glass was wavy, and the light came from an angle. The person in the reflection rose up quickly. Before I realized I was looking at my own image, I wondered who it was who was walking with such an energetic step, so confident to the outside world. The image enchanted me—it communicated energy, confidence, enthusiasm.

If only I could be that person. My true self was small, tender, fragile.

Two days ago, I found a small, drowned baby bunny amongst the chrysanthemum bushes that were emerging, green and fresh-petaled, from the dead brown stems of last year’s bushes.

That was the beauty of perennial plants.

The bunny, perhaps a week, two weeks, old, had drowned. Its ears were still tiny, its fur still in the level of velvet, or velveteen.

This had been a difficult spring for all the wild spirits of the world. I had already counted a number of victims. First were the victims of the air: The birds were the first I saw: cardinals, mockingbirds, and a robin—all freshly hatched and emergent to the air (and flight). Then, I saw the victims of the water: the tiny baby bunny…

Finally, a third category: victims of the fire. These were the people who had thrown themselves to the winds of media and sensation in their quest for love. They felt the fire without ever really understanding the underlying epistemologies of burning, purification, or damnation. Needless to say, they never found real love.

Was the real love to be found in the long marriages?

The best friend of the talk show host’s wife had a recurring daydream. What would she do if it cost her nothing to get out of her marriage? What if divorce were free? On the other hand, how much do you pay for freedom?

And, then, she wondered—freedom for what?

After everything was said and done, perhaps they would find that the truth of their long relationship, their long, long marriage, was all about the coming together of air, water, fire … flesh, mind, heart…

Or, perhaps it was not.

**********

I tried again. I drank another love philtre. So who was the person I saw after I drank the second philtre?

It turned out to be much worse than my darkest fears. He was a decent enough man to the outside world, but to me, utterly the antithesis of what I wanted and/or needed. He talked sports talk. He was moody but unable to acknowledge he had moods. He was inarticulate, not because he could not express himself, but because to do so would force him into the reifying, constructing, becoming world of language.

But, I had drunk the philtre, and he was the one I first laid eyes on. I had only myself blame.

The pine tree outside their room drew the bursts of breeze and wind into its needles and converted the strong belt of the air into a diffuse, resplendent burst of scent and sound.

The sound of wind in the pines made me think of what it blows away. Erasure of tracks in the sand. Evaporation of wet footprints on the deck next to the pool. Wind in the willows likewise.

He suggested that we go to see an Oklahoma City Thunder basketball game. Under the influence of the philtre, I agreed to it. Then, he talked about the fact his sister left her baby in the church nursery during a Sunday worship service. Then he talked about how overpaid college football coaches are these days.

I followed the conversation with 10 percent of my mind. The rest slipped away to daydream comfortably about tennis or Ashbery’s latest poems.

He continued to talk. I found myself acquiescing to every suggestion, every action.

The philtre made me a puppet or some sort of love zombie. Or, did it?

*****************************************************************

The long-married husband and wife drank love elixirs, looked deeply in each other’s eyes, and fell in love all over again. It was sweet. It renewed their marriage.

They neglected to admit to themselves that in resorting to a toxin, they became poisoners of their own psyches. Instead of acknowledging choice, volition, and self-actualization, they chose something else. In doing so, they were secretly rooting for death.

They poisoned themselves and each other into psychological submission. Their compliance and complicity come only after they poisoned themselves.

Self-erasure is often infinitely preferable to self-reification. “Becoming” is uncomfortable.

*************************

I threw out the philtre. I thanked my lucky stars that it was nothing permanent, and there was no harm done, except for having to sit through a couple of basketball games.

I decided to switch to concentrated energy drinks. The packaging drew me in with its tiny neon-colored plastic bottle.

Unlike a philtre, an energy drink does not compel you to meddle with the nether parts of your own mind and its complex negotiations with desire.

Indeterminacy gives us another day to play.