relentless collisions of intimacy
An Ekphrasis Writing on Still Life with Oranges, Jars, and Boxes of Sweets
There is something about the way the oranges press against one another, shoulder to shoulder, skin to skin, that feels almost unbearable.
And isn't that how intimacy can be? The way the presence of another can become too much, too present, too solid. Their breath, their warmth, their expectations crowding the edges of the self. I think sometimes I mistake closeness for suffocation.
Look at how the fruit glows, full, round, ripe, but how their bodies bruise where they meet. How the weight of simply being adjacent leaves marks.
There’s a jar in the center, its body wrapped in a green lattice of pattern. The lid cinched tight with string, like a body trying to keep itself from spilling. I recognize that gesture. The clenching. The effort to remain whole while surrounded by the chaos of need.
And the black behind them, this oppressive velvet absence, is a kind of relief, isn’t it? The fantasy of emptiness. Of solitude. Of quiet. A pause from the unbearable thereness of being seen, being touched, being asked to stay.
But here’s the ache: the fruit does not get to choose whether it touches or not. It cannot back away. This is the arrangement. The condition of matter. The condition of love.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m built for this. For the pressing-together of lives. For the small, relentless collisions of intimacy. For the slow understanding that closeness doesn’t always feel like comfort. That sometimes it feels like gravity.
But also, what is the alternative? To float in that black, untethered? To be untouched, unbruised, unmarked?
No. I suspect even the longing for distance is its own kind of yearning. A way of saying, I cannot bear to be near you, but I cannot bear not to be, either.
And maybe that is what this painting knows. That intimacy is both the ache and the answer. That to want less is still a kind of wanting. That to be touched, even to the point of overwhelm, is, stubbornly, still to be chosen.