When I think of relationships I think of balls made of elastic bands. To make one you have to start with a core object like a marble, or a golf ball, or a human being. Then you add your rubber bands, or the little moments of experience, which overlap each other and become entangled until a thing is made. It’s a simple but intricate creation that takes time. Time to make but also time to unravel.
Then you have this thing. It orbits and floats between two people, somewhere between two minds. One mind will notice the separate rubber bands while the other will only see the ball. But it’s still a ball made of elastic bands.
Then the day will come that the ball becomes a scattered collection of separate and discarded pieces. And the people who made the thing will ask the same questions.
“Do you remember the ball we made of elastic bands?”
“Do you remember all those threads being untangled and the thing being pulled apart?”
“Do you remember the thing?”
And of course the people remember. Because somewhere between those two minds the elastic band ball can be whole again, and thought about with all the others.
Christian Martius (2017)
