INTIMACY

As matters of the heart seem to be at the forefront and the past few months have been turbulent with winds of change blowing us away in various unexpected directions I thought of a book I read 3-4 years ago "Intimacy" by Hanif Kureishi. It's  the story of the end of a relationship, the end of a 10 year marriage as seen through the eyes of the restless male about to leave his wife and never return. A heartbreakingly brutal dissection of sexuality, love and INTIMACY. Enjoy some of my favorite excerpts that years since I first read them still seem so true. 

"I am not sure that I can touch someone as I used to - frivolously. After a certain age sex can never be casual. I couldn't ask for so little. To lay your hand on another's body, or to put your mouth against another's - what a commitment that is! To choose someone is to uncover a whole life. And it is to invite them to uncover you!"

"People don't want you to have too much pleasure; they think it's bad for you. You might start wanting it all the time. How unsettling is desire! That devil never sleeps or keeps still. Desire is naughty and doesn't conform to our ideals, which is why we have such a need of them. Desire mocks all human endeavor and makes it worthwhile. Desire is the original anarchist and undercover agent - no wonder people want it arrested and kept in a safe place. And just when we think we've got desire under control it lets us down or fills us with hope. Desire makes me laugh because it makes fools of us all. Still, rather a fool than a fascist." 

"The world is made from our imagination; our eyes enliven it, as our hands give it shape. Wanting make it thrive; meaning is what you put in, not what you extract. You can only see what you are inclined ti see, and no more. We have to make the new."

"I have been trying to convince myself that leaving someone isn't the worst thing you can do to them.Sombre as it may be, but it doesn't have to be a tragedy. If you never left anything or anyone there would be no room for the new. Naturally, to move on is an infidelity - to others, to the past, to old notions of oneself. Perhaps every day should contain at least one essential infidelity or necessary betrayal. It would be an optimistic, hopeful act, guaranteeing belief in the future -  a declaration that things can be not only different but better."

"Art is easy for those who can do it, and impossible for those who can't."

"If living is an art it is a strange one, an art of everything, and particularly of spirited pleasure. Its developed form would involve a number of qualities sewn together: intelligence, charm, good fortune, unforced virtue, along with wisdom, taste, knowledge, understanding and the recognition of anguish and conflict as part of life. Wealth wouldn't be essential, but the intelligence to accumulate it where necessary might be."

 

Photo taken in Londontown, me and Felix

PS: Some fun trivia:  Kureishi started his career in the '70s as a pornography writer,under the pseudonyms Antonia French and Karim. 

As Intimacy revolves around the story of a man leaving his wife and two young sons, this created some controversy as Kureishi himself had recently left his own partner (the editor and producer Tracey Scoffield) and two young sons.