The Brunch Dialogues II
BRUNCH TWO – Shapes and Feelings
(Same café, still rainy. XANTHIPPE has her usual: oat flat white, poached eggs with feta and mushrooms. SHe and OLIVIA are recovering from pilates, stretched and smug.)
OLIVIA I did not know there were that many kinds of squats.
XANTHIPPE It was almost like penance. Which I guess is thematically appropriate.
OLIVIA Because today is...?
XANTHIPPE Suffering, or dukkah. Kind of. But also the weird joy of seeing the pattern. Today’s about subtraction.
OLIVIA Dukkha? Isn’t that Buddhist?
XANTHIPPE It is. I didn’t mention? I’ve been meditating and reading about Buddhism for a couple of years now.
OLIVIA I love that. I was Wiccan in high school. Like, really Wiccan. Candles and crystals and one extremely regrettable handfasting.
XANTHIPPE (Laughs) We all start somewhere. Wicca’s great. It’s at least honest that the world feels full of influence.
OLIVIA So what’s subtraction got to do with all that?
XANTHIPPE It’s the feeling of something having been there, and now it’s not. Loss, sure, but more than that — the sense that what isn’t there is still shaping what is.
OLIVIA Like the echo of something?
XANTHIPPE Exactly. And the math backs it up. Subtraction, when you run it across a wide field of numbers, gives you a long-tail distribution. Most of it’s clustered up one end — like a ghost of everything that used to be — but there’s always something trailing off. Like the past pulling at you.
OLIVIA That’s a little gorgeous. And sad.
XANTHIPPE And it’s not random. Subtraction is what the universe does when it decays. When things fall apart. When infinity — everything that could be — bumps into the one — you, me, this coffee — and leaves behind just the stuff that sticks.
OLIVIA The dust after the bang.
XANTHIPPE Yes. The leftover bits that weren’t reabsorbed into everything else. That’s why it feels like suffering. You notice what’s missing. But also what’s left — which is kind of beautiful. The finite trailing away from the infinite. That ache is the shape.
OLIVIA That’s actually blowing my mind a little. So this is all just... leftovers?
XANTHIPPE The whole of being. A fridge full of ghost burritos.
OLIVIA And you said division is like...?
XANTHIPPE Division is the mind splitting the world up — ontological subjectivity, to use one phrase. The origin of craving. You divide what’s infinite into parts so you can start to want them. That’s samudaya.
OLIVIA So... identity? Or genre? “This kind of guy,” or “this always happens to me.”
XANTHIPPE Exactly. The world is what it is, but we break it into categories. And when we do, we want the category to mean something — to recur. That’s what makes us crave.
OLIVIA God. It really is therapy.
XANTHIPPE It’s pattern recognition. But with more brunch.
OLIVIA I’m so ready for the next quadrant. The flat one. The peaceful one.
XANTHIPPE That’s addition. And that’s next week.
