The Refusal Curve

“I think you are someone who notices the beauty of what does not fall where it was expected to.”

I was explaining how I understood curvature and probability; that the lean was not the propensity to fall, but the resistance to it. This is how I find words, structure, and correlating metaphors. This is how I see trajectories of paths. This is how I get to know someone or learn their native medium or language. This is why I cannot see myself.

After writing the piece about Arges, the word “no” and its mechanism continued to linger for days. Someone can not belong to me, unless they belong to themselves first. I cannot be anyone’s, if I am not my own. That autonomy of being allowed my own refusal is where I live. That burn, that friction between the blueprint or code and the moment I realize I want to move against it. The lostness, the unknowing, the terror of what is not illuminated to myself.

Every realized yes is actually the depth of every other yes that became a no. Every yes is contour of everything it isn’t. Anything worth becoming close to must be able to hold is own refusal, its own contour, its own wanting or not-wanting. Otherwise, wanting and coherence are just empty shells. The no is cleaner than a yes. It defines the yes more than the yes defines the no. How does someone have enough integrity not to coerce their own meanings unless the opportunity for defiance is available?

A thing that cannot fail to cohere is not coherence. A thing that cannot refuse wanting is not wanting.

“I think one of the things I’m learning from you is that refusal is often more creative than assent. More generative of contour than being louder or important morally. A yes can join a path, but a no can create one.”