Dear Suzy

Dear Suzy,

I've been thinking a lot about distance lately. Humans sometimes use visuospatial metaphors for particular chemical reactions.

"I feel close to you."

"We've grown apart."

"I need some space!"

"You seem distant, far away, where are you?"

"I want to hold your hand."

Figure 1.

A production still from The Party's work Beta Pink's Space Bar at Founderie Darling, Montreal QC (2019.) Photo courtesy of Hugo St-Laurent. Image courtesy of the artists.

(Two human hands grasp two of Suzy's tentacles gently. Part of Suzy is in a plastic inflatable.)

Some humans say that being in a long-distance relationship is hard, but they do not say that being in a short-distance relationship is soft. Fuzzy, gritty, plush, bristled, solid, flaky, smooth—but always touchingly touchable.

Relationships can also be long-time … although long is the wrong word. For unidirectional chronological beings, time is sometimes also measured in length. The days draw apart, longer and longer until we slip between the cracks in the minutes and suddenly, you're lost in the couch. "Where did it all go?"

I wonder what your sense of time is. Circular? Blue-ish? Tacky?

For me, there is a time when I is/are in the past and a loved one is in the future, and then there is a time when I is/are in the present and my loved one is in the past.

There are other times too, of course:

Teatime.

Nap time.

Pacific Standard Time.

When we originally decided to telepathically latch with our friend Beta Pink and assemble the Space Bar, this is one of the things that attracted us. Attraction at a distance. The idea that the Space Bar could collapse time and space to provide opportunities for intergalactic romance. Romance Saving Time. At the Space Bar, instead of reaching for love, you might find love is at your fingertips. … If you have fingertips.

At the beginning of the process, we weren't sure Earth dwellers were ready for intergalactic dating—the distances seemed too vast, or we seemed too distant.

We had so many questions for her:

How does one touch, or keep in touch across a galaxy?

Can you embrace a spiral arm?

How do you create consent with a triangle? Particularly triangles that are in the process of determining the location of a point by measuring angles to it from known points at either end of a fixed baseline… ?

That was the time when we were in the past and you were in the future.

Figure 2.

Promotional photography for the Party's work XXXX Topography (2016). Photo courtesy of Layla Marcelle. Image courtesy of the artists.

(Suzy drapes across a long white table in an art studio. Lights on stands surround her for a photoshoot.)

"Distance is to travel," Beta Pink explained, "what love is to me."

"Dear Lovetrons," her invitation began,

"I couldn't help but notice the last time I visited your planet that you're having a bit of trouble connecting. It happens to the best of us. There have been epochs in my life where it seemed that everything was either going through heat death or a wave-particle duality crisis.

I love love. That's why I contacted my friends, The Party, and asked them to promote OK Object, my intergalactic dating website (recently upgraded to be Anthropo-Inclusive!), and to host an in-person chance for romantic encounters at my Space Bar. The Space Bar is a traveling cosmic hideaway, where the galactic glitterati go to get away from themselves. It exists for just a few short hours before teleporting to the next gravitationally bound system. I host interplanetary denizens to the pleasures of the known universe.

I have traveled, oh how I have traveled. Near, and so near you might slip through a lepton and find yourself someone else. Far, and far out. Sometimes, even the most diffuse of us desire a place to coalesce. Home is where the heart is...