i have this are.na channel dedicated to what i call relational relationship aesthetics. the channel has gotten me thinking about the cyclical nature of romance. a current dynamic reminds me of a past dynamic. a brief flirtation when leaving one city turning into a fling six years later as i am leaving another city. love really seems to circle around.

but maybe i am searching for the circle in everything.

the other day, i watched love streams (1984) by john cassavetes at the eye.

sarah lawson asks, "do you believe love is a continuous stream?"

the film is long, and i found myself wishing for more of these crystallizing moments.

cassavetes portrays love as a form of psychosis. love really does feel episodic and on the edge. it's hard to talk about sometimes when it's built on a stream of nonsequiturs.

i left the theater wondering what the "stream" part of love streams is. this word has been dulled by the internet, which is unfortunate because it's such a beautiful word. on the train ride home, i kept thinking, "but does it stream?" i'm not sure what this question even means. maybe it's about asking whether it makes us feel something or changes us—and i do think that, in the case of love, it changes us.

last month, i asked my studio mates to write about, "what have you learned from love?" for our studio newsletter. everyone found it to be an impossibly difficult prompt, so i changed the newsletter's theme altogether. but i still think this question is worth exploring, and maybe that's part of why i'm writing this—because i feel like i didn't answer my own question.

i still don't feel like i've answered it here. maybe one answer could be that i've learned that it streams. another might be that love has taught me about myself. that strangely psychedelic and grounding experience of understanding yourself through another person. and maybe that's self-centered, but part of me has begun to believe love is always fleeting, so what other choice do we have but to see it as a lesson for self-growth.

all afternoon i searched for a script of love streams because there were a few other lines that i found meaningful, but i guess the screenplay hasn't made it onto the internet. it's somewhat appropriate. i do remember there being this other line about love being a string, but maybe i heard "stream" and thought it was "string."

"is love a continuous string?"

"you are a dreamer but not in touch with life"—something a partner once told me. i found it somehow sweet.

thanks to my friend temra for inviting me to this film and inspiring this writing about the title.