Eating big slices of delicious cake and staring angrily at my Symbolic Logic textbook. Nuts to Symbolic Logic, I say.

So I have been thinking (perhaps even better: "So I have been thinking"), trying to figure out a number of things. Conceptual stuff for the most part.

A day or two ago I found myself hunting for a very useful, very precise word.

(On a related note, mention of the CD Talkie Walkie sent me hunting for spoonerism the day before.)

The word, as I soon recalled, was "periphescence." In his otherwise very uneven book Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides (via a character named Dr. Luce) comes up with this very useful term.

The word itself means nothing; Luce made it up to avoid any etymological associations. The state of periphescence, however, is well known. It denotes the first fever of human pair bonding. It causes giddiness, elation, a tickling on the chest wall, the urge to climb a balcony on the rope of a beloved's hair. Periphescence denotes the initial drugged and happy bedtime where you sniff your lover like a scented poppy for hours running. (It lasts, Luce explained, up to two years—tops.)

If we ignore the excess sentimentality and overall irritating tone of that passage, the author of The Virgin Suicides makes a good point, albeit indirectly. We need a better understanding, perhaps even a dissection, of the term "love."

The L-word is too massive, too broad. It implies commitment and all sorts of different, perhaps horrible, things. Periphescence is useful in that:

First, it doesn't have to mean love (allowing the worried fathers of teenage girls, among others, to skirt a sticky issue altogether) and

Second, it describes (I'd say accurately) a very specific emotional state.

Which reminds me of the voles and love article, which (had I the power) I would force you to read. It's about another attempt, scientific rather than (as here) literary, to answer the question I almost asked above.

Periphescence is, of course, just one possible—one group of possible, relationship states. I think of it when I consider Jonas' odd blend of ironic self-conscious overattentiveness to Miß Sarah (I'm told that he played up her absence hilariously at the tournament, to irk Jubb) and apparent devotion to the same.

(I also think of Jonas' words after the The Last Party last year. Something about how he didn't mind me blogging about his love-life. I think of those words and I laugh. My tact punches me in the gut and I keep writing. On topic and incoherently, as always.)

We need, as I was just thinking, names for the many various emotional states. I could name them, since I enjoy naming things, but I don't have the literary cred to do it successfully and semi-permanently.

I also don't have a rough list of those states, which would help. Cataloging the different kinds of "drunk" is a much easier task.

It would be nice, I suppose, to feel that gooey periphescence jive again, but I'm boggled by even more specific considerations. The states I'm thinking of, sketches of various relationship gestalts, entail more than some emotional disposition.

All of us are hoping for certain—for the most part broadly accepted—feelings, but looking for very different qualities.

Jubb, whose highest compliment, by his own admission, is "crazy", is presumably looking for a female, art-loving version of one of his drinking buddies.

The one adjective, and it's a broad one, that I would look for in a girl is "interesting."

I've noticed, from observing the world's many happy boring people, that not everyone places such a high value on "interesting." Some people use "nice" or, in cases of extreme mental illness, even "religious" as their highest adjective.

("Highest adjective" is a good concept, come to think of it. I would have to go with "interesting," but I bet there's a better, more specific word for what I'm thinking of…)

So everyone is looking for an emotion (easier to generalize) and perhaps some specific qualities. Even that isn't my point; there's something to the state of a relationship that's more than the qualities of the people within it.

But it's too complicated. There are too many possibilities and I don't know how to describe them, let alone which of the myriad relationship states I'd consider "ideal."

(Time to wrap this up; I lost my train of thought a while back anyways.)

So it's back to the L-word. Seperate into the three traditional sides of the triangle (romantic, companionate, lust? I can't remember Psych 101 anymore).

Mix together varying combinations, parse, refine, define. Periphesence is a good start.

Ah, sweet delicious words, like chocolate cake.