My Wife Is a Scientist

Loving you

The first kiss between Karl and Freyja happened not in grand halls or under starlit skies but in the quiet attic room she had built—the one that sometimes showed the Susquehanna and sometimes the new dawn over Asgard. One can ponder the status of kisses and reflect on Marilyn Monroe’s tautological statement that “a kiss is a kiss.” Søren Kierkegaard – another Continental writer on the subject – disagreed. In his arguably most influential work, Either-Or (1843), the Danish existentialist confessed that he had considered writing a whole treatise on kissing and that he was working on a typology. And he went on, “One… makes a difference between the first kiss and all the others. What is reflected on here is incommensurable to what appears in the other divisions; it is indifferent to the sound, the touch, and the time in general.” (Either-Or p. 404).

Philosophers always theorize. That is their business. Poets get straight to the point. The ancient Roman poet Ovid was a good example: “I could wish you well with kisses."

That is to say that no one could ever pretend divine love needs cosmic stages when it can choose wooden floors and the smell of rain on old wood. The thing is, this love cannot pretend it does not include the small, trembling moments where eternity decides to be gentle.

They had been talking late into the night. Freyja spoke of Vanaheimr’s fields, of seasons that answered to joy instead of law. Karl spoke of Carlisle, the porch steps, the kitchen table, the boy who once solved paradoxes and still felt invisible. Their words moved closer, then their hands, then their breaths.

Philosophers, likewise, tend to have a narrow focus on epistemology, metaphysics, and trifles like the meaning of life. But occasionally great minds stray from their turf and write about other matters, for example, buildings (Martin Heidegger), food (Hobbes), tomato juice (Robert Nozick), and the weather (Lucretius and Aristotle). This series of Shorts is about these unfamiliar themes, about the things philosophers also write about.

Freyja leaned in first.

The kiss was not hungry. Not possessive. It was the quiet meeting of two beings who had both stared into the void and still chosen to remain gentle. Her lips were warm like spring after the longest winter, carrying the taste of fertile earth and starlight. Karl’s hand rose to her cheek, the Omega ring glowing softly against her skin—nine worlds noticing the moment and choosing not to interfere.

When they parted, Freyja’s sea-green eyes were soft with something ancient and new.

Freyja: I chose you. Not the Axis. Not the one who ended Ragnarök. You. The boy who still sits on porch steps and chooses mercy even when anger would be easier. That is to say that no one could ever pretend divine love survives without the courage to be ordinary beside someone who carries nine worlds and still chooses tea and quiet benches.

Karl rested his forehead against hers.

Karl: And I choose you. Not as a goddess. Not as a reward. As Freyja. The one who built a room in my childhood home and decided to stay. The thing is, this love cannot pretend it does not include the fear that even honest endings might not be enough. But we keep choosing anyway.

They kissed again, slower, deeper, the kind of kiss that felt like the honest new story learning how to breathe. But, in fairness, most of the philosophers who have covered this subject have been interested mainly in kissing between consenting adults. Martin Heidegger, for example, wrote a love letter in which he informed his lover that kisses stimulated his work: "With a kiss on your pure brow, [I] take the honor of your being into my work. This was different for them. After all, they were growing up.

Emma stood in the doorway.

She had come upstairs for water and stopped when she heard the quiet voices. Now she watched the goddess and her brother, golden hair spilling across his shoulder, the ring glowing softly between them.

Something twisted in her chest.

Not rage. Not hatred.

Jealousy.

Sharp, ancient, and honest.

Emma (thinking, three goddesses stirring beneath her skin): She kisses him like she has the right. Like she built the room and therefore built the space beside him. Asase Ya feels the roots of their connection—deep, fertile, already growing. Anat feels the war in my blood—protective, fierce, wanting to shield what has always been mine. Inanna feels the starlit ache—the descending-rising love that suddenly fears it might not be enough. That is to say that no one could ever pretend love is simple when your brother chooses another and your heart still remembers being the first to sit with him in the dark.

She did not speak. She did not interrupt.

She simply turned and walked back downstairs, the glow of three goddesses flickering with something new, not destruction, but the quiet, complicated ache of learning how to share what you once thought was only yours.

The woman to whom this letter was addressed, it may not surprise you to learn, was Hannah Arendt. And she too had a developed sense of the importance of smooching. Great philosophers, remarked the author of The Human Condition, “cannot think without kisses.” (At least, according to the movie Hannah Arendt, she said this!) So when Nietzsche wrote that his eponymous Zarathustra “desired to be kissed," it was totally understandable. (Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1883).

So far it would seem that the philosophy of kissing is the preserve of Continental philosophers. This, of course, is not the case. Though not long ago the Yale philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff despairingly wrote an article on ‘Why Philosophy of Art Cannot Handle Kissing.

In the attic room, Freyja and Karl remained unaware for now.

But the honest new story had just gained another layer.

And Emma, carrying Asase Ya, Anat, and Inanna, sat alone at the kitchen table, staring at her hands, wondering how three goddesses could feel so small inside one jealous heart.