Apathy is the enemy of Idealism, though Idealism has yet to notice. This lucid hatred may be the only thing Apathy cares about. The two women stand together at a window overlooking the city, where Idealism laughs and ponders the view and gently pokes fun at the people as they scurry to work; Apathy sees only the streaks on the glass and the reflection of her own miserable face and so she refuses to partake in the fun. Idealism finds this behaviour charming and, in her opinion, is indicative of their close friendship, where the silence is golden if you allow it to rest.
Pragmatism only knew the textbook meaning of joy until he met Idealism. Sometimes he doesn’t understand what he’s done to make her laugh so uproariously, but it makes him want to take her in his arms. Pragmatism and Idealism are husband and wife, where the wife wears an eternal megaphone strapped to her chest and her husband rubs her feet at night. Apathy spends evenings like these with bare legs, waiting outside nightclubs and blowing blueberry vape clouds into the faces of strangers. Apathy only sleeps with someone once she knows how she’ll leave them.
Sometimes Pragmatism’s act of physical affection makes Idealism cry and cry. Pragmatism thinks this is because he’s hitting the right pressure points, but Idealism can cry with such ferocity that it frightens him. She tells him the world is so beautiful and so ugly, but the ugliness is something she never sees and can only feel in the bones of her feet. She tells him it walks with her, and she says it can only be her fault if it spreads. Pragmatism knows deeply how wrong she is, but he just stays, silently, and that seems to be enough for Idealism in these long nights. When she emerges from the bedroom in the late morning light, with sleep still in her eyes, she finds him making pancakes. He watches her eat as last night’s admission becomes a breeze; something never meant to stay.
Idealism likes to try new things with her whole heart. She picks up paintbrushes and pens and protest signs. Boxing gloves and running shoes. Dostoyevsky and calculus textbooks; scholarship applications. When Idealism shoots for the moon or somehow manages to murder a cactus, Pragmatism can find her supine on the floor for a month (or three months, or ten).
Pragmatism leans down, strokes her hair, whispers to her: “Take a break and come back stronger.”
When at last she rises, Pragmatism says: “There is a next step here. We will find it together.”
Idealism might resemble Apathy when she can’t pick herself up from the floor, but regardless of appearance, Apathy is not present for Idealism’s hibernation. Apathy is out meditating wherever the world is burning.
Idealism has never been able to shake the feeling that one day she will set out from her front door and start to walk the earth. She will grow taller and taller as she wanders down its hills, skips along its rivers, waves to its mountains, and drinks from its oceans—until one day, she is taller than the tallest trees, unsure whether she is rooting into the earth or reaching for the sky, or both. Idealism knows in her heart that time is a Mobius strip where you only find yourself walking forward. The realization that a shattered glass can never leap back into her hand intact is a puzzle to her: worth a slight furrowed brow but nothing more.
Pragmatism watches Idealism as she plants her feet into her yoga mat and does her asanas. Her dedication to touching the sky—if only in her mind—inspires him to stretch further for his goals, as his goals—once, in plausible reach—are now further away. He allows them to expand slightly, like a balloon his delicate nature will never allow him to pop. Idealism inspires Pragmatism to consider that his dreams will become airborne.
Idealism says to Pragmatism: “I’d never change you.”
Pragmatism says: “You have, and you will again, because you’ve never stopped.”
Pragmatism and Idealism need to kiss on the mouth and roll on the floor together while giving the middle finger to Apathy, who is ignorant of the love people can make to one another; the love an idea can have for another; the idea of love as a balancing act that makes both parties grow taller.
Love is a garden, and if you’re lucky, then sometimes you find potatoes in it. Idealism might marvel in the morning light at the flowering plants and clap her hands; Pragmatism might return in the early afternoon to prune the flowers, so the potatoes will continue to grow steadily beneath the soil. In this perfect world, he presses the purple flowers gently in a book, to preserve them for Idealism to coo and marvel at once more. He presses them into the shape of his heart, and holds steadfast, so he is prepared to give her the gift of summertime when reality becomes dreary or cold or wet—and of course: she may be on the floor again. He would do anything to hear her voice ring out when the silence around them is damp and beckoning.
Right now, Pragmatism and Idealism are eating au gratin in the summertime, holding hands and looking at the trees and clouds from her small, tender balcony.
Nobody cares where Apathy is at all.
Rebecca Dougan has a background in mathematics and engineering, from which she balked at continuing. She now finds herself at Carleton University studying English with a concentration in Creative Writing, where small crumbs of her love for mathematics still turn up in her writing. She has never been happier.
