Reading favorite writer-editor Nandini Nair writing on love in the pandemic.
"Unable still to trust my own intuition, I tried to figure out why I liked him so much. It is little surprise that I found the answer in a book on writing. In First You Write a Sentence Joe Moran, writes, ‘People who love sentences love verbs.’
And there it is. I could see it now.

Moran continues, ‘Nouns, because they name something permanent, have just one form. Of all parts of speech they are the most self-sufficient and singularly resonant. But verbs take many forms, often irregular, depending on what role they play in the sentence. They are useless by themselves, and rarely as euphonious as nouns or adjectives. But put them next to other words and they are as life-giving to the sentence as light and air to the world.’

I could now make sense of this new relationship by seeing us as parts of a sentence. He is the verb. And I am the noun. It fit. We fit. I’d always fancied myself as autonomous, self-sufficient, an entity which did not need an other to be complete. But here he was, all do, do, do, and done; he’d infused brio and breeze into my days and nights. He is the verb, he is movement. Partner him next to the right noun, and he will animate it, just as a noun must earth him. Together we made a sentence, a foundational unit that is complete in itself.

Long-distance relationships are akin to transit hotels, a space for loiter and not for longevity. It satisfies only in small measures. To be with a partner is to move around each other in the daily-ness and to grow together. I recall Pico Iyer’s words, absorption is the closest one can come to happiness. Long distance seldom allows for absorption. And the online medium operates on the premise of distraction. To be together in person, in the same place, is to be absorbed in one another. To be in the same bio-bubble allows for attention and tending. It is happiness."