Within every relationship is the fear that we will be misunderstood and imagined by our lover rather than properly investigated. We are disturbed when our partner assumes knowledge of our needs and troubles, and gets it wrong. They don't try to find out: they don't carefully and lovingly seek out the precise nature of what we are experiencing. They simply say, 'Your problem is...' or "what you need to do is...' and one feels bereft, because the comments are not stupid, just inaccurate in our case. They could very well be true of someone else (our partner's ex, their difficult brother, their father; when we don't investigate the present we tend to project theories from the past). Leonardo teaches us the value of attending closely to experience, of looking at what is actually before us, and respecting the true diversity and individuality of the world.
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Resilience
Judith Kerr's delightful children's story, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, tells of a tiger who turns up, quite unexpectedly, for tea with a girl called Sophie and her mother (64). You'd expect them to panic, but they take the appearance of this enormous and usually aggressive visitor entirely in their stride, and their reaction is a subtle invitation for us to modulate our own behaviour. Perhaps there isn't any need to lose our wits about many of the things we think of as terrifying. Having, of course, a huge appetite, the tiger eats and drinks everything, but not Sophie or her mother. The only problem is that there is not really any food left when Daddy gets home from work. But that's no reason for despair or dismay. The mother and daughter just feed the big animal all they can. When the father returns they decide to go out for a simple meal in the local cafe that serves great sausages. It is a story of resilience. Untoward and very surprising things happen, but they are not the end of the world. Solutions can be found to problems; the unexpected can be accommodated. A difficulty turns into an opportunity. The heroes of the story are the parents, who, in their quiet way, can be trusted not to be fragile, not to get worked up or outraged.
This spirit of coping well seeps deeply into the book. The design of the kitchen table, the clothes the characters wear, their haircuts, even the night-time street and the cafe they go to, all speak to the same end. The simplicity, straightforwardness and modesty all mean: 1 won't be damaged by small problems; I am not overstretched. I know what really matters, and I know what doesn't. That, too, is love.
How to not panic when the unexpected occurs.
64. Judith Kerr. Illustration from The Tiger Who Came to Tea. I%8
Sensuality
65. Oscar Nicmeycr. Sensuality is unembarrassed enjoyment of touch and movement.
Casa dc Canoas, 1953
It would be nice to suppose that this comes easily to us, but the fact is that sensual ease - the delights of swaying one's hips to music, of caressing and being stroked - can be hard to find as a relationship develops. We become awkward because we need to maintain our self- respect and get worried that we will appear ridiculous or leave ourselves vulnerable to rejection. Will the other person want to stroke us back? If we get up and dance, will our movements be fluid and enticing or shamefully disjointed and inept?
The idea! place to reanimate your sex life.
Alternatively, it can simply feel hard to make the transition from all the other themes of a relationship - the need to persuade one's partner to change their attitude to the distribution of domestic chores, to agree that the children's school has serious failings, or to manage one's tendency to get irritated or morose - to an abandoned sense of one's own physical sweetness and allure, or to feel entitled to such pleasure, despite not having a physique that naturally draws the admiration of others.
Oscar Niemeyer's Casa de Canoas carefully constructs an environment designed to help us with such troubles (65). It repositions sensuality as part of a sophisticated, mature life. Instead of suggesting that sensuality might be the special province of the young, the louche or the pretty, he creates a place where you can be an accountant or work in the ministry of infrastructure (a responsible, hard-working person much concerned with technical and administrative problems) and relish your body. You can have a conversation that stretches your mind and also be gently exploring the back of your lovers knee; or kiss in the warm shadows before taking a conference call about worrying regional sales projections. The glass and rock help us feel sophisticated while letting ourselves be natural.
The house is a bit like a confident and encouraging friend who makes reassuring murmurs at the right time. It makes our self-consciousness kinder. It gives us a lovely sense of what normality might be. It feels at ease with physical pleasures, and carries them off in a style that it makes available to us as well.
Sensuality is in the hinterland of sex, and is enticing and threatening because of this connection. One could imagine a couple feeling safe enough in this house to be sexually adventurous in a way that has felt impossible for years. The passage from where they are now to the more risky, intense and dramatic elements of their sexuality, and the return to the rest of life, is here made simpler. It is a temple to erotic hope: that one can be sexually adventurous and a good person, and have a good relationship, at the same time. Niemeyer's house is kind because it docs not pretend that we find this an easy equation. Our culture makes us ashamed of not being able to pull it off; the building takes seriously the fact that we find it difficult, and does all it can to help us out.
It loves order, clarity and poise - and wants us to lore tbent too.
M. Filippo Brunei Icvchi, loggia. Ospedale dcgli Innocenti. <•.1430
Reason
One could be forgiven for supposing that rationality (or, more softly, 'reasonableness') is irrelevant - and even possibly opposed - to being a good lover. This is perhaps because we tend to think of love as a feeling, rather than as an achievement of intelligence. A reasonable or rational person is not one who is only interested in logic, or someone who tries in a cold, robotic fashion to substitute calculation and analysis for kindness or yearning. We are reasonable when we are moved by accurate explanation. Thus a reasonable person is slow to anger; they do not jump to conclusions.
Bruneileschi is a very reasonable architect. In the arcade he designed every element is there for a clear reason (66). Each element is clearly defined: each column supports an arch over the covered walk; that arch is supported by a corresponding bracket in the wall. These structural ribs arc picked out in grCy stone, while the smooth vaults between and the wall at the back are a warm white. This colour system helps make the structure very lucid and obvious.