Pushed away: Tomatoes; Tomato Juice (II)

It pursues position rather than possession, working steadily toward the rooms, titles and associations that constitute arrival, and it keeps intimacy at a distance because a person admitted that close would meet the ordinary someone underneath the position. A status-driven, socially climbing household with a mother who was not available taught it that being somebody is the currency and being known is a liability. What it asks for is one person allowed to meet the version that has no title attached.

I'd like to be in the room where those people are. What happens after that, I haven't thought about.

It echoes Julien Sorel, who studied the manners of every house he entered and used every affection in it as a rung, and who could not be loved as himself because he had never presented that version to anyone. The form implies a task: to be met once without the ascent attached.