Siri Hustvedt

And she said, I had the feeling.

that you and Paul were each other's Lebensmensch.

So Leben is life and Mensch is, of course, person.

And it's the most beautiful word I can think of, right?

It's the life person.

And I think we were that for each other.

Oh yes, very beautiful.

Now it turns out, now I didn't know this, this is, I was told that it's not a really common word.

People don't go around throwing, you know, they don't throw Lebensmensch around all the time.

But it did fit.

Well, you know, I can't remember exactly what month that was, and it had to do with a model of erotic love that I created when I was 23 before I met Paul.

You know, the machine model is this mechanical repetition, and if the machine goes bad, you have to replace a part, but the part is still the same part.

But a tree, you know, can be struck by lightning, and maybe a limb falls off.

And then it will not grow back in the same way.

That's why the organic model is superior.

You see, that was it.

So then I started thinking about this lightning and the tree.

And I had this memory of seeing it in Minnesota, a tree with soot, you know, cleaved tree.

And I thought, well, Siri, is this your fantasy now?

Or look it up.