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Mar. 12th, 2005 11:01 pmFollowing bits of conversation last night, and the tracks my thoughts tend to slot into when I'm tired, I've been back to thinking about this matter of lovem, relationships, and the Whole Thing
Not, after two hours of watching a Simon & garfunkel DVD (from the tour we were lucky enough to see last year) while attacking a bottle of white, that I hope or expect to make much sense of it.
The basic point I think I'm thinking is that, for all the empty hole that there is in my life from the absence of life partners and the like, I think I'm as happy (or not unhappy) about the fact now as I've ever been. I seem to have developed my life in such a way that it runs reasonably smoothly on the assumption of being unheld - I haven't wept about the fact for a fair while - and that plateau of existence should not be abandoned lightly. I guess I'd rather be stably unattached than unstably attached, and I no longer know how I;d tell the difference of the type of attachment. I've fashioned myself a persona which feels less like a mask than it used to of being happy enough in my mysetrious state of perpetual singleness - the people I work with would (I hope) never guess it mattered so much once - and to cast away that persona, the alternative would have to feel very right.
Or maybe Bill Hicks was right - "It's going to take a very special woman. Or a whole bunch of average ones".
As I get older, I feel more and more strongly a duty to get on with it - that I have a responsiibilty to myself and the real world to get up, go to work, and if that means plastering a bit of panstick make-up over the emotional cracks once in a while, then so be it. It's part of the deal - there are plenty of days when I could cheerfully set fire to the whole damn lot of it, and be demanding someone who doesn't understand me to feed me powdered happiness before the fire engines arrive. But in the end, you gotta do your bit, take on your own load, and that's the trade-opff for being a member of society. Most of us aren't special, and society has better things to be worrying about than our relatively futile worries - out of all thw wonderful and inspiring words in the Simon & garfunkel canon, the ones that speak to me most strongly are in a song they hardly ever sang, "An American Tune":
"It's alright, it's all alright, you can live forever blessed
But tomorrows' another working day, and I'm trying to get some rest
I'm just trying to get some rest"
And in some rambling way, that all links back to the point I was originally trying to make about relationships. I learnt the hard way that it isn't the world being unfair, or even if it is, that's just the way it is. I've largely made my peace with the world around me about that one, and if my heart is a little more withered than it was, then that's only because the seed inside it dreaming of being a forest isn't getting as much light as it was. And I hope that seed one day germinates, and bears fruit in the love "that spreads through others lives like a tree". But if it doesn't, the world won't be so much the worse for it that you'd notice, and nor, I'd imagine, will I. I'll just be me - not perhaps the me that I could be, but the me that I am, and in the end that's what there is, and I'll be doing my best with it.
The only thing I weep about these days is lost friendship.
Not, after two hours of watching a Simon & garfunkel DVD (from the tour we were lucky enough to see last year) while attacking a bottle of white, that I hope or expect to make much sense of it.
The basic point I think I'm thinking is that, for all the empty hole that there is in my life from the absence of life partners and the like, I think I'm as happy (or not unhappy) about the fact now as I've ever been. I seem to have developed my life in such a way that it runs reasonably smoothly on the assumption of being unheld - I haven't wept about the fact for a fair while - and that plateau of existence should not be abandoned lightly. I guess I'd rather be stably unattached than unstably attached, and I no longer know how I;d tell the difference of the type of attachment. I've fashioned myself a persona which feels less like a mask than it used to of being happy enough in my mysetrious state of perpetual singleness - the people I work with would (I hope) never guess it mattered so much once - and to cast away that persona, the alternative would have to feel very right.
Or maybe Bill Hicks was right - "It's going to take a very special woman. Or a whole bunch of average ones".
As I get older, I feel more and more strongly a duty to get on with it - that I have a responsiibilty to myself and the real world to get up, go to work, and if that means plastering a bit of panstick make-up over the emotional cracks once in a while, then so be it. It's part of the deal - there are plenty of days when I could cheerfully set fire to the whole damn lot of it, and be demanding someone who doesn't understand me to feed me powdered happiness before the fire engines arrive. But in the end, you gotta do your bit, take on your own load, and that's the trade-opff for being a member of society. Most of us aren't special, and society has better things to be worrying about than our relatively futile worries - out of all thw wonderful and inspiring words in the Simon & garfunkel canon, the ones that speak to me most strongly are in a song they hardly ever sang, "An American Tune":
"It's alright, it's all alright, you can live forever blessed
But tomorrows' another working day, and I'm trying to get some rest
I'm just trying to get some rest"
And in some rambling way, that all links back to the point I was originally trying to make about relationships. I learnt the hard way that it isn't the world being unfair, or even if it is, that's just the way it is. I've largely made my peace with the world around me about that one, and if my heart is a little more withered than it was, then that's only because the seed inside it dreaming of being a forest isn't getting as much light as it was. And I hope that seed one day germinates, and bears fruit in the love "that spreads through others lives like a tree". But if it doesn't, the world won't be so much the worse for it that you'd notice, and nor, I'd imagine, will I. I'll just be me - not perhaps the me that I could be, but the me that I am, and in the end that's what there is, and I'll be doing my best with it.
The only thing I weep about these days is lost friendship.
