In my line of work, you generally feel like death on Friday morning, whether or not you've been out on the town the preceding night. You're going to be shaking, full stop. Whether it's from exhaustion or alcohol abuse is entirely arbitrary.
Last Friday morning I chose alcohol. As I raced for my train, just praying I'd make it through one more day without stuffing anything up too badly, the morning sun was glowering. My head was buzzing and spinning, my body crying out for another hour of sleep, and yet, as I fumbled deliriously for my oyster card, I noticed a handwritten poem, stuffed clumsily in my bag.
In a second my fancy overtook me. I must have been still inebriated, for there and then I managed to convince myself it had been slipped in there by a kindly friend or admirer the night before, for me to discover on my way home. What fresh delights awaited me? In spite of logic, my heart soared at this exciting prospect. In another instant, of course, I acknowledged that it was my own handwriting and my own, drunken, forgotten missive, placed there, with the aim of my discovering it at a later day. I presume.
Perhaps only because it was Friday, I found this not so much disappointing as hysterically funny. I wanted to share this, instantly, with someone. Pumped full of adrenalin and booze, it seemed the biggest shame not to be able to impart this merriment to my fellow passengers. And yet, writing this back now, it seems less than amusing an anecdote and I am glad I reconsidered.
But I did make me wonder why it is we are able to share some personal moments so openly, and yet treat others with such vital reserve.
That same day (hark, before the glorious bell tolled for the weekend just passed) I was made to think about this once more.
22nd July....
Unfortunately I abandoned the post and we shall never know just what I was about to get at there. However, I know it was something to do with a magazine article I'd read. I think I was going to get at something about how sharing certain details gives you a sense of self - the corners of the prism through which you view the world and through which it views you back.
And what's more, it seems to change every day. Not so much when you're older, perhaps, but we have hobbies, interests, anxieties that all bounce off each other to create one persona or another, and isn't it funny how that varies, depending on who you're with.
Indeed, surely everyone you meet influences you a little in a new direction, or triggers the next domino of an effect that sends you on a new, unpredictable trajectory. Whether you keep up with them or not, spend years apart and reconvene, they've influence you, shaped you. It's comforting, isn't it, to find we are not so invulnerable to one another.
Another thought I'd had around this time, followed on from a conversation with a contributor who'd just published a memoir of her relationship. She'd openly confessed to me that the book had caused them a problem, that the marriage was under strain, but that the process of revisiting their love story had been vital to her in retracing their steps, discovering where they were now. I think she felt it was necessary to keep their love alive, for in spite of best, romantic ideals, we cannot exist outside our history, and when a history is built together, there comes a point where it is the glue of a relationship, the value of a relationship. You cannot reinvent or rewrite it, for it is shared and honest. It's just there, an intractable framework for your identity together. Frightening then, it must be, to find yourself alone, or a stranger. Or indeed to uncover something in that history that you were unaware of and to see how it changes everything.
To free spirits, those brave or adventurous enough to have had more than one love, I'm sure the sequence defines you, that you carry former lovers each as a girder in a framework of your growing self. I hope, indeed, that it shall be this way for me, but for those who have endured the years - even with the slowest, plodding, enduring of attachments - those are the most touching, the gamble, the test, and I hope, the prize.
22nd July....
Unfortunately I abandoned the post and we shall never know just what I was about to get at there. However, I know it was something to do with a magazine article I'd read. I think I was going to get at something about how sharing certain details gives you a sense of self - the corners of the prism through which you view the world and through which it views you back.
And what's more, it seems to change every day. Not so much when you're older, perhaps, but we have hobbies, interests, anxieties that all bounce off each other to create one persona or another, and isn't it funny how that varies, depending on who you're with.
Indeed, surely everyone you meet influences you a little in a new direction, or triggers the next domino of an effect that sends you on a new, unpredictable trajectory. Whether you keep up with them or not, spend years apart and reconvene, they've influence you, shaped you. It's comforting, isn't it, to find we are not so invulnerable to one another.
Another thought I'd had around this time, followed on from a conversation with a contributor who'd just published a memoir of her relationship. She'd openly confessed to me that the book had caused them a problem, that the marriage was under strain, but that the process of revisiting their love story had been vital to her in retracing their steps, discovering where they were now. I think she felt it was necessary to keep their love alive, for in spite of best, romantic ideals, we cannot exist outside our history, and when a history is built together, there comes a point where it is the glue of a relationship, the value of a relationship. You cannot reinvent or rewrite it, for it is shared and honest. It's just there, an intractable framework for your identity together. Frightening then, it must be, to find yourself alone, or a stranger. Or indeed to uncover something in that history that you were unaware of and to see how it changes everything.
To free spirits, those brave or adventurous enough to have had more than one love, I'm sure the sequence defines you, that you carry former lovers each as a girder in a framework of your growing self. I hope, indeed, that it shall be this way for me, but for those who have endured the years - even with the slowest, plodding, enduring of attachments - those are the most touching, the gamble, the test, and I hope, the prize.
No comments:
Post a Comment