(no subject)

Tired, after another night of working on the house. I'm not as exhausted as I was last time, but I didn't start until 7:30, though I just now finished. Or quit, rather, as there is still much to be done. (And I am hearing these words in my mind in the voice of the narrator of my Lord of the Rings on CD, which I have been listening to, these past days. Come to that, my phrasing seems to have acquired something of Tolkien's style.)

The list of things that have to be done only grows longer. I have now discovered the reason for the linoleum peeling in the kitchen. There is a leak under the refrigerator where the water pipe enters for the icemaker--which itself has not worked for years--which has rotted the subfloor and loosened the adhesive beyond what age would account for.

Two quotes

All companionship can consist only in the strengthening of two neighboring solitudes, whereas everything that one is wont to call giving oneself is by nature harmful to companionship: for when a person abandons himself, he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up in order to come close to each other, there is no longer any ground beneath them and their being together is a continual falling. --Rainer Maria Rilke

Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now. --Rumi

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These two quotes showed up on wombat recently. The first one strikes home because it reminds me of something I tried many times to explain to Ray: he had been fond of telling me (when our life together was better) that I was his everything. When he was trying to keep me from my friends and other activities, he told me that he should be everything to me: "That's what marriage is about."

Being anyone's everything is far too much responsibility for me, and I tried to explain that. He never understood. I don't even want to be Rosa's everything, though dependence in a child is much more understandable and even necessary. That is what makes the parent-child love relationship different from the relationship and love of two adults.

After our breakup, he told me that Rosa is his everything now. That frightened me: if it's too much weight for me, how can a baby be expected to shoulder such a thing? I fear that he will expect far more from her than she is able to give. As for me, I believe that a happy, contented parent, satisfied with her life, will be much better for her in the long run. It is best for both of us if I am complete in myself.

(no subject)

I am...( Albus Dumbledore )

A surprising phone call

Kirk called tonight, surprising me. I'd only called him a week and a half ago, and it had been almost a year before that since we'd talked. The old feelings are still there. On both sides.

We sort of sat there for a good ten minutes without being able to say much to one another, embarrassed by the open admission of something that had been suppressed for a long while, but eventually managed to not only talk about our feelings but also have a normal conversation.

The vague and distant possiblity of a physical or cyber relationship still remains, but there are impediments and good reasons not to. In any case we need to bridge the distance that has grown between us over the last few years before thinking seriously of such a thing. But I think our friendship will recover in time. Its roots are deep; twelve years we've known each other, and we still share something that can't be called anything but love, however difficult it is to express and whatever shape it may take.

Thinking about it right now I think the thing I miss most of all is the comfortable way we used to cuddle and rub each other's backs and things like that. What I think of as cuddlefriendly behavior. It needn't imply anything beyond close affectionate friendship. If someday we find ourselves free to pursue something else, well I'm not closing that door. But I hope we can have the touch back, at least, and the comfortableness of being in each other's presence.