QOTD: "The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one's soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive - you are leaking." - Fran Lebowitz
Reading: Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
Listening to: Four Tet, Paws
Decluttering accomplishments: At least I didn't add anything else to the chaos here
"Let's try to see each other as much as possible in the coming year," he says.
The timing is perfect - a lazy afternoon of making love, a leisurely dinner in a restaurant the reviewers describe as "reminiscent of Saigon in the 1920's," cuddling comfortably afterwards, half-asleep in each other's arms. They're chatting about nothing and everything, movies and architecture and whether they might have rowed on the same lake thirty years earlier. She wishes that they'd fallen in love on that long-ago lake, when "as much as possible" meant more than a few hours here, a few days there, and at least one of them weary with jet-lag.
They have a silly argument, about Cyprus and archaeology and civil wars. Their arguments are always silly. Once they fought over which New York subway lines were locals and which were express trains. Another time he accused her of having kissed him first. It's always safer to focus on trivia.
Later, alone, she hugs her teddy bear, reads Dorothy Parker poems and tries to find time to go to London.
Copyright 2001 Miriam H. Nadel