speaking with the whispers

The "wedding" was pleasant, and I got to see a great many people I had not seen in months, many of whom I could tell what they really thought of me by the way they avoided engaging me, or engaged me with great vigor and enthusiasm. Hypocrites need not apply.

Afterwards I took a former student of mine home, stopping for dinner. I had always found her rather attractive, and she has put out some signals to the notion that she would not find an overture immediately dismissable. We talked, we joked, we flirted, she complained about her life situation, and it occurred to me I am not something she is running towards, but a place she is running away from other things to. Deja vu. I have been the janitor of the human condition before, too often.

I have sometimes wondered if I have ever had an authentic relationship. I would like to think I have.

In the midst of it all my own line ricochetted around inside my heard: "I will take no pretender, again, to my bed"

Damn good line, from the poem "In the Memory of Lovers". Sorry, guys (and gals)...I've played with that kindling before. It will take something authentic to take me there, something I have not had in my life in some time (in retrospect, the last time it was real was probably sometime in 1997, if then, and I am ashamed I have allowed myself to be so easily fooled).

I can talk myself into almost anything, superimposing my whim and wish on top of a tabla rasa or near to it. Summoning virtues to laud that are lacking or absent. Alllowing myself to be lead by my hormones or my loneliness into places my heart rebels against. No wonder my soul is in fragments, my mirrors cracked and cryptic as they bounce a light of indeterminate source onto the floor of an unfamiliar room.