all mimsy were the borogroves...

I am strangely serene and happy today. The past few days’ thoughts have come up to surface in a blush on warm cheeks only to settle quietly on gentle smiles. Last night in conversations I recalled a friend who last July committed suicide, ending my three month sabbatical into celibacy. Vulnerably I came out of my solitude and met *R and learned to give even more unconditionally if that’s possible.

May, my darling *J had just graduated with her degrees and was moving to Berkley. Planning a dinner was put off until suddenly she was gone…off on her way. I called her a month later. “Baby, Steve is gone….” And we cried. At the funeral his wife Kanami clung to me and in her little girl voice of broken English, whispered “is so unfair”

“Hush, I know darling…” We lose people too easy but I would rather have and lose than to never know.


on being the peach, on being a woman

Last night the air was sweet and the moon full but there was little breeze. Last night I took lessons on being a woman. Funny what a man can tell you about your own nature. Or rather what your own nature is supposed to be. Intention versus perception, what is real? But what he said struck home.

In retrospect, you should know I grew up in a vaccuum raised by books and apparently Dickens and Poe could only go so far in thier teachings. The rest I suppose should have been learned from human interaction. Only there was little human interaction, just books and my own imagination for the longest time.

So now I understand some things about what I should be feeling. As a woman I should want more. In entering an exclusive relationship, I should naturally want it to develop in to something serious. I should be territorial, jealous of other females, perhaps especially the younger ones, the pretty ones, the more exotic ones, the often immature.

But I raised myself from scratch more than I was raised by another. And between that and the hardness I've faced in life, the loss, I truly believe…

Every relationship has a time and place, a depth and duration, a purpose. And we can only know these things as they occur and in hindsight. Though I suppose hope plays a role somewhere in there, I’m not quite sure where, but I always seem to have it in abundance.

We spoke of other things, the house, my moving, friendship...

The line stayed clear and we spoke at length of suddenly having friends you couldn’t walk away from and the panic that instilled in us. The freedom we lost by it and the companionship we gained. That was the key, companionship. Loners I think are such by habit as much by nature, but sometimes we find we need others and it's new way of life to suddenly learn.

So on being a woman? Evidently where I should want marriage, I want companionship and intimacy and where I should be jealous of the young, the pretty, the immature, I find I’m not. For though I may not be the typical female, from where a man stands, as my friend says, I am most definitely all woman.

p.s. thank you my friend for believing I am who I am and difficult to typify. It means a lot that someone actually sees that part of me.