Still Life

Lucrezia Borgia by Bartolomeo Veneziano

Oh, but I am tired tonight.  The week has defeated me.  After work, for the third night in a row, I skipped the gym.  I went to eat on the sushi veranda instead.   And it was lovely.  A breeze had blown up as the weather changes for the weekend.  It will be cool tonight for the first time since winter.  The weekend will be beautiful.  So sitting on the veranda was everything it could be and the fish was fresh and the staff more than friendly.  Tonight they told me things I'd never known about them before.  They came over individually and in groups.  They wanted to be outside and to enjoy the night, I know, and I was the common denominator, but it was a comfort after such a long and difficult week.

"You look tired," more than one of them said to me, and I winced in pain.  I don't want to appear tired.  No one does.  But I did and I do.  All I want is to sleep, but if you've read the blog. . . whatever.

Prodigal Girl wrote to tell me it was good that I "put myself out there" in going out with the Eastern European, but she is wrong.  It was not good and I should have known before the beginning.  There is no guessing one way or another, no waiting to see.  You know upon first glance.  No other way.  You must be swept away at once, everything gone below you, just that interminable falling. . . falling.  I don't understand the pleasures of the other, the weighing and measuring of qualities and values.  I can almost understand hook ups but for the feeling that follows.  No, I shall remain a purist in this which means. . . we shall see what it means.  One can't predict the future from the past.  We know that.

*     *     *     *     *

The first day of October.  The morning breaks cooler and drier, the breeze goading the leaves.

There can be the most beautiful lines in even the most horrible movies.  I fell asleep watching "The Wolfman" last night on HBO.  I remember this:

"Never look back.  Never look back.  The past is a wilderness of horrors."

Of course, it was that "wilderness of horrors" that haunted my dreams and brought me to wakefulness in the dark.  Dehydrated, I went to the kitchen for water.  The future, I said, the future.  But once in the dark wilderness, it is best to stay put 'til morning.

And so, like some romantic poem, morning brings hope.  Still life.