6/11/07

I told Trooper today, when she dropped me off after baby class, "I’m okay.  It helps to know that part of the way I feel is due to sheer exhaustion, so I’m just ignoring my feelings and getting on with stuff.  In August or so, I’ll look back and know what to really feel about June."

Feelings to be ignored: That I am pathetic.

Stuff to do: Accompany six recitals and perform in two other ones and get students ready for end of year recitals they’re performing in and fit in all the make-up lessons and … what am I forgetting?

I don’t want to go to my ten year reunion, which I was just invited to.  I will go, of course, but somehow I am dreading the whole issue of my singleness.  And A Curious Mango isn’t able to go.  I always, always imagined that we would go together.  We had it worked out in grade twelve … she would ride a helicopter and smoke a cigar, and I would hitch a ride on a motorcycle and smoke a pipe …

In this huge OD silence, I have been very busy, to the point where each day is its own wheel of silence riding over the minute-by-minute activities.  On the advice of a flute teacher colleague, I decided to get up every day at the same time, whether it was a day off or not, to keep my sleeping patterns regular.  It now works so well that I couldn’t sleep in if I tried.  The nights I decide to stay up late result in groggy mornings, but I still get up.  I don’t think I’ve ever had this kind of rhythm/ease in my life.  I say ease, but I guess what I mean is resignation.  Submission, even.  Like a monastic Divine Office.  I wonder, do monks get as little time to reflect?  Is every moment economically spent?  I don’t think of prayer as reflecting.  At least, not as self-reflecting.

I keep having to ignore that feeling that I’m pathetic.  Almost every day I have to be brave or pretend to be.  Occasionally I forget all about it.

In other news, I come home and find Ms. Spur with hickeys on her neck occasionally.  She has caught herself a 31-year-old boyfriend – irony of ironies, he is perhaps even more inexperienced than I am in relationships, and here he is with my uber-experienced sexually-obsessed roommate – and teaching her a patience I don’t believe she’s ever felt necessary before.  They are great together, if for no other reason because they are both basically Muppets.  I’m happy, and annoyed.  I come home from work feeling more clearly than ever how far I seem to have grown from the whole idea of erotic love being possible in my life, and have to listen to stuff, either the wonders or the terrors of a relationship in its seedling stage.  The awesome power of one wrong or right word!  And I think dimly of the Friar, as if my memory has to squint to recall my certainty.  I sometimes wake up, afraid that it came and went and there is no chance for another.  That brief period of time – sketchily documented in this diary – in which it seemed to be raining men, only confirmed for me that I am not really a dating person.  How can I explain this?  I love; I have scruples; I hate games.

Well, more work.