complex pleasures

It’s Thursday, my day off.  Since I spent the last two days being incredibly lazy in order not to have a relapse of last year’s vertigo madness, this will be my third day of puttering around the apartment and basically being nice to myself.

(I was warned that, having had the inner ear viral infection last year, I would be susceptible to that sort of thing from now on, if I let myself get run down.  And sure enough, this week, my cold was followed by dizzy spells and nausea.  Hence, the incredible laziness.  I keep using the word "incredible" because I can’t quite believe how FREE I am to be lazy at this point in my life.  I can rearrange rehearsals and lesson times relatively easily, and there are no major assignments or tests looming.  Yesterday I had a fleeting sensation of guilt because I wasn’t busy doing something.)

It snowed again last night.

Ms Spur and I have been talking (when she’s home from work in the evenings) about how we are definitely getting into a predictable rut.  We come home from work, make soup, knit/cross-stitch, watch maybe an episode of the Muppet Show or Coronation Street (!!!), ride on her exercise bike, yak, take baths and go to bed.  It was a nice, calm, quiet routine that I think we both needed for a while after all the upheaval, but now we are both getting itchy urges to get out there and live a little.  For Ms Spur, I think this means dress up and go to parties and be surrounded by people.  Ms Spur is definitely an extrovert in the sense that she loses energy when she is by herself.

(By one’s self; what an interesting phrase that is!)

For me, this means that I want to find the nearest stargazing clubs or Scottish dancing events, and special cafes where I can take my laptop and just write for hours.

——

I was re-reading parts of this diary for the first time in ages last night, because Ms Spur brought up the U thing.  Sort of out of the blue.  Ms Spur is uncanny that way.

So I went looking for the times when I wrote about him.  And two things struck me.  One, that I used to have a much more interesting social life … and my entries seemed so full of FUN.  Two, that I never really did justice to the U connection.

Ms Spur asked why the hell I didn’t just call him.  After all, it’s strange that we talked on the phone pretty often when I was in Victoria for two years, but now that I have returned to the mainland, our communication is only brief interchanges at the music school.

So I "tormented myself" (as Ms Spur said), researching the past.  (Ms Spur sat there clucking, "This is way too obsessive.  It’s quite simple.  You enjoy his company.  You call him.")

Ms Spur thinks I have missed some obvious hints.

Such as when I asked him, standing in line for food at the faculty benefit post-concert dinner, how life was treating him; he said, "I’m just quietly going about my business, waiting for something to come along."

I’m still not sure that’s a hint.  But when I quoted it to Ms Spur, she rolled her eyes and put down her knitting and said, "HuLLOOOO, Music Shivers … "

Apparently, too, when I actually picked U up when I hugged him the first time that night (because I was on a roll, scaring everyone with that weird pick-up-hug thing … ), and he said, "Well!  Do that 50 times a day and you’ll never need to go to the gym," Ms Spur believes this was another hint.  That’s one I definitely disagree with her about.  I think it was just jocularity, not a hint that he wanted me to lift him 50 times a day (how romantic).

But that second hug.  Where I put down my violin and said "Okay, let’s do this properly," and my arms were around his neck and his arms went about my waist.  I will not attempt to describe it (someone will say I need to write harlequin romances), except to say that once again, I felt: Home.

Ms Spur has told me (almost sternly) that this is up to me, because a man in his position would never make the first move.  He met me when I was 17.  He was once my teacher.  He probably can’t bring himself to believe that a woman like me would be interested in a man like him.  And, perhaps he worries about my expectations – about sex, about whether or not I would want marriage and children …

Funny – there is no doubt in Ms Spur’s mind about him desiring me; she said, "I don’t think I’m the only one who has noticed how he lights up whenever you’re around."  But I do doubt it.  I remember that one time we went for coffee and he said almost wearily, "Sometimes it’s nice just to admire someone from afar, so you don’t become disillusioned."  I was certain he was telling me, obliquely, that I should let him be; that he was content as he was and didn’t want to be tormented.

So what now?  Our connection has been the background of my life for ten years.

—–

I have to be careful, too, that I don’t let my thinking become too influenced by Ms Spur, since we are coming at all this from totally different angles.

Because I don’t believe (fundamentally) that life is about Happiness, or Getting What You Want.  The Friar and I used to talk about this and he really liked my picture of an ideal marriage: Two people spurring each other on to be the best humans they could be, and making a real contribution to the world … "partners in crime."  I guess that really applies to all friendship (just look at A Curious Mango and me, doing "synchro days" where we check in with each other and make sure we’re getting through our list of things to do … ).  The point, to me, is to find your true work, and get busy doing it.  Ms Spur would probably agree with that in principle; but in practice I think she feels unhappy whenever she reflects on the stuff and relationships she doesn’t have.  And here my friends will jump in to say, "But Music Shivers, you periodically feel sad when you think of how you’re ‘going to waste.’"  That’s true.  Then there are those moments when I feel more myself than any other time, when I’m whole and alive in pursuit of some ideal sound or phrase, or immersed in somebody else’s beautiful creation.  Then the whole question of "going to waste" is a moot point.

This is all just a reminder to myself that U and I don’t have to have the movie ending where we finally kiss or fuck; that our ineffable affection for each other is already in itself enough.