Super short and sweet today. I don't know when Asia's friend Magda will return, but my suspicion is it will be any minute now. She arrived yesterday and is staying with us through the weekend. It's nice to have another person around, I just want to get the writing out of the way to avoid the appearance of being rude. Why is it rude to take 20 minutes for your daily writing practice, you ask? Well, it probably isn't. But it feels like it is, and that's enough. I imagine someone sitting in my living room thinking, oh, this person doesn't want me here. Why else would they leave me sitting here while they hang out in the next room typing away on their computer? Of course most people probably don't think this way. Some might even enjoy the time to themselves to check on the things they didn't get a chance to. A moment of focus time can be a gift.
It's weird, the stories we tell ourselves about what's right and wrong, what's appropriate or inappropriate.
I was just talking to The Profuser while doing the dishes after dinner. He was much less profusive today given he had a root canal yesterday and said he couldn't talk much. That didn't stop him from speaking at length on all varieties of topics near and far. One thing that came up was the phenomenon of calling someone that you haven't spoken to in a long time; not because of a falling out, but more of a falling away. There are friends I simply lost touch with due to time and distance that I would still like to be in touch with, but to me there's this feeling of 'well, if I haven't made an effort to stay in touch, then they must have released me from their circle of friends and would see my move to make contact as odd.' Too little, too late. I think I have this belief because it happened to me once with an older woman I was in a kind of romantic relationship with. She accosted me with the fact that I hadn't spoken to her in months, which sent the signal that her friendship wasn't very important or valuable to me. She'd said something like, "I prefer to have friends who call me more than once every eight months." I'd have to go back and see if I could locate the exchange to find the exact phrasing, but it was cutting. I've even heard friends talk about other friends in a similar way, "X reached out, she hasn't texted or called me in years...now I'm good enough?"
The Profuser urged me to ignore this type of thinking, and I think he's right. If everyone acted that way it would drive everyone further apart instead of bringing them closer together. We should seek to build bridges, not walls. If someone is offended by your lack of communication, it's their responsibility to tell you and to establish boundaries / expectations - just as my more mature female friend tried to do. I've always thought myself mature (and it's true, I am and have been more mature than most people my age) but man was I too immature for that relationship. She was a smart, beautiful, cool woman. I think on some level this must have intimidated me. That and the age difference. She had nearly 20 years on me, if I remember correctly. Maybe my mind did some future accounting and started ringing unconscious existential alarm bells that said: in the best case scenario she'd die at 80 when you're 60 and you'd be left alone to live out your end years a grieving widower.
Perhaps it was a mix of those things and the fact that I was still in my 20's sowing my wild oats around San Francisco. Sowing my wild oats. Where the fuck does that phrase originate? Another one The Profuser and I talked about was the phrase cold turkey. So many combinations of words like this in our heads that, when examined in isolation, have absolutely no meaning. Is this why idiom has the same root as idiotic?
We'll need to ask Mr. Owl.
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