Moo...

It's funny how generally contented I've been for the past 2 weeks.

Work has been very hectic during the week, with first-year-like hours during on weekdays (1.30-3.00am), but with the weekends mostly mercifully off. And this week my vision actually turned blurry one day (!!), but therefore decided to leave early (9pm) and meet friends for dinner instead. So in the past 2 weeks, despite the work, I've managed to sleep in (no French class=no alarm clock during the weekend!), meet an old friend, have a leisurely walk around town, through Hyde Park, watched the England-Israel match, watch Bourne Ultimatum, and shoot the breeze with late night dinner at a bad Leicester Square cafe until we were thrown out close to 3am. And then there were Sunday drinks and catch up dinner, weekday dinner, asking a girl I like out... Life seems so beautifully paced.

A magic combination of frenetic activity (which I need) and high adrenaline from the new challenges in my job, and the ability to take it slowly and relaxingly sans schedule: e.g. sleep in sans alarm clock... I can't remember the last time I did that!! - i'm the kind of person who's perpetually late and perpetually in a rush...). And a full day of random meandering around town with an old friend I've missed.

It seems, suddenly, that life could not be more perfect. I feel bovine with contentment, even without a husband!! (cf. "Oranges are not the only fruit")

Eh... c'est incroyable... je suis très très très content. :)

Life partner

Someone said that what he looks for in a life partner is someone with whom, when the kids have grown up and left the nest, he can go whale-watching with.

I smiled. It is a simple, beautiful picture. A boy and a girl (both silver-haired and bent), arms around each other, on the deck of a boat, watching whales off the glacial arctic coast.

I smiled too because I could imagine doing it with him, this boy who I had met for the first time barely a month ago, and bonded with (got drunk with, messed around with, quarreled with) over a Swedish crayfish party weekend in a friend's summer house in Gothenburg. This strange, most unlikely of boys who I like and am attracted to, rather against my will. I like his warmth, his sharp mind, this sparky personality that he has, which draws me to him. But I'm not sure I'm attracted to him in a romantic way.

My idea of love (=life partner) is not something so beautifully simple and domestic as whale-watching. It's stronger, more fiery, earth-shattering and core-shaking. The kind of "es muss sein" ("it must be") that has been deeply engraved by liquid light into ancient stone tablets at the beginning of time. Deep and violent, both creator and destroyer (Brahma and Shiva), and sacrificial (willing to be destroyed). But I was younger then, when I had come up with my personal definition of ideal love. I have not thought about/re-assessed my romantic notions for several years. And now, the thought of destroying and being destroyed, rolling thunder and liquid light, seems quite exhausting. Also too, perhaps, surviving requires more strength, sacrifice and commitment than death and destruction. And so his image of a whale-watching love, seems almost hypnotically compelling.

In theory, I think I could whale-watch with many guys, and then it comes down to choosing the boy and my feet-dragging and unwillingness to "give up the forest for one tree". Although, I have to admit, that some boys are more suited for whale watching than others. To undertake a purely theoretical exercise - when I think of Cavé... and the love I have for him, which is warm and deep, but also complicated and full of potential hurt and pain... our personalities and characters would make for more of an earth-shattering and core-shaking unstable love which might burn out before we reach our whale-watching silver years. I try to imagine whale-watching with my French classmate next... and I can't... I suppose because I don't know him at all really. Also, depressingly, I have discovered he has a girlfriend (French!), even though I can sense that he is reasonably attracted to me. Oh my luck and timing!

So the question is, are warm feelings, deep affection, and mutual regard which would ensure a lifetime of domestic contentment, enough? Can one accept the prospect of a stable relationship and family life as a substitute for love? Or is that what love is? Being happy and willing to be housemates for all your life (with someone who you can also have sex with)? But that could be ANY number of boys then... and isn't love supposed to be special? I want someone who I love so deeply it hurts, because it is him and only him I want. Or am I being childish and unrealistic? Is that the trashy-paperback-dimestore-novel love?

A lifetime of domestic contentment or a shooting star love? Should one not seize the opportunity for domestic bliss? Or can that ideal, imperative love exist without being destructive? Can a love which hurts be stable enough to endure? Or are the two loves - the whale-watching enduring love and the liquid light core-shaking love - mutually exclusive?

Maybe a romantic love is not incompatible with a life partner. Or am I expecting too much? Am I in denial, setting impossible standards, because I'm scared shitless?

I'm 25 and still confused, still asking fundamental questions. Hey, at least it means I'm still alive and still have loads to discover. Dear world, this girl is patient, and I await answers around the corner, for the rest of my life. Always bring me beautiful surprises please.