reflections

We meet at the bus stop and he says he's cold. He doesn't want the jacket that I'm not using; that's in my hand. The bus soon comes. He speaks a bit too loudly, but I'm not too fussed. He's intense, but again I'm not fussed. I'm used to it now.

I make us coffee and we sit on the couch. He reads aloud from the Sun-Herald. Trash. He asks if he can tear a page out. "Take the whole thing if you want". He wants to borrow Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. He starts reading this aloud too, and we try to make sense of it. He wants us to read it together again soon. He touches me, shows me how cold he is. I forgot. I forget that other people feel the cold more than I. I remember the heater in his room and how thick the air was. But he stayed for a couple of hours, so he must like me. I like him, but not his age. Way too young. I start thinking aloud about when I'm next free but he cuts me off, reminds me that we're neighbours and we'll just be in touch. There's no need for planning. I like this.

He's too young so I just want us to be friends. But he fascinates me too much. And the flick of eyelashes leaves me a-gush. As does his voice, his politeness, his face. And I adore his angst. Mine was never so beautiful, so direct, so contemplated.

I read in the bath, but the words are slipping away and I can't care for that book tonight. I put it down and reach for Anais Nin. She takes me where I need to be. There's passion and emotional struggle and wanting to make things with words and kindness. I wonder how much I've carved her into my own being, over the years, through reading these diaries. I sometimes catch myself, as her, surrounded by sad men, listening and caring. Wanting them, and sometimes having them. But often finding disappointment because they can't give in the way we (believe that we) give. Maybe we feel tortured by them, but we're really torturing ourselves. Yet the struggle seems necessary to feel alive, and to exist in an otherwise flat ocean between our wanting and its objects. Our struggles create waves, yet we think they come from elsewhere; beyond our doing.

I read:

In the case of withdrawal from a friendship it is difficult to tell whether it is the withdrawal of feeling which kills the warmth, or whether the warmth was a reflection. As soon as I withdrew, Robert revealed his coldness, or was it always there? To what extent do people have an independent life or reflect each other's warmth? To what extent do we call into being what we believe, see, wish in others?
(Nin, January 1942)