Les Affaires de Coeur: May 2008 Archives

The Naked Science episode on TV right now is discussing "extremophiles" and the possibility that they may live or have lived on Mars. Sometimes I think there is a human equivalent to these microbes.

For those who don't know, extremophiles is a nice logical name for microorganisms that favor difficult environmental conditions - extremes of temperature or radiation, chemical environments that would be toxic to other forms of life, that sort of gig.

Don't you know someone who lives like that in an emotional way?

I do; a friend of mine was just telling me about his regrets at having left a relationship that I'd call doomed. The person he broke up with was married to someone else, lives more than a thousand miles away, and has - shall we say - lots o' baggage, in the forms of multiple dependents and health issues.

I told him it was okay, nay, good, to make an intellect-based decision in a situation like that, but I don't think anything I said penetrated to the decisionmaking center of his brain. Or, as he'd put it, his heart. He's probably still gonna get back into that mess. See? Extremophile.

I have apparently (I hope) grown out of such behavior, though it took me years and years, and it's not like I don't occasionally relapse and be drawn to something that's not so terribly healthy for me.

Though I think that the fact that for the past several years I've been able to eat healthy foods and only healthy foods with no difficulty whatsoever suggests that I probably have that ability in other areas of life.

At the moment, I am feeling very anti-complications, and anti-"settling." Anti-settling for less. Anti-settling down. All that.

I'd rather be airborne, thank you very much, and the concept of being tied to someone else, of having to give a good god-damn what they think of my every little decision and behavior, well let's just say it's an unsavory prospect. Apart from the sex, of course. That sounds appealing.

Sigh. Rainy day. No bike ride. Lots of walking around in wet trousers. A blood test. A visit to the physical therapist's office, which is nice and has jazz playing in it but still involves being poked in the most painful spot on my butt.

My mom is getting me a massage for my birthday, and I am not sure whether to look forward to being kneaded into a more relaxed shape, or to fear the pain it may involve.

I am sick at heart lately, I'll admit. Nothing terminal, and nothing really unusual, but it does make me awfully weepy when a fairly good romantic movie comes on TV. And it makes me not have the energy, sometimes, to talk to friends who call all bouncy (Annabelle likes rainy days; more power to her) and just want to chat, like friends do.

I know what the trouble is, sort of, but there is nothing to be done about it at the moment. I have an awful lot of shit in front of me, and I have to just keep plowing at it. And that isn't even the worst of it.

I remember feeling this way, a long time ago, and I thought I might have grown out of it somehow. Well, I have grown out of some of it, actually. I no longer feel incomplete as a single human, and I sure don't feel any desire to get married or "settle" or go through any other of those proscribed motions.

But unfortunately I seem to have retained the ability to be lonely. Not even garden-variety lonely, but to feel longing. And of a peculiarly annoying sort - it's not attached to anybody in particular, and it's not attached even to a specific vision of a somebody.

I don't know that I'd want a boyfriend if I were offered one. I just know that not being offered one is not doing me any good, either.

I was talking to a friend some time ago, about her mother, and how she'd never quite found anyone who was right for her. It's a variation on the theme that's the black-hole center of virtually every single-girl movie and TV show ever made, but the end of that, always, even in the supposedly singles-positive world of Carrie and the girls (though I'd argue that it's absolutely not singles- positive), is that the girl's "problem" is solved by meeting The Right Guy.

It may well be that it just doesn't work that way in real life, and maybe what I am feeling is step A of coming to terms with that. Maybe that's what my hesitation to even wish for a boyfriend is about. Maybe I am starting to recognize that any romantic relationship is always going to fall short, or that I want a degree of autonomy and freedom that is only achievable when one isn't paired off like one of Noah's monkeys.

Maybe it's because I've realized that my soulmate may well be that bicycle hanging on my wall. He's damn sexy, that's for sure.

Do you ever have trouble figuring out what's going on in your very own head? I am having one of those days. One of those weeks, actually. Maybe one of those fortnights.

While I was tie-dyeing some socks today, one of the color combinations got rather out of hand, and I kept trying to get a handle on it, adding darker and darker greens until, well, I have really no idea what I'm going to end up with. I mean, it's tie-dye; it's always a gamble.

But lately, I swear that's a metaphor for my whole life. Or least the current state of it. I really have no fracking idea what I am doing.

I know that I am not quite happy with a lot of it. I know that I am suddenly overwhelmed with loneliness or longing. But then when I imagine what it might be like to have a boyfriend (which is generally the answer to that particular sort of longing), well, the very idea makes me want to wriggle away and go dancing at some giant mythical party with a hundred gorgeous slave-boys.

(Shut up, I know slavery is wrong; this is a fantasy. And no, my fantasies don't generally run to subgugation; it's just that slave boys are often depicted in nice little purple togas, their skin lightly oiled, and equipped with big bunches of grapes in the one hand and nice fat palm fronds in the other, the better to wave at me with.)

Okay, fantasy over. Where was I? Oh yes, wriggling away from the restrictive clutches of having to say yes to just one boy.

The trouble is, I am not being presented with that problem. I am not being presented with any problem having to do with any specific boy.

I am being presented with a singular lack of boy. A few of them were emailing me, and vanished, as the email boys often do, before you ever get a chance to meet them, even when you've taken the bold step of asking them out and they've said sure, and then when you try to arrange a date, nobody has time that week and so you agree to meet next week, but by next week they've either lost interest or found some magical perfect mate with whom they are off on some Hawaiian island, and there you go, now you are back to the slave-boy fantasy.

In fact, I'd settle for it simply being Celebrate the Bicycle Day again. Every day. Because it's occurred to me not once but several times over the last few days, while I was milling around in my metaphorical mess of color, that I really ought to make it a prerequisite that any theoretical boy with whom I might theoretically become involved at some potential future date should of necessity be a Bike Boy, and preferably, a Bike-Obsessed Boy. And in fact, really it might be best for all concerned if he rode fixed-gear, not because I am a snob about such things (all bikes are good bikes!), but because, well, it's a bit of a spiritual experience, only it's the kind that one likes to be able to rhapsodize about with a like-minded someone.

Oh golly, what a long-assed post this is. See, I told you? Lost in a tie-dye factory, right? I mean, if it were only a fortune-cookie factory, you might be able to send for help via message-in-cookie, or perhaps retrace your steps using that long long strand of cookie-fortune-paper you so cleverly laid out on your way in.

On the other hand, there are good things about messily tie-dyed items. I mean, consider the Icee. I refer, of course, to the rainbow Icee, which amounts to nothing so much as a tie-dyed snowcone. And how can you argue with a dessert that stains your tongue in variegated stripes of blue, lemon, orange, and red. (Rhetorical questions get no question marks, mind you.)

That's all. What, you were hoping for a witty punchline?