Peristalsis
There are times of expansion and times of contraction. Sometimes, you want to go out into the world. Other times, you want to you want to fall back and inhabit that place called home - whether it be a physical location or a state of mind. Sometimes, you want to be expansive and communicative. Other times, there is far more need for quietude.
I've been remarkably quiet of late. A number of people have assumed that that has been because of Ross. You know the scenario. One of your friends develops a special relationship and that is the last you see of them for months on end.
I won't deny that Ross's presence isn't a part of what's been going on. For one thing, it is remarkably good to have someone to go home to. But he doesn't provide the whole story. Longtime friends such as Colin, Gill and Roland know that I go through phases such as this where I retreat for a while. It's like I need to recharge my batteries every so often.
And I'm also experiencing my usual autumnal melancholia. Where some people get off on seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness and delight in all manner of golden tints in the leaves on the trees, I just see a dying back and an end to light nights and a growing chill in the air. I used to enjoy this time of year for the sense of new promise with beginning of a new academic year and the start of all the new seasons in the various theatres and opera houses. Now I just see a long hard slog up to the Midwinter Festive season. And the main reason I like to hit the shortest day of the year is the knowledge that the days lengthen from then on.
It's not that I'm dramatically unhappy or anything I would have you understand. It's more that whatever needs I have at present centre more on the private rather than public sphere and, as such, I find myself less easily able to communicate them.
It was easy to talk about my journeyings in North America or my party times over the summer. It was easy to delineate the little dramas and to discuss the merits of this or that course of action. Times now are quieter.
For example, I've been doing a lot of reading of late. In this area, it is sometimes a good idea to trust to other people's tastes and choices. I've just finished reading two remarkable books I would not otherwise have read.
Gill bought me Borderliners by Peter Høeg for my birthday. The book takes you inside the mind of a young, disturbed adolescent boy and his way of piecing together the world and understanding the conspiracy of adults. It's a beautiful piece of writing that is also a disquisition into the nature of time and memory and the means of power and control and the strategies that children put in place to cope with the hostile world around them.
I've also completed The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon by Tom Spanbauer which Fred leant me a long while ago. It's the story of a young bisexual half-breed boy growing up in a turn of the century Idaho whorehouse and his search for his true identity. However, it's more a hymn to diversity and tolerance, a pæan to the lost cultural values that supported such ideals and a cry of pain and anger against those who limit us by preaching hatred in the name of love.
Both books invite the reader to enter into a wholly separate imaginative world and partake of a viewpoint that is entirely alien. And I love that element in literature. On a different level, it's what I so enjoy about Terry Pratchett's Diskworld novels and Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. I admire any writer who can create such a cogently realised alternative world that you can visit it and be completely taken over by it.
I sort of wish I had those talents myself. But I do realise that I shall never be quite that good. Still, it's enjoyable to utilise those talents I do have and at the moment I'm more than content.