radiant fracture

I got over my unrelationship self-pity before Valentine's Day, which seems like a shame. I had all this really decent maundering to do and I finished it like a week in advance. The day itself I mostly spent shopping.

It seems so indulgent to even worry about having a partner or not; and the little epiphanies that go along with that struggle are so smudgy with handling that they don't really bear looking at. "Heck! I'm a whole person after all!" and like this.

Someone called at 2 am last night. I struggled out of sleep and into a lacuna -- either I left the light on or I turned it on, and I had time to check the clock across the room behind a line of washing (n.b., inlandsea, stitchinmyside - I think the dryer is broken) -- yet I still had time to pick up the phone before it stopped ringing. So did they ring twice?

"Hello?" I said, in that universal bleary-beleaguered-ready-to-be-alarmed voice.
"Sorry." said a male voice.
There was a pause. I waited for "Wrong number," or a click.
"Hello?" I said again, uncreatively. Then the click. I *69ed, but the number was blocked.

No doubt trying to reach ex or possibly a cab. Though when I got up proper and found a city construction sign newly embedded in our lawn where I was sure it had not been the day before, I briefly entertained the fantasy that this was all part of some elaborate backhanded love gesture on the part of, well, I can't think who. Someone in public works, I guess.

Have been treating my life like a verb with a missing referent, as though my being were trying to limp along at the wrong valence. Don't know why. Phase, I suppose. Feel better now. Don't know why that either. Hopefully means I can get on with it. You know. Life. Being useful.

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From today's discussion with the delightful Bee:

Top five famous(ish) literary characters you would have liked to marry/be involved with?

I have only got to two. Seymour Glass, OBVIOUSLY. Am pondering the others. I fell hard for Billy from the Regeneration trilogy, but I can't see marrying him.

My trouble is that I tend to fall for tragically brilliant villains who oppress the protagonists in subtle intellectual ways. Casaubon. Dean Priest. Clever men who are very bad for you. I am, by type, the noble but misled sidekick to the villain, the one who adores him but either betrays him for the cause of Good or is sacrificed for his escape.

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I asked inlandsea for an atmospheric place to do some writing today, and she suggested the Abkhazi Gardens. What I actually ought to be working on is the last art project on my list, due May 31, but I needed the walk and the writing time.

( In which our hero accomplishes his first real ramble of the season, witnesses many blossoms, and reflects on love affairs as works of art. )

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