april 26, 2000.

Last night Agamemnon called. We really should use the magic speaking tube more often: we kept trying to hang up and then getting sidetracked on more conversation. Marcie - the girl who played gracious host to us in Edmonton - was over to his house for dinner, and the three of us managed to get all whipped up about the wedding. This is the first time in a long time that I've actually felt the thrill. The excitement fades, you know. The details multiply like guinea pigs and eat up all of your peace of mind and you're left wondering if it's all worth it. Marriage, yes. Wedding, though...

Each asked about the progress of my application to U of Alberta, and I had to gently lead them through the recent developments with Acadia. They both agreed that it was better to go with the bird in the hand, but reluctantly. "If you get into U of A, you can forfeit your deposit," Agamemnon said earnestly. "Marcie and I will gladly pay it back." Lumps - multiple! - rose to my throat. To think that I would have friends who wanted me to be nearby so much that they put cash on the line! But more than the money, it's the obvious love that brings me near tears. God, I miss Edmonton. It was a wonderful busy weekend in a wonderful cold town with wonderful strange people. But I miss Agamemnon most.

So what with the time difference and the action packed conversation, I was up way past my bedtime. It was, in fact, 11:30 before I snuggled in with my teddy bear. But then a quiet, but distracting racket began, and I couldn't sleep. To whit: my parents' bedroom is right across the hall from mine and they were having sex with their door open.

Agony! Sheer, horrible agony. I clamped my arms over my ears and moaned tunelessly, reduced to extremes of human behavior by the most embarrassing, angering situation I could imagine. I couldn't even go downstairs to escape the noise: to leave the room would be tantamount to facing the facts and then I could no longer pretend that I wasn't hearing what I was most indubitably hearing.

It was midnight before I was able to fall asleep.

O renaissance guitar book
How I love to lick your creamy centre.
You sit at the loom
Weaving the fabric of my very existence.
And you laugh.
Laugh, renaissance guitar book, Laugh!

- the first canto of ode to my renaissance guitar book, written by cranly and exerpted without permission.
i'm a very naughty girl.

An interesting detail has emerged in my conversations this week. When Cranly & I thrashed it out last Saturday, we spoke of our grief following our mistaken perception of Ophelia. See, we thought she understood us. Turns out she just knew how to appear like our heart's companion. And everybody knew it but us. Everybody. Cranly's friend Waldo spent 10 minutes with her and said, "so, what's she really like?" Agamemnon, a man of God now all the way across the country, knew what I was talking about immediately. On Saturday night I mentioned it to Dirk.

"So, I finally figured out what Ophelia's all about."
"Which is?"
"What do you want her to be about?"

It's the rhetorical question that sums it up perfectly.

I think this is some of the reason why I sometimes felt like a degraded copy of myself around her. See, she could do me so well that she could improve on the basic postulates, so that even people who didn't like me liked her in the middle of the act. I often accused Paris of hating me because I was so much less than her. As it turned out, I was both dead wrong and dead right. I thought we were psychic twins, she and me; now I wonder how much of that was her true heart.

Anyway. So I was thinking about all of this in a vague sort of way on Saturday night. Then Dirk casually mentioned that after interminable silence, she'd invited him to the theater. This more or less delighted me. "She's poaching on my territory, trying to capitalize on my upcoming absence," I thought, and although I wasn't entirely convinced of my own hypothesis, it amused me greatly that night. The amusing part is that I have finally found a me inside of me, a me that she can't touch from afar. She may very well be pursuing Dirk for reasons that exclude me entirely; but even so she can't touch me. She can't know the songs I know or share the memories of all those nights dancing with Dirk or recreate the discussions of movies on the walk home. She hasn't even read Watchmen!

And she doesn't have the Boy to laugh with or argue with or be challenged by. That, I think, is the big difference. I am a completely different person than I was when we were friends. I am not Ophelia the Lesser, but Amoret the Bride Ascendant. This is someone who I enjoy being.