I'm really enjoying the new organist at the church. He's a music student at the university, and I used to see him smoking between the education and music buildings and think: there is someone I'd like to know. Even smoking seemed to be a performance for him...and I find his flamboyance interesting. I was surprised when he turned out to be the new organist, and I've been trying to start a conversation with no success. I just can't think of anything to say beyond I like the way you smoke, which is, let's face it, a pretty bizarre thing to say to someone. Not to mention the fact that I'm not sure that a correctly modest wife would say that to another man. It's all so confusing.
Anyway, the amusing moment today was when he put on his coat before service started. I caught his eye and mimed a cigarette gesture. He laughed. There's just something so funny about an organist who absolutely needs a smoke before church starts. But he's an extremely talented musician as well as being interesting to be around. I'm enjoying my time in church even more these days.
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I started a new project this morning. I mentioned yesterday that we found a copy of the Boy's great-grandmother's novel, and that it had an obituary taped in the back. Not only did I learn more about the Boy's family, but I began to wonder who this woman was who had owned and treasured the book. I know her name - Estella Jennings - and I know when she bought the book, but her own life is a mystery. I'd like to think that she's happy that her book ended up in the family which produced it, and that it's just as special to us as it was to her.
But the whole thing got me thinking. I've kept a diary since I was fifteen, more than a decade now. There is a gap of two years from the first half of my university degree, when I got too wrapped up in myself to write anything down, but other than that it's pretty consistent. Only, when I started putting it all online, certain subjects were automatically redacted. Gossip about my friends, for instance - I learned early on that the web is a poor place to hide secrets. Anger, for another instance - I fall in and out of passions so quickly that publishing my many spites makes the situation embarrassingly indelible. And sex would be the other big topic. I don't talk about sex in my journal in anything but the most oblique terms. I have sex; I don't write about it. Part of that is prudishness of course, and part of that is the inevitable embarrassment of re-reading something swoony I wrote when I was all hopped up on hormones. And of course this diary is a family affair - Pixie Stix & Q are semi-regular readers and Scout drops in once in awhile. So I keep that part out of the official record.
This morning I was thinking about this compromise I have developed. Suddenly I can remember why I started writing in the first place: it's to keep a record of the quest because I am terribly forgetful and silly. If I don't keep records I loose things. And I began to think what a shame it would be if I lost all of the feelings and jokes and situations of sex. What if when I'm widowed (it's statistically likely; I'm two years younger than him) I forget that I ever felt that world-spinning energy?
I found one of my half-completed cloth journals and began to write. I filled 4 pages. They won't ever be published here, not on my mailing list, not anywhere. They're for me. This makes me very happy.
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3 years ago today: as if I needed another reason to hate Bob Dylan
