If you want to have a terrific day, the kind where you look out on the garden in beautiful summer weather and breathe a sigh of contentment and gratitude for all that's good about this world and your life in it, do not engage Ed at breakfast time in a philosophical discussion about the meaning of life.
From our very fist date now nearly 16 years ago, I knew where he stood on nearly all important issues. We got down to the serious stuff pretty quickly in our early moments together. So there is no mystery, no deceit, no obfuscation. There is also no movement ever in any direction. Ed has survived this long without straying from his well thought out positions and not anyone or anything is going to sway him into a different mindset. I've learned that, because he is a compassionate person, you can help move him in certain directions, but he will not ever admit that he has been moved. The very essence of his being demands that he speak the same language of existential doom every minute that he still lives and breathes. It's part of the fabric he has woven for himself and honestly, it has gotten him this far so who am I to question its postulations.
But for some reason I got sucked into this discussion anyway. How foolish on my part! Let me remind myself how I even got there:
I'd been clearing the garden and trying to revive my old pocket camera. I loved the pics that my phone produces, but the process of working with those was just too cumbersome. So I was trying out my wee ancient camera and grumbling to myself that wee cameras are not great for squinty ancient eyes. Here are some garden photos anyway. You get what you get.
And after an hour, maybe two hours, I was ready for a breakfast break. We bring out the foods, the flowers and settle in for a leisurely morning meal.
And then it starts. I ask, innocently -- why are you proceeding in this fashion (insert here some detail as to his current work project) and not in that way (insert here an alternate course)?
From there it's a small leap to our place in the cosmic universe and the smallness of our actions to say nothing of the paucity of knowledge about the consequences of our behaviors.
I mean, really Ed? Can't you just say "oh, I don't know, but it's a grand day and I think I'm doing right by others, and by the way I love you very much and let's go somewhere together just the two of us?" That could be one alternative, but there are others. I'll settle for "you're making a good point. I'll have to think about that. Maybe I've been too rigid in my views on this stuff..."
So then there was nothing to do but be ever so slightly annoyed at him and of course, he understood perfectly well that he had overstepped and so as I tried to settle down into some writing, he kept interrupting with fascinating tidbits of stuff he was reading, just to engage me and show me how much he cared. In other words, I got nothing done and the first half of the day was pretty much a waste.
I have learned my lesson.
In other news -- well, I am still on the fence as to my travels next month. And I will be on the fence until the day I leave (if I leave) because each new day presents me with new data which I have to digest and incorporate into my strategies for successful and safe movement at the time of a pandemic. But because it may well work out, I have to start attending to stuff like filling out passenger locator forms and finding out about vaccination passports. If anyone thinks travel was complicated even two years ago, well, it's only grown twenty times more so now.
So, I listen to Ed's chatter and I fill out forms until late in the afternoon when I have just had enough of staying home and doing nonsense stuff. I get on my moped and scoot over to pick up my market flowers, and I admit that it isn't much of an adventure, but at least it gets me off the couch.
Ed bikes today, though smartly he waits until evening. Did I mention that it's warming up again? With no rain, things are looking pretty crispy dry out there. But pretty, no?
I have great plans for tomorrow: sit down to breakfast with my sweetie, throw out some positive comment about the cats or the cheepers or the butterflies, then go inside and dig into my writing before I get sidetracked by discussions that go absolutely nowhere.
