Best Before

I was on a first date the other day. We'd chatted for ages on dating apps etc and, well, you know how it is; people are busy and calendars are hard to align and, well, if you're not really sure or feeling a bit stretched... it had been years of chatting, quiet admiration, and unspoken expectation. The date was great. A lovely, summery, January day. We had lunch. He was clever, compact, charming, considerate, cheeky. And that's only the 'c's. The other letters were just as good. We clicked. An instant connection.

Ideal really. There was one downside though. Just one. It emerged towards the end of the date. Just one downside, but it was a biggie. He was poised to leave the country. Permanently. Or for years at least. Off on an adventure. July at the earliest, but more likely October. In other words, he had a "use-by date". A "best before".

Ok. Deep. Breaths.

And then the most unexpected thing happened. The connection deepened. We could let down the firewalls, lower the drawbridges, send home the guards. There was no need for barriers. This was zero risk. Breach the walls, have the keep. Our levels of intimacy skyrocketed. We could share and be vulnerable. It wasn't an investment any longer - no need for compound interest. It was a holiday bromance, but in our own town, with our familiar settings and comforts. A feast to be consumed, not a harvest to be extended. We went to movies, the theatre, dinners, camping, and quiet nights in. No need for family introductions and getting on with friends. And it was good. Or so I thought.

Until one day, at the end of May. You're probably thinking it was the departure day. That the use by date had arrived. No, it was much worse. We were at the beach. He said that he had started to develop feelings for me. "What" I said. "But you can't be! That's not what we agreed. You're going away! You can't be doing that". It was a breach of contract! Accidentally in love.

Arguably I think we only ever really fall in love accidentally. It can be a very painfully transient thing. “But that was love and it’s an ache I still remember” says Gotye. Real love, the best love, sneaks up on you and you're gone before you can escape. Stitched up. But this? This was a Kobayashi Maru. A no-win situation. Stay here with me and abandon your dreams? Fall for him and abandon my heart as he abandons the country. It collapsed. Perhaps we'll be friends. Another one that got away. Perhaps The One, that got away.

I now think that all boyfriends should come with a best before date. It would just save such a lot of angst.

How ironic though, that the use-by date turned out not to be the use-by date.

Indian Summer Haiku

I wrote these Haiku in May 2006. It never ceases to amaze me how the angle of the sun, the smell of the air and the bittersweet fall of summer into autumn into winter always brings me back to that time. My darkest days. The breaking of the world. And beginnings.

Night swimming
sandy salty skin

nestle into warm strong arms

until breakfast kiss.

Winter apart
cold nights warm with dreams

now a chance for men to rest

together apart.

Chris
winter sun bring home

my beautiful traveler

his shoes by my bed.

Pizza night
eyes of sleepy kids

kitchen tables full of kneading

in my heart flowers.

Galacto-intolerance

In Lady Windermere's Fan, Oscar Wilde writes, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Are you looking at the stars? I don’t mean Beyoncé and Rihanna. I mean the heavens; celestial objects; stars. How long is it since you saw a real life star?

The word galaxy comes from the Greek for milk. Why? Galileo Galilei published his astronomical observations of the skies above Padua in 1610. One of his findings was that the Milky Way is made up of individual stars. How could people not know it was made of discrete stellar objects. Did people really think the Milky Way was some kind of aerial fluid? Galileo wrote that the light from the Milky Way was so bright that it cast a shadow on the ground. What if, back then, the light from all those stars was so bright, so solid, it really did resemble a smear of milk? 

Our night skies are now polluted with so much artificial light it has been estimated we are no longer able to see 90 percent of the stars we might once have seen. Our vision is literally clouded with light bouncing back to the ground off our smog and mists.  A particulate reflection of nothing in particular. How ironic that our post enlightenment age has brought darkness to our heavens. A luminous beauty is concealed from us. Our society has made us all galacto-intolerant. A split milk over which we should most definitely cry.

If you want to bask in the natural illumination, you've got to travel to a remote area where the darkness is deeper. Perhaps we all need to find somewhere profoundly dark and distant before we can see clearly again. To lose the reflection of our dissipated energies. And then, some of us can look up and see the stars. Got you lookin' so crazy right now. You and I. You and I, like diamonds in the sky.