prose in progress pip 5
2010
She loved the morning hours. As he was still fast asleep next doors, she would sit in front of the computer screen, smoking, coffee mug at hand. Reliving the night spent in his arms. Although the animalistic avidity that ruled her for so long slowly wore off, this man had a way of communicating with her body entirely new to her. Less of the emotionally linked interaction, more fed from, how did he word it? Adoration for females. “I adore women. I love their bodies.” His exact words. Given, sometimes he would show a glimpse of some personal bond, but somehow she had the impression he was trying to avoid that at all cost. It did not matter to her a bit. He had other ways to make her feel loved, too, without verbalizing that fact and outwith bed. One of his qualities she had come to appreciate: he was honest. In everything. He would not lie just to please. Or because it would be the appropriate thing to say. Or because the way the conversation went, a certain reply was inherent and almost automatically due.
A shift in the rhythm of the slight snore told her he had turned in bed. 10:59. He would wake up soon. She was surprised that the wonder of learning and knowing intimate things – like the sound of breathing indicating certain moods or announcing certain actions in another human being – gave her the same pleasure as it used to when she first fell in love. Somehow, in the twentyfive years in between, those details have been overlooked. Went unnoticed. Well, not unnoticed, of course did she notice and “”know” but she did not prize them the way she did now. Or had, when she first discovered that thing called love. And what was that, exactly?
Like life itself, impossible to grasp. Or define comprehensively. But somehow those two were interrelated, in her view of the world anyways. Not for nothing love is the source of trouble. Joy. Pain. Tragedy. Laughter. Cruelty. Happiness. Devastation. The lightness of being and its curse. Or should she go by all those biochemical scientists, explaining endlessly about hormones, gland produce and cellular interaction stipulating what? Our actions and reactions, determined to grant the survival of the species? Humans solely pilot-controlled by instinct, chemicals, neuronal firings and behavioural patterns imprinted when a personality is formed? Who was right? Freud? Pirsig? Schopenhauer? Precht? Wittgenstein? Wilde? Or the Bronte sisters? Shakespeare? Rilke? Angelou? Morrison? In the end, she opted for Mahler and Mozart, Waits, Reed, the Stones, Simone, Dylan and John Lee Hooker, lots of Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, some Wittgenstein and else escaped this mess with Quentin Tarantino flicks.
Be that as it may, she knew she was in love with this man. She regretted that the initial excitement of infatuation was turning into a fading memory already. But the rewards of her present life more than made up for that loss. Somehow, her two rivalling inner states, the emotional side opposing the rational side, sometimes causing her to stall all together, seemed to make peace all of a sudden. Merging into something new. Making her whole for the first time in her life. She wasn’t even sure it was this man in particular. Maybe it was just coincidental and a natural evolution of herself. Thinking that, she realized her rational side was still in good working order. Keeping her overwhelming emotions at bay. Maybe her two sides hadn’t merged after all, merely stopped fighting. Using the ceasefire to team up in order to enhance her life.
floatsome 