Day 46

Many strange half dreams this morning, involving KT and others.  Why do most of my strongest memories of the past involve regret?  "Things done wrong or for others harm," as it were.  I'm fairly certain that the people I used to be close with, the ones I dream about, think about, regret my actions toward, must also have mistreated me in some ways, at some point.  But that's not what I remember.  I remember an ex-gf, in grad school, giving me a paper she had written, on fetishism in "The Metamorphosis", and me disdainfully exposing all the flaws in its argument.  Probably not good idea for me to have dated someone in English Literature field.

Had semi-idea this morning about Moby Dick (he's up, in my increasingly desultory lecture series on the Western Canon).  To do with the allegorizing nature of the book.  Everything in Moby Dick is made to stand for, to mean, something else.  Candles, coins, a sextant, whatever gets brought up is immediately made an exemplum of some act or virtue.  A bit like the old medieval bestiaries, in that way.  But the whale, in Ahab (and Melville's) description, cannot be made to fit into a simple allegory.  He is too large for metaphor.  They're applied, but they don't stick.  He resists them; he means too much.  And for this reason, he must be destroyed.

* * *

My 4th anniversary is today.  (The traditional gift if flowers--it's your flower anniversary, in other words.  That strikes me as odd.)  My wife and I had our first date in 2005; by the end of this year we will have been together in some form or other for six years.  A public blog, read by the hundreds of millions of people who come here every day, is not in my mind a suitable place to talk about your love for your wife.  And love itself is a complicated, varying, constantly reshaped and reshaping kind of thing.  There's a sense in society in which the romance of married people is less talked about, less understood, less celebrated than the romance of people who are just starting to fall in love.  (Many many movies about people getting together; hardly any about staying together).  It's a cliche, but no one writes about what comes after 'happily ever after.'  Because it's too large, and too messy, and too private.

Typing in a new quote in the space above the blog's name up above, I was reminded of a night we spent together.  It was the day of my brother's wedding, so my wife-to-be and I had been dating about nine months.  She got very sick at the wedding and went home immediately after it was over.  I stayed up and went to a bar with some people and got pretty...uhm...riled up.  I got back to my apartment at 2 am, where she was sound asleep, fired up with the need to watch David Bowie videos.  For some reason, I insisted on watching the videos right then, at 2 AM, with the music up loud.  Even though she was asleep.  In fact, I think I may have woken her up and insisted she get up and watch them with me.  To share in the joy.  Which joy I don't think she felt as deeply as I did, at that moment in time.

But she did get up and watch them, without complaint.  I think we actually had fun doing it, though to be honest the night is pretty hazy.  Now on one hand, that story reveals me to be sort of an inconsiderate jerk, I know.  On the other hand, it shows that we were well-suited for each other, since she was basically fine to get up and watch Bowie at 2 am.  [As she should be!!!! (And so should you all, out there....)]

Well this is going off into a rambling incoherent place, a place I must try and avoid.  Happy Anniversary, Honey!  I guess the gift this year will have to be just flowers, but next year (number five)--it's the wooden anniversary.  Wood!  So that's something to look forward to....