I don’t have a great interest in politics but I do really like people who do have a great interest in politics. You know, I don’t have the maturity or self-confidence to be invested in balancing the scales of society, but I would love to be around someone who does, the silent party to an opinionated person. Like John Cusack in the midst of a Catherine Zeta Jones, she intimidates me enough that my entire personality is diminished. Once the years have gone by and we’ve grown around each other, it takes everything I have to come across as a normal well-adjusted person. Her friends, correspondents, and arch-rivals develop a grudging fondness for me because I bring to the table a steady supply of homemade kimbap, empanadas, and macaroons.
These days this is my sketch of the ideal life I could have led. A degree in library science, and I meet-cute the most self-righteous, know-it-all woman you’ve ever heard of. The entire arc of my early twenties is in learning to be the cooling vat awaiting people that have been reshaped by the fires of debate. It’s a lot of silently offering people a drink after they’ve been beaten into submission. Or perhaps instead of a political operator she’s more of an analyst or spy. Either way, I keep my head clear of it, and subsist on a steady diet of silent film and mystery novels.
It’s a relief to be around such a steel jaw. Like many people who’d like to do something good but can never decide how, I’m more than willing to concede the vast majority of daily conflicts. As long as it’s for something, and since I don’t have the world view, my something has to be smaller, more personal. It has to be in support of someone I believe in. Actually, in real life I dreamed of being a personal assistant or a like a nowadays equivalent of a butler. I felt there would be such a clarity to daily life, in tackling only the decisions of each moment, and never really thinking about the bigger questions, having that reckless certainty that this chosen person deserves to remake the world in their image.
I’d still dream of writing something, just like now, but my real hobby would be making food. I’ve had a taste of baking in real life, and I think I could have hunked a whole loaf out of that, but only when firmly entwined in another person’s life. Cooking just has no weight when you do it for someone else, and way too much weight when you do it for yourself. Still though, maybe in the twilight years I’d ghostwrite her autobiography. That seems like a fitting capstone to a lifetime of supporting the life of a great and not terrible person. I mean, she wouldn’t be president or anything that grand. But maybe like an environmental lawyer, or a county board supervisor, or like the best friend of an actual diplomat, or I guess those aren’t mutually exclusive.
Yeah, I would bring home various teas from our trips, and would organize the teas by personal timeline. In the beginning I’d text her while re-shelving books at work, but there would come a day when she would take a hard stance against “perfunctory texting”, which would be hard for that version of me to do without. No pets until early thirties, but probably one then (to keep me company). The best present I’d ever give her was an authentic replacement for a friendship bracelet she’d worn to shreds in her teens, before she met me. She kept the threads and beads, occupying precious real estate in the puzzle box she allows herself for sentimental keepsakes, smaller than a half a tissue box. I had to take a secret trip to Colorado while she was abroad, to find the original maker, who I thought was going to be an eccentric hippy, but turned out to be just some dude who’d handed out homemade bracelets at the lodge one year, probably for youthful reasons. She doesn’t wear it on the occasion of reconnecting with her friend (the diplomat) because she’s embarrassed to have a fiance who is that into her, and that impractical, but it does pass muster into the puzzle box, and does eventually get worn a few decades later, once the embarrassment has been thoroughly outweighed.
All thoughts, but to be real that would never be my life. How can you not be yourself, I don’t know, and end up someone you aren’t. It’s just nonsense. But it makes sense to weigh your heart by what it claims to be missing. That’s just straight science of self.
saltednotion 