I’ve got a woman who seems solid. It’s still new. A couple times recently she asked me about my past with one girlfriend or another and I spent too much time answering her questions. She questioned if I was still attached to these other people… The people who were, generally, long gone. One is not. She tries to cling on, and I’m well practiced at ignoring her.
Now, I have something good, and something I really want to see go forward, and maybe be made permanent. The echos of my past though, are tainting this new and good thing. I decide it’s time for a purge. I delete a few photos of old girlfriends, and some other general physical house cleaning of such things.
Some time ago, I had torn out a dozen or so pages of my journal, most, or maybe all, had been of my most recent ex, but whenever I had done that, I hadn’t the ability to discard them, so put them in an envelope and saved that decision for another day. The envelope was tucked away in a drawer, and then forgotten. Recently, I re-discovered it and decided it was the best way, symbolically, to start to let my memories of some pains and some failures decay was to dispose of the contents of the envelope. To add to that, I removed a few more pages from my journal as well, about a few false starts with a couple of people… Really only a few pages of a couple hopes.
I had sent my mind on some matcha, as it is my choice of teas before anything that ought have ceremony or ritual to it, but then choose two things:
1) Sencha, as this would be a day like any other, except I’d be throwing away a few pieces of garbage.
2) There would be no ritual to this, because these pieces of paper had no significance. This morning would only include a trip to the Dumpster to throw a few pieces of paper and an envelope into it.
The only problem with decision #2 is I’d already soaked the pages in alcohol.
The flames melted a bowl in the snow, and pieces of blackened paper floated up into the air like the feathers of a crow.
I stood in my doorway and sipped on my tea. With a screwdriver I poked through the pages, spreading them out so they’d all burn. I saw words like, “hope” and “happy” which felt like it should be difficult to see, but I knew I was cremating these inscribed memories for all of the other words.
The sencha turned out perfect. My skin smells of smoke. And today- I’ll forget.
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Oh Stephen- isn’t it funny how complete strangers of different genders can have nearly identical experiences in life at the same time? I know what you’re going thru! I’m glad that Japanese greens are part of your healing process. I love both sencha and matcha. I’m praying for you and wishing you no hurtful memories of your past.
The interesting bit about it is that my memories aren’t hurtful to /me/ anymore. There’s only so many times I can hurt from the same cut. The memories have been poisonous to /us/ or /her/.
So, I’ll forget them, which I’m surprisingly efficient at, I’ve done this before.
Thank you for your thoughts.
Best of luck and happiness in your new relationship. It makes me smile that you seem so completely smitten with your new girl.
Okay so I know it’s none of my business but I was just researching Sencha and found your review (it’s been 2 months now) and was hoping it all turned out well and that your madly in love with your new g/f. What can I say I am a hopeless romantic and I want the fairytale/storybook ending for you! :)
The saga continues. About a month after this post, we had a pretty nasty fight. And what initiated it still isn’t perfectly clear to me, but we escalated it as all impassioned idiots do, dragging in so many things that had nothing to do with what caused the fight to start with. And we officiated (and I hate to admit, through text message) the dissolution of the relationship. We spent a month without any real contact with each other. She had tried to email me or text me a few times, and I replied every time, but admittedly in a very dismissive way because the ways that she was trying to talk to me were very unusual. She invited me to the movies with her friends (after such an angry conclusion of a romance, this seemed bizarre to me) and another time she sent me a text message about Lost (which she remembered that I like) which also missed the expected precursor of either seeking an apology or apologizing. She, and I should have known this, really cannot just jump into The Conversation, it has to be eased into, which is impossible, for anyone who has ever had to participate in one.
I missed her for the month, and she missed me. Eventually she sent me a text message requesting I call her, which was enough of a start for me, and I did and we talked, and that conversation, initially, as all do- both parties trying to not be defensive, but not doing that great of a job.
As an item of personal conduct, I try to never take much time to make decisions, large or small. The Hagakure told me that a samurai should take no more than the space of seven breaths to make a decision. And I think that’s good advice. She was driving home from Philadelphia during this conversation to where she lives about fifty miles from me. I made up my mind that tonight would be the big show of how, no, I didn’t simply toss her away for a month, she’s important to me, and we both made, frankly, asses out of ourselves. But I wasn’t going to tell her that. I’m all about surprise grand gestures. I kept her talking, while I raced the fifty miles to be at her house waiting for her. We hugged, she went to bed, I left, and we’ve been fixing things, and it’s been overall better. But this only happened a week ago.
I want my fairytale/storybook ending too. And I would certainly not mind having it with her. My only interpersonal concerns is that how we conduct each other sometimes gets on each others nerves. And on a long term sort of thing, we definitely do have some differences that I think seriously concern her. We value different things in life, and I know it concerns her about me being a valid candidate for life-long partnership. She’s finishing up her Masters (graduation ceremonies are tomorrow) and I’m uneducated. To be fair to myself, I do have a two year college degree, but it’s in something that I have no illusions about making any money. I am planning on being with the company I’m with until retirement, and every year I’m there I make more and more money, but I know that I won’t be a CEO, because I don’t have That Piece of Paper, and I don’t want to get one. I don’t know if she has any certainty about me, and I don’t know if she’ll stay, and I don’t know how I’d tolerate regular encouragement to leave a company that I love working for, for a job that makes more money, but I hate.
The future is still uncertain. But that’s not really important to me. I will enjoy all of my time with her, with the understanding that any way about it is limited. If she tells me tomorrow it’s over, or if I die five decades from now, it’s still impermanent. I can’t bring myself to mourn a loss that hasn’t happened, and I won’t avoid a loss that’s inevitable.
Fortune favors the bold.
First off Thanks so much for the update and I know your didn’t ask for advice but here it goes LOL. What I am about to tell you will sound very cliche’ but most good advice does. When you meet the right girl you will know it you might not know it right away but you’ll know it and there will be no doubt that you’d never let her go and she’d never let you go. I am telling you just what I’d tell my own precious son work on bettering yourself and getting to really know your self so that your prepared for the day when “she” walks into your life. Your fairytale/storybook will come.
Things seem to keep getting better for us. We communicate a bit better now, the few rocky places that have come up I feel were handled well. She hasn’t mentioned me leaving my company for some place else more than a couple times. In several instances she’s had opportunities to encourage me, which she succeeded. Overall things are looking well. She wants to move to Florida and I said we can do that, so I have been working on packing up shop to move about a thousand miles due south so she can have a bit better weather. The weather here I find largely agreeable, warmer climates- not so much. But I spent some time in Port au Prince and Juarez and I adapted, and in both places the nights are unbeatable. I’m looking forward to buying fish right off the boat.
But, she only occasionally asks me to cook some tea for her.
Oh Stephen- isn’t it funny how complete strangers of different genders can have nearly identical experiences in life at the same time? I know what you’re going thru! I’m glad that Japanese greens are part of your healing process. I love both sencha and matcha. I’m praying for you and wishing you no hurtful memories of your past.
The interesting bit about it is that my memories aren’t hurtful to /me/ anymore. There’s only so many times I can hurt from the same cut. The memories have been poisonous to /us/ or /her/.
So, I’ll forget them, which I’m surprisingly efficient at, I’ve done this before.
Thank you for your thoughts.
Best of luck and happiness in your new relationship. It makes me smile that you seem so completely smitten with your new girl.
Okay so I know it’s none of my business but I was just researching Sencha and found your review (it’s been 2 months now) and was hoping it all turned out well and that your madly in love with your new g/f. What can I say I am a hopeless romantic and I want the fairytale/storybook ending for you! :)
The saga continues. About a month after this post, we had a pretty nasty fight. And what initiated it still isn’t perfectly clear to me, but we escalated it as all impassioned idiots do, dragging in so many things that had nothing to do with what caused the fight to start with. And we officiated (and I hate to admit, through text message) the dissolution of the relationship. We spent a month without any real contact with each other. She had tried to email me or text me a few times, and I replied every time, but admittedly in a very dismissive way because the ways that she was trying to talk to me were very unusual. She invited me to the movies with her friends (after such an angry conclusion of a romance, this seemed bizarre to me) and another time she sent me a text message about Lost (which she remembered that I like) which also missed the expected precursor of either seeking an apology or apologizing. She, and I should have known this, really cannot just jump into The Conversation, it has to be eased into, which is impossible, for anyone who has ever had to participate in one.
I missed her for the month, and she missed me. Eventually she sent me a text message requesting I call her, which was enough of a start for me, and I did and we talked, and that conversation, initially, as all do- both parties trying to not be defensive, but not doing that great of a job.
As an item of personal conduct, I try to never take much time to make decisions, large or small. The Hagakure told me that a samurai should take no more than the space of seven breaths to make a decision. And I think that’s good advice. She was driving home from Philadelphia during this conversation to where she lives about fifty miles from me. I made up my mind that tonight would be the big show of how, no, I didn’t simply toss her away for a month, she’s important to me, and we both made, frankly, asses out of ourselves. But I wasn’t going to tell her that. I’m all about surprise grand gestures. I kept her talking, while I raced the fifty miles to be at her house waiting for her. We hugged, she went to bed, I left, and we’ve been fixing things, and it’s been overall better. But this only happened a week ago.
I want my fairytale/storybook ending too. And I would certainly not mind having it with her. My only interpersonal concerns is that how we conduct each other sometimes gets on each others nerves. And on a long term sort of thing, we definitely do have some differences that I think seriously concern her. We value different things in life, and I know it concerns her about me being a valid candidate for life-long partnership. She’s finishing up her Masters (graduation ceremonies are tomorrow) and I’m uneducated. To be fair to myself, I do have a two year college degree, but it’s in something that I have no illusions about making any money. I am planning on being with the company I’m with until retirement, and every year I’m there I make more and more money, but I know that I won’t be a CEO, because I don’t have That Piece of Paper, and I don’t want to get one. I don’t know if she has any certainty about me, and I don’t know if she’ll stay, and I don’t know how I’d tolerate regular encouragement to leave a company that I love working for, for a job that makes more money, but I hate.
The future is still uncertain. But that’s not really important to me. I will enjoy all of my time with her, with the understanding that any way about it is limited. If she tells me tomorrow it’s over, or if I die five decades from now, it’s still impermanent. I can’t bring myself to mourn a loss that hasn’t happened, and I won’t avoid a loss that’s inevitable.
Fortune favors the bold.
First off Thanks so much for the update and I know your didn’t ask for advice but here it goes LOL. What I am about to tell you will sound very cliche’ but most good advice does. When you meet the right girl you will know it you might not know it right away but you’ll know it and there will be no doubt that you’d never let her go and she’d never let you go. I am telling you just what I’d tell my own precious son work on bettering yourself and getting to really know your self so that your prepared for the day when “she” walks into your life. Your fairytale/storybook will come.
Things seem to keep getting better for us. We communicate a bit better now, the few rocky places that have come up I feel were handled well. She hasn’t mentioned me leaving my company for some place else more than a couple times. In several instances she’s had opportunities to encourage me, which she succeeded. Overall things are looking well. She wants to move to Florida and I said we can do that, so I have been working on packing up shop to move about a thousand miles due south so she can have a bit better weather. The weather here I find largely agreeable, warmer climates- not so much. But I spent some time in Port au Prince and Juarez and I adapted, and in both places the nights are unbeatable. I’m looking forward to buying fish right off the boat.
But, she only occasionally asks me to cook some tea for her.