Just Talking

I'm getting ready for Persephone Reading Weekend hosted by Verity and Clare and was reminded of this quote. It seems fitting as Warmth and I both have the week off work to spend together in London.

'But - but if you can get so interested in a conversation with someone you're in love with that you forget about wanting to kiss them, then - well then it looks as if you're safe to go ahead...
She thought of the dozens of married couples she knew, who were apparently quite happy... but who never seemed to want to be alone together. Society was made up of people like that, she thought; people who had to run around and go to parties and be constantly surrounded by other people; couples who, if they were alone, would even turn the wireless rather than face the prospect of just talking. And yet life was not long enough, no time could be too long, to talk to someone whose mind answered your mind, so that conversation was like a double set of thoughts, carrying each other along indefinately...
I don't mean that a perfect marriage consists of endless conversations! I only meant that the thought of endless conversation wouldn't be a sort of bugbear. And, of course, one would want to run around and do things with other people sometimes. But the best part of the party would be the drive home!'
Jocelyn Playfair A House in the Country

talking

We went to a great party on Saturday night and yes - the best part of it was travelling home together - discussing the evening.

I can be alone

I'm not sure if always being with Twin when growing up meant that I wasn't used to being alone. I know as a young adult that I didn't need to have much time by myself. We change though. Now I need time to be just me, alone. I need silence too. I think when I first read this poem I couldn't understand it, and didn't think I would ever understand it, but now I do.

Intimacy

I can be alone,
I know how to be alone.

There is a tacit understanding between my pencils
and the trees outside;
between the rain
and my luminous hair.

The tea is boiling:
my golden zone,
my pure burning amber.

I can be alone,
I know how to be alone.
By tea-light
I write.

Nina Cassian
(Tr from Romanian by
Eva Feiler and nina Cassian)

@

How about you?