(no subject)

Someone posted this on a mailing list I'm on.

[...]
I wonder
what can come of these minutes,
each a hard inner tumbling, as when a key nearly won't turn,
or the note of a piano, clattered or stroked, ringing.

Everyone knows
everything sings and dies.
But it could be, too, everything dies and sings,
and a life is the interlude
when, still humming, we can look up, gawk about, imagine whatever,
   say it,
topple back into singing.
Oh first our voice be done, and then, before and afterwards and all
   around it, that singing.

                                                  -- Galway Kinnell

[Excerpted from "Flower With Five Blossoms," in When One Has Lived A Long Time Alone]

relationship noodling

So there's finally a thread on a particular mailing list that isn't inspiring me to just mass-delete. It deals with discussion of primary relationships: do you want one, do you have one, what does it mean to you, do you feel differently about your secondaries than you do about your primaries?

I used to think very much in terms of primary/secondary relationships. I don't think I do anymore. I guess if one were to look at my situation, one could claim C. is my primary due to the fact that we live together and have some degree of life entanglement. I guess that would be true, and I've certainly had it said to me lately that "[I]'ve had a primary the entire time we've been involved" (so even if I don't think about it as such, other people apparently categorize my relationship that way). I guess in my mind though I would consider someone a secondary if I wouldn't be willing to do the life-entanglement, live together and deal with all the every day mundane stuff with them. There's no one I'm involved with at this point that I wouldn't be willing to do all that with. I certainly don't feel like I have a stronger emotional committment to any one person than I do the others. As I get older, I seem to be less inclined to get and stay involved with people that I can't see having that level of involvement with. I guess the thing that's really getting to me now is that I wonder how many of my other partners feel that way about me.

D. and I had a nice chat this afternoon; we both agree that we've got a pretty stable, well-defined relationship at this point. I think we'd both be okay with living either with or near each other in something like a cohousing group. (He promised to save some loft space for me. ;) ) We could spend all weekend vegging in front of the playstation together and be totally fine with that. It's a nice feeling.

I have another relationship where I'm thinking that we have a probable mismatch in what we want out of the relationship. Like I said, I would be perfectly happy to have a degree of life-entanglement, although we each have things keeping us where we are right now, and it was always pretty clear that I would have to be the one to move if anyone was going to. I am pretty sure he doesn't want that now, if he ever did. I used to think he might, but recent developments and comments make me think otherwise now. I'm not sure where this will end up. D. and I have gone for years seeing each other much less frequently than this, and have been fine. I think I'm just feeling off-balance here because it feels to me like the rules are changing mid-game, and some of them are making me vaguely uncomfortable. I think this relationship is the least stable for me at the moment. I don't know what I want. Well, I do, but I don't think I'm ever likely to get it as this person seems to me to have the pretty distinct "primary = 1 person I want to live with" mindset, which just isn't how my mind works anymore. I want multiple "primaries". I want to live in a big old house up on a hill with lots of people I love and people they love. Why is it so hard to find other people who want that too?

Someone in the discussion brought up the point that in some ways secondaries have it best, because time spent with them is almost always spent focusing on the relationship, and not on the mundane bill-paying, grocery shopping type activities. I'm not sure that I necessarily consider that "having it better" than getting to spend more time with the beloved, but then I'm a freak and don't mind doing that day-to-day stuff with people I love.

My newest relationship happened very fast; it surprised us both. I think we both want it to go in pretty much the same way, but again there's the distance thing. Thing is, I don't want to move to Boston (I don't like Boston as a city particularly, and moving to Boston would require breaking up with C. as he refuses to move back there), and I don't think it's fair for me to ask him to do something that I'm not willing to do myself. I hope someday we come to an arrangement that makes us both happy. I know I've talked about my "big house" dream with him, and he seemed receptive. I think I've been much more upfront with him about what I want out of relationships, mostly because I think that it's evolved enough into something that really seems right to me that I can talk about it and say "this is what I want".

I want the big house. I want to live with people that I love, and it's not confined to one person. I can be a secondary, I guess, but I'm having an increasingly hard time with it (with one exception, and that's because our relationship has been so stable and well-defined for so long that it's okay, not because I love him any less than my other sweeties). I want a frictionless world where I can have it all. ;)

(no subject)

I got webcam pics of my niece and nephew:

Kyle:


and Katie: