Emma and the professor
I called L late this evening just telling him about how disengaged I have felt from anything and anyone in the last couple of days – and he was a good listener and mentor – he said you are outside of your usual social amp and sometimes the disengagement and the detachment helps you get passed things you might not be dealing with during the swirl.
We talked about the uncertainty of the times we live in and he told me a parable involving himself and P whereby they were deconstructing another younger friend M, who has not been able to pull the trigger with R – as they pondered why, P said, well when we were his age we weren’t pulling the trigger either, but then we woke up and were 50. Frightening, no?
But isn’t that life? L wondered aloud whether he might not live out his years without finding that other and I said well, I’m not looking for the other, but I am a romantic and am inclined to believe that love will come and I believe it will be the best love of the ones that have come before. He, Gomez, said he too believed the same, that he is hopeful he will find that in his life.
He said he was in the process of teaching Emma, Jane Austen’s masterpiece, and he read from the novel the passage when Mr. Knightly finally declares himself to Emma – it is when he finds Emma faultless despite all her faults. And isn’t that love? we both declared.
And then he read from a text about Jane Austen from a writer who said her characters have a moral obligation to live outside themselves and that the best minds are constantly striving for self awareness even while never fully achieving it. Ah, feet of clay. We try so hard to understand ourselves and yet, we are shocked to find ourselves at every turn.
And so I gave him my own parable – where when my girlfriend whispered to me the other night, “I’m acting out” and acknowledging it can’t stop her from doing what she has done a hundred times before even if she doesn’t like that part of herself.
And I too, tell him I’d like to be somebody else sometimes – a woman who isn’t so goddamn earnest about my feelings and seeking to take care of the feelings of others – I’d like to be careless and irresponsible with a man and his heart – but at the end of the day, I’m the woman who can’t be frivolous in sex, love and relationships – and so I am what I am – as tedious as that might be.
And suddenly it explains a lot about me though – I understand now why I have been married my entire adult life.