The Truth About Plans
Tin and I were going to get up and go to the Prado, but because we were up at 3am watching Frozen on my computer, we actually ended up waking for real at noon and having about an hour to run down the street to eat.
We were in room number 7, an omen for a trip that was already going smoother than expected.
We stopped into La Fabrica and I had another delicious pot of pu erh (this time red) as Tin slathered creamy butter on large slices of toasted bread. We had the good fortune of another window seat, where he and I striking a pose caused people to turn their heads – hmmm, a bald white woman with a handsome African American boy (what goes on there?) – and us looking at them as well thinking the same thing.
We lugged the giant suitcase to the Atocha and sat in the huge steamy terrarium waiting for our train. I knew Tin would be hungry for lunch on the way and so I bought a whole pepperoni pizza that I had to delicately balance between the already awkward backpack and unwieldy suitcase that someone at the airport had tagged – heavy.
And we made our way to coach #7, and once in our seats it was announced that the movie was about Dinosaurs. Really? How convenient, because for years the train video has been about war and violence and guns popping off, but now in the age of Tin’s huge love affair with dinosaurs that’s what was showing on lucky #7 coach.
He watched and I read, missing most of the Spanish countryside as Botton’s book held me rapt – yes it’s the story of love and deceit and regret. I have a few of those narratives under my belt, but Botton has laid his out in such a cogent manner, it’s easy to just insert names into his frame and consider your own story told.
There is usually a Marxist moment in every relationship, the moment when it becomes clear that love is reciprocated. The way it is resolved depends on the balance between self-love and self-hatred. If self-hatred gains the upper hand, then the one who has received love will declare that the beloved (on some excuse or other) is not good enough for them (not good enough by virtue of associating with no-goods). But if self-love gains the upper hand, both partners may accept that seeing their love reciprocated is not proof of how low the beloved is, but of how lovable they have themselves turned out to be.
I thought about our trip, most of it is before us, and it made me think of my seatmate on the plane from New Orleans to Atlanta. Her pendant had caught my attention, two gold wedding rings joined together – the small one dangling inside the large one. She was on her way to Paris then to take a Viking cruise through the Bordeaux region. This was a trip she had planned with her husband, perhaps brought on (we both concluded) by her watching Downton Abbey and seeing the Viking cruise ads one too many times. But as she received all the brochures, her husband took ill and before she had time to even think he was dead. Forty eight years together she said, and he went quickly. I noticed the gleam in her eyes, which did not match the memorial pendant. “So I’m here with my traveling companion who also lost her husband and we’re taking the widowers’ trip.”