I’d say it’s what separates us, not from the beasts, but the bestial. Creating the future, renewing a learned past - these are reasons to strive. Writing for and with love, taking and framing an image, stretching new melodic skins onto old skeletons of song… it’s how we manage to fly. It’s how we stay you and me, not us and them.
Unlike Osk, who seemed to establish his own tactical task force wherever we lived, scooping up neighbourhood feline troublemakers as sidekicks (including the memorable ginger behemoth Watson, with whom he used to scope the street from the safety of the shed roof), Jelly has the intelligence gathering skills of a sponge cake.
Anyway, somewhere in between my 'and then you should've done this' and 'why didn't you say x and y, rather than z', and 'for the love of monkeys and the general public's eyesight, you didn't honestly wear that heinous shirt did you', something he was saying about the dating extravaganza we were picking to pieces finally penetrated my cloud of self-congratulatory cumulo-waffle.
"Most people don't talk about how dates are progressing as a tender process, do they?" he asked.
"What?"
"She said I was 'part way through the tender process' and that she was judging me on my submission. I'd like to think there was irony involved, and I think at the time I may have given an admittedly weak "haha, yesssss, quite". Looking back, I'd have to conclude, computer says no on the presence of Fabulon or other aids to achieving crisply pressed linen."
Think about the person you're with presently (if you are with someone - if not, think about the person you feel you'd like to be with). Now imagine the future. You're seventy or eighty years old. Believe me, it's on its way - admittedly for some of us it's closer than for others. It's after dinner on a Saturday night. You're sitting on the sofa with them, vino in hand (hey, eighty doesn't have to be boring!)
““The problem with growing up,” Quentin said, “is that once you’re grown up, people who aren’t grown up aren’t fun anymore.” ”
— Lev Grossman, The Magicians
I was listening to The Great
Gatsby soundtrack yesterday and in particular the Lana del Ray song
'Young and Beautiful' - well, it would be fair to say, a bit
incessantly. It's a great song, and it fits the mood of Gatsby so well -
the reckless hedonistic abandon of the 20s and maybe/maybe not doomed love.
It also
raises a question which we all think about in one form or another,
whether we are single, coupled up or somewhere in between:
"Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful?"
It's
something we all have to face. Time stops for no man, and it seems
doubly so that it stops for no woman for some extremely unfair reason
(case in point; grey hair looks better on men. I'm sorry, but it does).
Growing older we soon learn who is willing to love us for us and not for
pure physical appeal.
Even more importantly we learn whom we want to love ourselves.
I
was talking about this with the still very very youthful and extremely
beautiful Miss K the other day. We were discussing relationships (as one does)
and she said 'yep, they have to pass The Scrabble Test'. And this is so
very true when it comes to longevity in love.
What's The Scrabble Test? It's simple.
Think
about the person you're with presently (if you are with someone - if not, think about the person you feel you'd like to be with). Now imagine the future. You're
seventy or eighty years old. Believe me, it's on its way - admittedly for some of us it's closer than for others. It's after dinner on a Saturday night. You're sitting
on the sofa with them, vino in hand (hey, eighty doesn't have to be
boring!)
Now.
It's time to...
Whip out the Scrabble. And whip their butts.
And laugh while you do it.
Firstly
I suppose, can you see yourself with said person at eighty? And if so,
can you see yourself happily playing board games and reading together
and snorting and pretty much being as much of an idiot
as you are at twenty-five, or thirty-five, or forty-one?
That's The Scrabble Test.
You
can call it the Trivial Pursuit Test, or the Backgammon Test, or whatever
the hell you want, but my point is this; love is the sum of a whole lot
of parts. And one of the biggest parts is like - and laughter.
And
stupidy stupid. To quote Baldrick the Great. So make sure you bestow
your affections on someone you still want to beat up over board games in
years to come.
