Soul Kitchen

Desires... to write lyrically, to live communally, with friends and cheap food. To travel locally. I feel a swelling of affection for the people I'm close to, an appreciation for talking in cars and at late night dessert cafes and on walks through the dry hills.

I look forward to being focused, when uni starts, but fear that I won't be. My time and interests are too scattered. I dread the rearrangement and negotiation of my work schedule, toy with quitting one job, the other job. To quit the hostel would seem a step backwards, and I feel that the intense sociality of it is something thats good for me, despite it being wearying at times. To quit the nut shop would be in a sense easy, but in a sense much harder, because its so comfortable.

I look forward, too, to reinvigorating the friendships that were started last year at uni, that fade with distance and time apart. New shiny people, people whose flaws and stories aren't so intimately known yet. (But: see first paragraph. Simultaneously relishing in familiarity).

People are very capable of deluding themselves, of asserting and even believing that what they think now is what they've thought all along. I say that with a wry hope, though, that the criss-crossing opposing emotions of two of my particular broken-up friends will eventually settle in the right place. Whether that 'right place' is with both of them happy to be together, or both of them happy to be apart, I don't know.

Something about the combination of books that I'm reading: Sack's observations of mentally deficient patients in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and the argument between the pastor and the scientist in a Sue Miller novel - made me realise today that I believe in the human soul. I can't even remember if it were a question of belief before today or not.

Valentines Day was good, and a good opportunity for a quiet shout out about how happy I am at the moment with all that... stuff. A while ago, when we first started going out, I remember thinking that in future years, after we'd hypothetically broken up, I would always remember DW, the person, who had happened to be my boyfriend. But he would remember his girlfriend, who happened to be me.

It was only today, recollecting that thought, that it occurred to me that this assessment might not represent something negative. Part of the reason why I wouldn't see potential for a relationship with one of my close male friends is that I feel that his idea of me is too fixed, that I am a defined persona in his perception. Of course, its not that the persona is in any way faked - its me, my own essence poured within the lines of his picture. But those lines are there. They're shaped slightly differently with everyone, but they're always there, in slightly better or worse formations. People make you see yourself in different ways. Some time ago, floating in one friend's image of myself as an elegant, articulate, kind girl, I remember thinking that maybe it was bad that DW didn't make me see myself in that way. But really, it's that he doesn't make me see myself in any one way. He doesn't pour my substance into any particular self-shape. And maybe that's not a bad thing.