Further adventures in Surreality

London City Airport, 7:30 on Wednesday morning. Early morning people in the concourse. Police in bomber jackets with guns - a disturbing sight for one raised on Saturday teatime 'Dixon of Dock Green'. Two ladies at a desk selling poppies - though I feel wearing a poppy might not be tactful where I'm going. A young black woman with three children: a boy of about 8, a girl of 3 or 4, a baby girl swaddled in a quilted all-in-one, arms and legs a cross as stiff as a teddy bear. The boy is teasing his middle sister while their mother is preoccupied with the baby.
I send a text:
'I'm @ the airport. time u wr up! :-) xxx'
Is now the time? should I confess?
I have a lover.
Once, when I was in London in August, could have been a one night stand, a flash in the pan. Twice, I guess, makes it almost official.
I have a lover.
Once was a secret, shared with only a few, a one-off, a crazy night. A memory, which could have been a fantasy. Two months of thinking, remembering, wondering, before we could contrive to meet again. Two months of trying not to think, trying not to wonder.
Am I in love? I cannot allow myself to be. I've been down that road too many times, of love that leads me nowhere but into despair. I daren't let that happen, I won't let it happen again.
He is funny, intelligent, much younger than me, we are on the same wavelength. We laugh, we talk, we make love. He is bony and angular, I am fleshy and rounded, I pull him into me and wrap myself around him. We complement each other.
I will not fall in love, I cannot let myself fall in love. I will enjoy whatever time we can spend together and then let it all go. He is not my ticket out of an unhappy marriage, I will not use him like that, I will not ask anything of him except the time we can spend together. If anything, he is a symbol, a sign that it is time for me to find the way, to find the courage to do what I know I must.
At the airport, I notice people, I notice men more, not less, than I did before. I feel desire because I know I am desired. I try the perfumes. I am deciding between two by Gucci, 'Envy' and 'Envy Me', the softer, sweeter version. Usually I would avoid sweet, but today it's the one I go for.
Envy Me - I Have a Lover.
I lay awake last night against his warm, satiated body, in a hotel room while the unexpected snow fell outside and a yellow street light shone through the window. I thought of Magritte's street lamp, of light and shadow, yin and yang, I watched the chiaroscuro on the hotel room chair, the table. If I were an artist, I would paint this.
I feel him sigh, his hand on the small of my back, moving down to my buttocks. I touch his hair, stroke his face, his lips. We find we weren't as sated as we thought.
Twice makes a lover.

Looks like it's Tom Petty night tonight...
what is it about a man playing the harmonica???
Something to do with the conjunction of 'mouth' and 'organ'???
(Please forget I said that... ...)

Is this me???
'Far away from your troubles and worries.
You belong somewhere you feel free.'
Oh, I hope so, I feel it to be so.
And
I just hope I have the strength to get there.

not the title of a rediscovered Agatha Christie, but what I found in the dining room when my feline friends left me a present.

And in the evening, when the day goes down,
She leaves the bright house lights.
Stands and watches, with her coat pulled around,
While torches light the western skies.
Sometimes she thinks she knows him just too well.
Other times, not much at all.
They live their lives in some familiar spell
and catch each other when they fall.

...

She longs to run out where the day meets the night,
Far beyond these [Bedfordshire] farms.
But she'll be with him till the day she finds
A stranger lying in her arms.

People who say money isn't important are the ones who know they'll always be able to get enough to live on.

... I would move to another lifetime.
I'd quit my job,
Ride the train, through the misty nighttime.
I'd be ready when my feet touched down,
Wherever I came down.
And if the folks would have me, then they'd have me...
Any world that I'm welcome to,
Any world that I'm welcome to,
Any world that I'm welcome to,
Is better than the one I come from

I've got this thing inside me,
It's got to find a place to hide me.
I only know I must obey,
This feeling I can't explain away.

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

... pretty much like the last one, really...
in fact, come to think of it, they're all pretty much the same.
Only, last week, I hadn't had anything to drink (and I was at Jan's house, not here).
But apart from that...
so, this is how it was in the good old days:

Hey, I can dance like that! Maybe I should have been a Grateful Dead groupie (Well, I was 18 at the time... and 10 days. How come I never did stuff like that when I was young???)