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epitome of incomprehensibility
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...made me needlessly but fleetingly jealous of a Croatian philosopher this fall. I'll explain.
Since the breakup, David and I had exchanged a few emails arguing about politics, but pleasantly. These abruptly stopped in the spring.
In the fall, I finally got up the courage to email him, apologizing if something I'd said in my latest message sounded improperly flirtatious. Not in those exact words, but I explained in painstaking detail that I was trying to lighten up the partial disagreement that I'd expressed rather than evoking a familiarity that he would find disagreeable. (Fuck it, that still sounds too much like Jane_Austen.) The "objectionable" thing I'd said was something like, "I insist you have a good weekend!"
He wrote back three days later. He didn't remember exactly what I HAD written, but he was sure I hadn't said anything wrong or anything that he'd taken the wrong way. And, about news, he was in Ontario to visit his mother, who had been confirmed to have a form of dementia - it wasn't just the thyroid issues. (When I thought back to my two visits with her, it seemed evident in hindsight that her speech and alertness had both become simplified, dulled, between the first visit and the second one two years later.)
The second news went something like "I'm in another relationship now, so I wanted to visit family because I'll spend Christmas back in England."
That would explain why he didn't write: he didn't want a new partner to be suspicious of an old. Or maybe that attachment came later. Maybe he was just busy and didn't bother to write back - didn't think my message was worth answering.
And, as if amending the way he'd snuck in the girlfriend news - and/or evoke an old joke between us - he concluded, "You should get a girlfriend with big boobs to scandalize your mom."
...
I didn't tell him anything about who I was or wasn't dating, but I expressed sadness about his mom.
I was also sad, fairly or unfairly, to hear about his girlfriend. And angry: What, was he so emotionally superficial, that he could just pick up with someone else so quickly after a five-year relationship?? (So ran my thoughts. But it was about a year after the breakup.)
And then I thought of the Croatian philosopher he was friends with: aha! Why did he write to her so much? Clearly, their common pursuit endeared them to each other, even if they hadn't admitted it before, and that's why he wanted to break things off all of a sudden after he landed on European soil. (So ran my thoughts. But then I remembered she was married to someone else, and it was stupid of me to think that there was something going on just she was a woman. And a philosopher. And Croatian? At that I grinned. There's something in the specificity of Croatia that's funny, even if Croatia itself isn't funny.)
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