Sunday, March 29, 2009

The Next Morning


We're having a blizzard. I just took Cyrus out for his morning pee and we have about 2 inches thus far and it's sticking. My car is covered, the cafe table in front of the greenhouse has a couple of inches on it. Yesterday was warmish and sunny. Today the snow is falling fast enough to cover the green that's emerging. The buds on the pear tree are white with snow. I hate this shit.

L and I had a lovely evening, but I fear my bulldozer approach to conversation leaves much to be desired for a man of his scholarly disposition. He is a philosophy professor, retired but still teaching a couple of classes a year. He loves teaching and will probably keep teaching until he dies. But I'm nobody's student. I've read as much or more than he, and we don't value the same writers in the same way. He teaches literature as philosophy. If I were a student of his, I would be one very argumentative and opinionated student, challenging his taste and conclusions at every turn. I don't think he enjoys this much, this intellectual bully I've become. And I realize as I write this, that, like a younger sister, I am always pushing back, always trying to prove myself his intellectual equal. We disagree about one of the writers he teaches, Penelope Lively. "I think her prose is thin and her characters a bit boring." I realize when I said that, I was poking him with the sharp stick of my many years of glutenous reading. Why? Why do I do that? He is a lovely man--kind, sweet, warm. Why am I so competitive with him? Odd that even when I was twelve and he was almost sixteen we were intellectually competitive. It was important to me even then that he know I was no light weight in the reading department. I had read Lolita, he hadn't. One up for me. He had read Thomas Hardy, I had not. On up for him. Let the battle of the minds begin. And yet I do still love him. I always have and I always will.

I did find out one thing about his "new" wife that made me think I would like her--she's a fan of fart humor.

And I did not poison him with my cooking. The meal was delicious. But I'm pretty sure I spent my sleeping hours farting. I wonder if Cyrus, my old dog, notices.

16 comments:

Freida Bee said...

So, I guess the snow's timing was off to have him be stuck there for 3 days- just long enough before I would poison someone I was snowed in with.

Husbands who go meet the women they first loved at their houses are, indeed interested in a little some some, but you are not making it casual, because you are not a liar and a pretender. We blantantly honest gals don't always get the guys (or gals), me thinks.

Yes. Yes. I still love you. I'm just selfish, as you probably know by now, fair-weathered (or it's opposite).

Freida Bee said...

duh- its ;)

Utah Savage said...

Freida Bee, MD, you still love me, thus I do exist after all.

L has always been married to one woman or another, and I am not the sort of woman he would want to spend more than an evening with and preferably in a public place so I could not pick a loud fight about the talent of Penelope Lively. Going out was his first choice, but I vetoed that idea. I hate most people, and I have to be nice out in public, so it's my place on no place. Take it or leave it. And since he wouldn't fuck me when I wanted him to at sixteen, I would never have sex with him. As far as I'm concerned I will always be a virgin of sorts. Unless you still want me. Know what I mean?

Amos said...

Girls don't fart they fluff. I'm glad everything went well.

Utah Savage said...

Please Amos, enough with the "Girls don't fart they fluff" nonsense. Ladies may not admit to farting, but women do indeed fart.

Freida Bee said...

In fact, I just farted.

Utah Savage said...

See what I mean? Freida Bee is a woman and an MD. She knows what she's talking about, and she farts.

darkblack said...

'I would be one very argumentative and opinionated student, challenging his taste and conclusions at every turn.'

Golly, that's unusual - So often your readership has to cajole conjecture on events of the day out of you, the thrust and parry of online discourse not being your métier and shit.

;)

'I wonder if Cyrus, my old dog, notices.'

This too shall pass.

;>)

Amos said...

Ahhh yes but it takes a real man to lift his leg and aim not to mention trying to light it on fire.

Amos said...

It could very well be the major cause of global warming

MRMacrum said...

Wonder what L thinks of Ayn Rand.

Mauigirl said...

Bummer about the snow...

I'm sure one of the things L values you for is your intellectual competitiveness if you two have been doing this dance since you were 12!

Utah Savage said...

L better hate Ayn Rand or the friendship is off!

jmsjoin said...

Don't worry Utah the beauty of these late light snows is you know they are temporary and the fresh air of spring in your face is right around the corner. As for the farts the beauty of dogs is it makes them more at home!

susan said...

It must be a fine thing to have old friends that remember you when you were 12. My oldest friends remember me at 24 but I no longer know anyone from beyond that time.

Yes, the snow will be gone soon.. last blasts and all that. Speaking of which, I think something bizarre happens to our digestive systems as we age.. or maybe it's the extra calcium I take :-)

Randal Graves said...

Come on. Rand is good. I'd imagine Atlas Shrugged would make a hell of a doorstop.

Now I'm trying to think of an author I dig/you hate or vice versa. You can't poison me from across the tubes, at least not literally. Unless you're a internets virus spymaster. Shit.

Can we have your snow?