yesterday evening i went for a walk with my legal-brained friend on our almost usual walk through the matte, to the new restaurant's terrace at the
schwenllenmätteli, back up to the
bärengraben and then to the
rosengarten. granted that this is a rather scenic route, but yesterday it paled in comparison with the conversations that we had.
we had at one point a good chuckle about my proposal that we get married. after all, we do have great discussions, we do not have sex with each other, and we travel rather well together. granted that he is a disaster in the kitchen, be it with cooking or washing up, although he does conjure up a good salad every once in a while, as long as you do not mind enjoying it in disposable paper plates and plastic forks. he hates doing the dishes, even with a dishwasher, and he sticks by his guns. really? i laughed, he laughed.
but that was later, before that, while walking on that part of the forested way where one well known bernese patent attorney got shot to his death some years ago. we had a rather involved debate on monogamy, polygamy and polyandry. the patent attorney being shot somewhere along that path is unfortunately true, he had been a colleague of mine, and years earlier he made a decision that ended up costing him his life: he married a woman who later was convicted of having him shot.
my friend was trying to convince me of going with him to the
pink beach in lausanne one of these days. although my moralist would have no problems to find itself in such a place, the rest of me seems to show little to no interest. i just find myself in the odd situation of my friend thinking of me as being rather a professor of monogamy, while the practice in my life has been one of polyandry. either sex is no longer as important as it once was, or i am getting old, or both, but somehow, i seek peace and quiet spots, or the tatami of the dojo or zendo. yes, and not only. still, the pink beach is on neither my public nor on my hidden agenda.
the situation gets just a tad odder when considering that another friend of mine who professes monogamy has at present implicitly intoned a few questions as to where i stand in this whole thing. so far i have either ignored or overheard the intonements. for me it is easy. polyandry always came easily to me, if it happens it happens, i do not go out looking for it. the only odd thing here being that i am female and close to the arab culture, where polyandry is just not "in" these days, although polygamy is still prevalent. however most men can not afford polygamy, even in saudi arabia, and thus, for rather practical economical reasons, stick to monogamy, and the usual path of divorce and remarriage like any where else on earth.
to me none of this is surprising, and then i very quickly forget that i must live in another reality. this reality of mine might be parallel to that one reality that is totally foreign to me and is lived by my neighbors and contemporaries. our conversation last night would have been much too trivial had it been limited to the question of the nature and plurality of my sexual relationships. it would have been not just trivial, it would have been insignificant.
prompted by the sight of the type of man whom i find rather attractive, spotted on the terrace of the schwellenmätteli, tall, blond, slender and a bit delicate, we continued our discourse on my present spectrum of relationships. once again, in my wonderfully empty life, there are wonderful relationships, and the conversation turned to two men who to me are not even on the same plane of the manifold of my reality, and to whom i maintain rather intimate and very distinct relationships.
one is dark, tall and classically handsome, and by far, not what on the physical plane gets my attention at the distance. yet, to this tall dark and handsome man i maintain a rather formal and distant relationship which is very inspiring and gratifying on the non-physical plane; he is a muse, he is a projection of my ego, and i have great admiration and respect for him. the idea of even flirting with the thought of being sexually intricated with him falls into some black hole of my conscientious, and there is nothing there feeding my curiosity.
the other, blond and delicate, just as strong in character, is a totally different story. when no restrictions are to be respected, we touch, and before we know we have fallen into each other's arms and forgotten all suffering.
all being the same, the issue is not about these two, or any other men. it is sunday, i have spent the whole day working, and now this issue returns like a nasty little fungus that fails to understand its undesirability in its tenacity and impertinence. the issue is at the core of me, it is that wavering uncertainty about my own right to existence. do i have a right to exist?
perhaps not. just consider that nobody and nothing has a right to existence. existence is not a right. existence happens, it is not a right. the sun shines, the river flows downhill to the ocean. we are all born naked and screaming. but all we want is food, sleep and sex. humans are wonderfully simple animals dabbling, struggling and inventing the abstract while pretending to be something else, while the while, when push comes to shove, we are animal.
causality is one hell of a catastrophe. i have no right to exist, yet i am, i have no right to life, yet i live. i have no right to conscientiousness, yet i am conscient.
perhaps i could stop asking the questions that lead no torture. if not there are all those toys at the pink beach meant to put existentialism on a realism plane.
Technorati Tags: bearpit, bern, berne, conversation, fluage, rosengarten, words
