take this longing

I’m hoping, maybe in the new year, to divide my posts into the three USSR categories, urbanity, scepticism and romance. Or maybe four, including society. I gather that Blogger doesn't support this, which is a prob. I suspect that scepticism will be the most prominent. I also hope to make my posts more daily than they have been. Lately I've been just about getting there.

Here’s a piece to definitely slot into the romance category.

A dream fragment of Christmas Eve. I was with a friend, someone I haven’t seen in reality for many years, and he was as young and garrulous as ever, and I suppose I too must’ve been quite a bit younger. We were, or rather he was, talking about a young woman he was interested in. I was interested in her too, though I tried to avoid speaking about it. I was surprised then to hear my friend admit that the young woman seemed to have chosen me. I nervously probed the matter. He suggested that we go out for a walk, to see if we could find her, and I could find out for myself.

We walked down to the seaside. There was quite a crowd. On the grass strip between the shop-fronts and the sand there were many al fresco tables and chairs, with people chatting and laughing. I suddenly found that my friend was no longer at my side. I turned back to find him happily chatting with the group at the first table. They were friends of ours who ran a café restaurant, one of the shop-fronts nearby. Among them was a young woman quietly reading. It was the young woman we’d set out to find. I walked up to her, and when she saw me, she rose and leaned against me. I put my arm about her and she put hers about me, and we walked away together. I marvelled at how easy it was to make contact with the person you loved, when you didn’t think or worry about it too much.

Then we were walking together along a quiet suburban street, our bodies touching. I liked everything about her, her faint female odour, her mussed brown hair, her clear, serious, slightly melancholy brown eyes, here fine olive skin, her modest workaday jacket, her slightness and quietness. I couldn’t get enough of her still face. I realised I’d never seen her before, but that didn’t matter, we were in love. I wondered if she hailed from the Indian sub-continent.

That was it. The best thing about it was that I didn’t wake up suddenly and realise it was all just a dream. I must’ve fallen asleep.