15 Minutes: Day 17

15 Minutes: Day 17

What is true and what is real?

I’m sitting on my mcm chair while Alexis lays on the couch across from me looking at a black and white ballet photo book I picked up in Paris. We are heading there in October. She is a great dancer.

It makes you wonder sometimes why people don’t spend more time apart. The day we had today. You can’t have a day like that every day. But why would you let someone walk away after a day like today?

I think about life getting boring. Because how many perfect days can you string together before you miss hurting.

What is the real, true reason that people are in relationships?

I know that a great many people have built nice lives for themselves and become happy with the individual that they had become. Work was good, family was good, apartment was beautiful, most importantly, everything was under control. Then they’re walking down the street and they see the person that gives them a flash flood in the chest and all those good things are as dry as the desert.

I’m not sure we did all that much today. My body said bed and hers did too. Hours can disappear just as long as we don’t have to reach for each other very far.

She asks me if we should go get the sheets out of the dryer.

“15 more minutes. I want to try to finish an article in that time.”

“You can write 500 words in 15 minutes?”

“Yes.”

“No wonder you write every day. It takes me 2 hours.”

I read a book on anthropology as it pertains to relationships once. How the height and physical characteristics of a partner are coded into our genetics. And then you think about all the psychological factors. How two people can be abandoned children and in one conversation not feel lost anymore. And all the other 10 trillion factors that determine chemistry. And it’s no wonder why we walk through life rationalizing our feelings. Because it’s goddamn near impossible to walk into a room and see across from you another one created under just the right lighting with a fair amount of discernment holding the line above a well of sweetness that has been aging beautifully for years.

And she’s right, you can’t talk about this shit all the time. It’s true, people get tired of hearing it. It’s not interesting anymore. The fights are better for TV. The chance that people won’t make it is more appealing than the ones that just might. Spending a day doing nothing and feeling happy doesn’t turn pages. I wrote but 2 lines in my journal today. I simply did not feel like picking it up. I didn’t check my phone either. Because they didn’t really matter today. Maybe tomorrow they will matter 1% more and then 1% more and then 1% more until she has to leave again and it hits me in the chest again that no I cannot imagine my life without this person anymore because she helped me fold my laundry tonight and I bought toothpaste that makes my breath better.

* as it turns out, this article took me 21 minutes to write. I will not go back and change it after I realize it is pointless and I hate myself. That is how it only takes 21 minutes. More skillfully though is the fact that she fell asleep in 3 minutes after asking me that question. And yeah I’m looking at her sleep and yeah it’s fucking beautiful and today was a good day. I hope tomorrow is good too.

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