Normally, Angharad would be Ang or AKW on these pages. Generally, there’s no good reason to name people by name, almost ever, in this sort of writing.
(Other rules that AKW and I came up with while on the telephone last night:
- write less on the Internet
- talk to fewer people
- say less in general
- deny everything — this one isn’t AKW’s)
Anyway, AKW wonders whether I think of her in the same way that I do other girls who have moved me. She says that, according to me, they’re always “wonderful[ly] winsome, a little sad, kind of funny, and generally really beautiful.” That’s true (and I should use “winsome” more; what’s that novel with a character Winsome? V., Roony Winsome…), but these recollections are all post-duena. That’s difficult to admit.
I don’t know any of these heavenly creatures anymore, and so can accetuate without limit those qualities that put them in my thoughts to begin with.
For AKW, this isn’t exactly fair. But she hardly needs the benefit of my selective memory: I think fondly of her without much benefit of time. And when we have broken up (what, 5 times now?), she attains an irresistability that took the others years to approach.
Even better, from her POV, is that I feel these things in person. I broke up with her after Thanksgiving the year before last, and we met again a month later an hour before the New Year. I didn’t want to go the party and was apprehensive to enter, but was with friends who had made up their minds. It was the right choice: I saw a flash of her white face from across the room (in the dark, smokey light and my alcohol-soaked fog, she seemed an apparition, gliding gently from towards the kitchen and the door). Instantly, my feelings were rekindled. I don’t remember what we spoke about that night, where my friends went off to a little bit later, or almost anything else.
Without thinking, we kissed to welcome the New Year.
(and we’ve only broken up once since!)