The thought later struck me: I am decrying six weeks as neither here nor there, but I never got to spend more than a fortnight with the person referred to in any number of these pages.
Humans have a strange relationship with time. I already touched upon this when I mentioned anniversaries. Birthdays are of a similar ilk - regular punctuations in the musical score of our lives, ineluctable and shining brightly in the temporal distance.
Such events are signposts for the destination marked 'the rest of your life.' When considered independently of that life, they are stripped of their meaning, akin to the real signposts pointing north on the motorway. Keep travelling through Yorkshire, through Cumbria, up to Scotland, and still you will find signs directing you to The North. Before you know it, you've gone so far north that you've missed it, and instead you exist precariously on the edge of nothing and nowhere.
Realise, then, that your temporal roadsigns must be taken in context if they are not to become pointers to a destination that can never exist. The two-week bursts with my soulmate were lessons in relinquishing fear and misery - even if sometimes I am sure I have not learned those lessons, even if sometimes I howl with loneliness because she recedes a little more with every passing day.
A teacher has only ever finished teaching once the intellectual crutch she provides can be happily removed, such is the confidence and poise now apparent in her pupil. The roadsigns are not only understood, and understood well, but the pupil is able to see the road below them, and even appreciate the point of setting out in the first place.
When a really outstanding student emerges, he or she even takes joy in their painful limbs after a tough day of travelling. At that point the teacher, like the pacemaker in a long race, can be discarded. Better students still take her along with them for the remainder. This we call unconditional love - knowing where we are headed, yet unsure if we'll ever get there. We know, though, that failing with such a woman beside us is preferable to failing alone.
Is failing alongside this woman better than succeeding alone? This we call romance, and some of us are intoxicated by it. Others are but pretend not to be.
We have unconsciously just established a boundary between romance and unconditional love. Unconditional love states that I am happy to fall short of what I set out to do, so long as you are with me at the moment of my humiliation: falling flat on my arse in the road from fatigue, and miles from anywhere.
Romance states: I am well able to reach the end of the journey, but I'd prefer to stay here than do so if you are not in lockstep with me. Romance is the abolition of wishes and passion for the wish and passion of another person.
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