Journal 84 The kind of marriage I want

You turn and touch the light of me.
You smile, your eyes become my sweetest dream of you.
Oh, sweetest love,
My heart is not a beat away from you.
--Harold Pinter, love note to Antonia Fraser




"There was nothing I did not discuss with John."
--Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking



Though both the women in the above photos, Lady Antonia Fraser (whose diary-style I decided to imitate when I began this year to title most of my posts as Journal and then a number, chronologically arranging them); and Joan Didion, are now widows after long (33 and 40 years respectively) marriages to men who were also writers, I idolize their
marriages.
I idolize them as people, as real adults, the type of real adult I aspire to be everyday, who doesn't behave like a Real Housewife, who doesn't make fellow human beings feel like pieces of furniture, or like they are housepets.
I often worry, in this 'age of insanity' (age of inanity) the one we, as a collection of generations are destined to be living in (God help me) that these adults are dinosaurs.
Well, I want to be a dinosaur. I want to enjoy cocktail hour after a solemn day at work, one where thoughts were important. I want to discuss my day with my husband and hear about his; I want to work with him on solving all the worlds' problems over dinner together.

From what I have read, that is what these couples did.
Oh, and they were soulmates, and madly in love.
That I already have, and that fire I will continue to stoke.
To being a real adult, and the mantle of responsibility it entails.


"Christ, you know it ain't easy"
--The Ballad of John and Yoko



(they had their issues, yes, but God they also had some fun with the world, didn't they?)
When interviewed by Vogue in the age issue a few years ago she said "your life is not "up there"--your life is all around you". She was talking about how people in New York would go to the outside of her apartment building to look for her and that they would say "she's up there!" and she, Yoko, would be standing right behind them.


Something we should all remember.