"Canon," Sam said when I ran into him this evening. "Le top!"
Sam, friend, restaurant-owner, inspired chef, magician in his moments, excellent judge of character.
As if I needed his judgement. Though for all my fluency in French, I hadn't realised before tonight that canon has one further meaning apart from its English counterparts.
"really ? you boastful
;-)))))" comments François, friend, Netwiz, musician.
He happened to be passing when a woman and I left the Canteen last night, past midnight, but I have nothing to boast about, just immense gratitude to whatever makes certain things happen. I've got no idea what comes next.
What Tim Swanson's remark on my last entry means, I dunno. Perhaps he understood.
Somebody in South Africa hasn't, because I 'phoned Joburg today in the course of work and he said, "By the way, Nick, this hasn't got anything to do with anything, but I've just been reading your blog and I don't see the connection between the flower and your comment."
It's simple.
The Wildcat told me a story early yesterday evening. She began it when I was shopping, poured more into my ear as I carried three heavy bags up four flights of stairs in the other hand, and finished an hour later. It was a wonderful story and it was true.
When I put the 'phone down, I listened, because of the Wildcat's story, to Schönberg's 'Verklärte Nacht', which musically recounts a tale she inevitably brought to mind, while I reflected on hers (except that the Wildcat isn't pregnant and there were other differences).
Later, a woman knocked on my door and we went to the Canteen. What happened then is nobody's business but ours. All that I will tell you is that before we parted, I kissed her goodnight. And then came an "accident" with an absolute, irrefutable, inevitability. My lips found hers. It was very short, chaste even.
Perhaps it foretells disaster. Perhaps it is the most marvellous thing that has happened to me, apart from the birth of the Kid, since a previous such kiss led me to chuck in a job, pack my bags, and come to France in August 1980.
That kiss made one thing easy. Today, I was able to tell the person I consider the loveliest looking woman who works under the same very big roof as I do how and why she recently became muse to this blog for a brief while, which she took with grace. Though she told me, finally, that she prefers milk chocolate to black.
I will also say that for a very long time, so long that I cannot exactly remember but it is certainly more than 11 years, I have for three or four reasons, mostly a matter of choice, not made love to a woman, apart from one short episode which bruised two people.
It hasn't always been easy, but I have been content to wait. I have a very rich imagination and fantasy has sufficed. You may think that unusual, unhealthy or insane, you may wrongly decide that this explains many things about me, but I really don't give a damn.
That kiss and this woman were worth the wait.
Last night, she found me "serious even when you joke". I couldn't help that, though I want her to keep laughing and I would like her to be very, very happy. She is, indeed, "le top!"
Whether I have anything to do with her future happiness -- because such developments are never without their difficulties -- does not for the moment strike me as the essential question. The Wildcat is bounding a long way ahead of herself when she tells me what she thinks about all this...
The only phrase I can think of partly to describe what the kiss did to me has become a bit of a cliché. It sung my body electric. My mind is, of course, completely blown.
That I managed to do a day's work without too many mistakes was quite an achievement. As to the only music I could listen to and really appreciate today, it came from Sandy Denny and goes back a very long way. She was not just a fabulous singer, she was a very gifted poet.
I particularly adore this passage:
"Please my friend help to make me glad,
Help me find the one and only thing I've never had.
What is true?
Even though it only ever whispers part of what it knows,
And it's never ventured through the locks
Where the brazen river flows.
It's the fingerprint which is never made.
It's the perfume of a rose."
Even if it doesn't work out with the woman -- and I have made very many mistakes in the past, I hope I've learned from them as well as what I have learned from others -- the kiss alone was worth the wait.
Because, as I wrote a while back, henceforth I'll settle for nothing short of the best.
Last night, just for an instant, I was blessed with the best life has to offer.
11:21:36 PM link 
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