Day 174

The mind is the most cunning weapon we have against ourselves, and we never spend enough ttime to realise that we use it against ourselves constantly. Looking out over the bay last night, a part of me found the silence between M and I oppressive because, in this new circumstance, what had previously seemed companionable and grown-up silence, seemed strange in a time of what should be elation at freedom. What my mind was doing was telling me that because circumstance had changed, we should have changed. Such nonsense – a change in environment doesn’t change a relationship, doesn’t suddenly make it necessary to talk constantly, doesn’t mean that what was gentle and comforting before should no longer be so. This is why everyone should have therapy. I had this conversation with myself, my own therapist at last, before I finally fell asleep.

An admission – I am not using the Bluetooth keyboard I bought at great expense (not). It ended up seeming like a faff, and the speech marks and other punctuation were triple keystrokes which would have slowed me down even more. On a normal-sized keyboard I can do 2k words an hour when in full flight, and I do hate to be slowed down. By finally copying the children, I have come to be able to type quite quickly just using two thumbs, although accuracy is probably not that great (as yesterday’s post evinces if you proof-read it). No matter. The keyboard will come in handy in the future. On rainy holiday days, perhaps, although the weather forecast here is for unbroken fabulous hot weather until we have to leave.

The locals were out in force again last night. They come out, it seems, after midnight, when the tourists, exhausted from doing nothing, have retired to their air-conditioned rooms and start sleeping off their food and drink excesses. I wish I was a local, wish I could just assimilate the language in seconds. But that’s not how life, nor language acquisition, works.

AGGIE’S ART OF HAPPINESS – CHAPTER 128