IS CHOCOLATE THE ANSWER?

Increasingly, I'm finding that I am desiring food, thinking about it all the time. I'm even going to bed thinking 'what shall I eat tomorrow?'. Cereal, bread, fish, bacon, anything with sugar in it, especially chocolate. Drink too, tea, tea and more tea, and then some strong coffee to wash it down with.

Am I having a growth spurt? Or am I craving because I'm pregnant and I don't know it? That would explain the belly that increases girth with the weeks and months. Or are these cravings replacing something I'm missing or not getting, a substitute for something?

I was told the other day that I looked like I was searching for something, and I know I've written about this before on these tiny pages, so it's nothing new to the few that read them, but this particular friend has never read any of my ramblings so perhaps she has a point. My initial response was 'aren't we all searching for something?', and it took a fair bit or persuasion for her to qualify her reasoning for saying so. This may have been because I was a little harsh in my persuasive questioning, as I was surprised that I might look like I'm searching, because, up until now I always thought I was internalising my 'searching', mainly to cover my thoughts as they are not always in line with social acceptability as to what I might consciously or subconsciously be 'searching' for. I thought I was doing a great job of hiding them!

I guess that I should question further what it is I actually look like when I'm 'searching', is it all the time or just part of the time? I did press the young lady concerned a little , in order to alleviate my paranoid concerns that I might be advertising my thoughts in neon signs where ever I go, and she said that I looked like I was 'looking for adventure'. This, equally was a suprise, and I feel there may need to be more questioning when the time is right, but I've always thought I was the un-adventurous type, the stay at home type, the 'travel in my head' type. So I find it a bit of a surprise that I might be giving off these twin impressions of 'searching' and 'adventure'. Perhaps I should be questioning myself a little more too.

Perhaps I should just buy another bar of chocolate.

GLASSES

Did you know that i like my new glasses a lot? They are varifocal, which means i can see long distance and i can read clearly, with the same pair of glasses. Not many people know that.

A MAN AND A WOMAN

Quite a few decades ago, when I was a burgeoning grown up, I lived in a city that promised me so much, and yet all it gave me was the freedom of movement that only comes with the anonymity of a ghostly shadow. In those fallow years, out of any significant relationship, I had a time of writing stoned out stories alone with accompanying doodles, folded them neatly, putting them in envelopes and sending them to a woman that lived hundreds of miles away. She was my friend, and yet she was a woman.

It is quite possible that she no longer remembers my name, any more than I do hers. But the memory that is still etched in my mind, is the naive hope I placed in her. For I craved the love, acceptance and understanding that I thought was possible between us, even if I was only wanting these things from a woman who was never my girlfriend, only my friend. I have been left with the underlying perception that our friendship was solely based on her polite acceptance of my quite, but persistent desperation. Perhaps she could have saved us both the time and just told me to fuck off years before.

It has been said to me on several occasions, and quite emphatically, that within a friendship of a man and a woman, not only that it is unlikely that it will ever be just platonic, that there is always be sexual tension, but also that the woman are in control of the stop and go signs, that should they want to, allow the man to step over the line.

By stark contrast Simone de Beauvoir, in her insightful book The Second Sex, gently submits the idea that all woman wish to be dominated, taken control of, loved and protected by their chosen partner, a warrior in tweeds and golden rimmed spectacles. So here is the question to all ladies out there, who is right, my wife or Simone de Beauvoir? Surely this is a paradox of such extremity and fundamental understanding that it cannot be answered so easily. perhaps it is a mix of the two thoughts? As we all know, life is never as black and white as the written or spoken word, there is so much to consider here, and probably never resolved. But I am a simple and confused man, and, as with most men, I feel I have to fix things, to feel I have done something useful, positive and life affirming. But this seems to be out of my control and in yours. Is it we, as men, that have been subliminally allowed control of a few islands in our lives, such as the dish washer and the garden shed? Whilst beside us our women press all the required buttons. Or is it that women quietly and passively want us to push those same buttons for ourselves, in doing so taking control of our relationships, what ever they may be.

I am genuinely confused, i find it hard taking control of my own life, now i find out that i might have to do the same with someone else's to. So if you know the answer please help me know what tools to get our of my toolbox so i can start fixing it.