It takes a lot of experience for a girl to kiss like a beginner.

 

as a young woman I tried reading the four gated city by Doris Lessing several times. I don’t think she is a writer for young women who think the entire world is spread out before them for their fun.  But as a 'mature' woman her words are just the thing that resonate within the mind and soul. This time I opened the Golden Notebook and was transported immediately. and this is following  the hack pop writing of Larry McMurtry filled with guys bonding and men who can't commit but dream about the one who got away and who is maudlin and macho and die because of it- or in spite of it- But lessing is about the internal landscape- the place women retreat to in order to survive. and it is wonderful when she describes the "break down" that some women in middle age have ( doctors call it hormones) but it is a profound cracking and dropping of the shell we were forced to construct and now as the shell falls away we are forced to view and learn to love the authentic self. I don’t think I am projecting here.

 

I had a very good session with the toe fungus psychiatrist ( she is an ice dancer in her free time hence the continued trauma to the toe and the fungus- she didn't tell me this i learned it elsewhere) anyway we were discussing the difference between being considering nice and being good. It was in the context of wanting to be liked, hence one is nice. and I challenged that analysis because I do not feel I must be liked by everyone and I am certainly not always nice. but I try to be good. and goodness doesn't always mean you are nice because goodness might mean sharing an uncomfortable truth or doing the very unpopular thing, or saying no when the nice person wants to do the wrong thing.

 

certainly all of us have known nice people who often were not good. Montgomery was filled with those women, people who were always smiling even while their husband was having you blackballed or they were going to go out to lunch and slice you apart verbally. so nice is a cheapo commodity  that I don’t care to have.

 

Henry James said" Civility costs nothing and buys everything." and I agree . However civility is very different from the "niceness" I am describing. Someone else said something like being able to judge one's character by how well they treat people who can not do something for them- such as street beggars or door men or someone else's maid or animal. and that sunk in. along with so many little them cliches from my father which turn out to be formative than we like to admit.

 

so yes, doris lessing is the one for me right now and I am back in the curtained canopy bed with soft greens and deep reds and it's aura is one of peace and comfort and whenever I want I can sit over a bidet of hot water and warm my chocho . that's good too.  Right?