Disappointment: my guardian angel

Fell sound asleep for hours after I got back from work, waking up only now, which is why this post looks a day late. Am still determined to try and write every day though. I'm not sure why though, because I don't think I get any visitors.

A friend sent me a quote which I have been re-reading all day. About the joy of disappointment. I actually agree with the following, but it does go against a lot of what we're taught - striving and attaining and attaining and SUCCESS...

'I am not averse to disappointment. It has its own special pleasures. Disappointment is the hidden agenda within fantasy, a nugget for the aficionado who might trick up the bland negativity of the word by sliding alphabetically towards disjunction and disparity. If you could have what you dream about, if I could have Antarctica all white and solitary and boundless, there would finally be no excuse. Imagine, you are exactly where you want to be — and now what? Yes white, yes solitary, yes boundless, but will it, in its icy, empty, immense reality, do? In my head, it does fine, why seek out the final disappointment which the earlier, smaller disappointment only seeks to prevent? The point of desire is desire itself, the essential pleasure in expectation is expectation. The idea that gratification is a completion of the wish is fallacious. It is only our dim literal-mindedness that makes us believe that we should try to achieve what we wish for. Disappointment stands between the two
like a guardian angel. The fissure between what I want and what I can have is my friend, my best friend in all likelihood, and I know it. Disappointment is a safety net, to be relished in a secret knowing way by the disappointed.'

—Jenny Diski, Skating to Antarctica

I cracked today, and replied to my love who, in actual fact, is no longer Mine in any way. He replied, a lovely email, but I couldn't help noticing that where he usually starts all emails to me with 'My beauty,' this time he simply wrote 'Beauty,'. So much is lost in the omitting of that one tiny word! Mutual possession, mutual belonging, is that what love is? Put that way, it sounds quite oppressive. But the words from Song of Solomon are so beautiful:
'I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine....'


A little list of things I have developed a fondness for:

• sticking cloves in oranges, and mulling wine. (more than the drinking of it)
• amazon used books
• public libraries (a long-standing love)
• the contents of the Uffizi, especially when replicated on the xmas cards my mother receives (and therefore easy to pinch and stick up in my room, in manner of adolescent, which I am no longer.Need to remind self of this fact on regular basis)
  
• long baths (which has led to the destruction of many books, and a couple of manuscripts for work - the less said about this, the better)
• gingham checked pyjama bottoms
• quotes. Especially acerbic and witty ones. (Oscar Wilde is the master at these)
• love poetry with unhappy endings. (Duffy's 'No Cuba' is a favourite. Haven't quite reached 'My last Duchess' levels yet.)