discovery

Her neck telescopes forward to bring her face closer to his, the better to hear his words over the rising din of the crowded café.  She smiles then looks away.  Her hair is cut in a Louise Brooks-bob that frames her face, perhaps hoping to lengthen her round face or simply to show off her long neck.  The man across from her looks Japanese to me, but I can’t see his face well from this angle.  She spots me noticing them but tries to ignore it.  I continue to watch them interrogate each other, looking up from the papers I’m grading occasionally to confirm my suspicions.  Their questions, which I can hear well enough to know only that they are speaking Thai, are personal and inquisitive, questing, seeking.  To my ears, his pronunciation doesn’t sound native, so perhaps my supposition is correct.  They’re on a first date, having likely met at the office, have come out together today to seek each other out and discover themselves.

Of all the things one sacrifices when marrying, I miss this most of all: the freedom to get involved in another person, in their story, their idiosyncrasies and, simultaneously, to reveal oneself enough to appear interesting to yourself again.  The discovery of another and yourself through their eyes.  One thing that made university so heady was the long late-night conversations in the common areas with the other students, each of us trying to understand the world and ourselves by talking about it.  I no longer have those sorts of encounters and the world seems particularly bland and unpalatable as a consequence.