Sunday

How Many Fools Am I? (5/29/08 Thursday)^

Stacey wasn't at work yesterday--at least I didn't see her, but she would have sought me out to thank me for feeding the cat if she'd been there. When I got home I walked across the street to make sure her car was there. It was. I was surprised she hadn't even called me. Apparently, I wanted her to. I've speculated (no doubt wildly) that the cat swept the note off the counter and under the fridge. Or maybe Stacey's just absorbed in herself. Now, if she doesn't ask in the car today on the way in. ... I'm determined, even if she does ask, not to tell her who my crush is on. I'd rather she speculate and never be sure than to know and have it color her relationship with Julie, with me, and with Julie and me.

There is much evidence of my wisdom in my restraint in this matter (including calling it "this matter"). I'm reluctant to allow any emotion to reach rarified heights, choosing instead to step back from them and amuse myself with their irrationality. A tendency of mine in past infatuations is to feign indifference to the object's presence and my feelings toward her. It's happening this time around as well, but not without a grinning remonstrance to myself. I'm two people anymore, the Fool and the Wise Man--or maybe I always have been--the latter amused by the former. The Wise Man has finally outgrown the Fool, can finally step aside and let him pass, the better to observe his missteps. Though, of course, the Wise Man is no mere observer, but does the Fool know he is being watched, much less manipulated? The Fool might be grateful if he weren't a fool; and the Wise Man would not be so well amused. I'm grateful for the Wise Man's growth, and nearly as grateful for the Fool's lack of it. But I don't enjoy the pangs of foolish reaction before the wisdom rationally calms it, and I would like to shorten the distance between the two, sever the tangle that momentarily confuses the Fool with the Wise Man. Perhaps that is actually putting distance between them. But as they spring from a common source, that may be asking for schizophrenia, the denial of the Fool as a responsibility of the Wise Man's.

^There is no entanglement of the Fool and the Wise Man; neither is there separation. The Fool has always been laughing; the Wise Man has gotten in a chuckle here and there. The Fool laughs with joy, without malice, at what he doesn't know or care; the Wise Man chuckles at the feckless fool, pretending not to envy his insouciance. This post was almost purely the Wise Man's puffery. He didn't have a clue.

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