2002-01-08 - 8:17 p.m.

Two spirits that go by 'Patricia'.

I should say two girls, but that would lend them to the infantile. And what have children been, to me? Uncommunicative, surly archangels of doom (I cannot gaze past the obvious). They are habitual creatures while I search for an amante.

Italian is the language of these dreams - amante, diamante,

Amant, amour, amethyst, bien-pensant Amelia. If I were Jonson she would be Celia. Oh the strings are without bounds. She exists to saunter, close to me with a space peopled with Gargoyles. But it is of my own volition - this all is. The pieces are down to me, I have placed them there. There can be a beginning and an end.

Two Patricias. Who are they?

P1 - an old school-mate. Two years spent in close proximity. Saucy. Occasionally flamboyant. A bar-maiden. Gathers the chips of life. I would call her a chanteuse manque but we are all so young. I would not call her conventionally beautiful. What of intelligence? This is usually Chapter the first with me. She shares melancholy, a love of food, a fondness for words spoken softly. We have yet to actually meet. There are only words to people our increasingly mordant silences. I think that I'd feel like some sort of miniature beside her. Full disclosure forces me to reveal that I couriered to her four books, a rarity and a seasonal card, all scented, all upon Christmas Eve.

P2 - a rencontre drawn by chance. Shares my love of books (I am led to believe). Volatile. Can smile without a trace of despondency. Laughs like she's always playing tiddly-winks. We have dated precisely twice. First time this past summer; dinner, Twelfth Night, retour-a-la-maison and a charring mishap. A car accident verging on the comic. Despite my best entreaties chose to call upon a friend rather then surrender to the charm of an empty house.

Second meeting was a recent Friday night. Dinner, again. Three hours of continuous chatter. Laughter. Wine. Smiles. Cautious flirting on my part. I never truly call upon myself, am too afraid. Strange - without the 'exigencies of company' excuse I still managed elementary tipsiness. Procedural failure. My tongue is loosened and I begin to emerge. Melancholy. Irrepressible bursts of colour. Various languages. A 'cherie' thrown in. I picked my garrulous self up and we walked the deserted streets of Valletta - the Street of the Republic. Not even perilously close to a kiss. Quoth I 'O that this too too sullied flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew...'. But she doesn't know Horatio 'Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels to sing thee to thy rest'. Denouement: all-too-foregone - night ended peaceably, myself bereft.

I try to savour these snippets, these random hours when I can enter my element. Then I come home at night to an empty bed and I complain. I, capable of a waltz to physicality, wish at the same time to elude the attendant consequences of devolution. That is what physical expression is to me - a radical devolvement of responsibility.

I'm just saying this because I probably kiss like a gormless Yankee.

I want to find someone and for the both of us to find, concurrently, a mother tongue. There are dragons to be slayed, first.

Yet I am no Macduff.

troilus

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