In the evening my wife generally reads. At the moment she is reading Henri Troyat’s biography of Tolstoy. She isn’t just satisfied to read, but identifies with the individuals mentioned and brings them into our lives. Tolstoy, according to Troyat and Marie, was a horrible man. His long suffering wife, Sophia, runs the estate while Tolstoy writes his books, lives like a peasant, believes in sex only for procreation and feels holy as he ponders the great questions of existence. The Tolstoys have twelve children, and Sophia also copies his manuscripts and inserts his corrections. At the moment Marie identifies with Sophia.

“What are you going to do today?” Marie asks.

“I’m going to study the Chinese Enlightenment for Yiyan’s project. I’m also going to study four genera of fungi for the mycological society and possibly write a letter.” With thunderclouds gathering I retain sufficient instinct for self-preservation not to mention the computer and OLO.

“I mean. What are you actually going to DO?” Marie has told me about Tolstoy and his long-suffering wife. After briefly considering suicide I get up, for recycling take apart the mango box, dry the frames for the fruit-drying machine, uproot the asparagus fern (Asparagus aethiopicus) growing around the bird bath and do the grocery shopping. Now I am sufficiently differentiated from Tolstoy to go back to the computer.

Marie has done two loads of washing, made breakfast and lunch, planned supper, boiled and pickled beetroot. Her bookmark is placed almost 2/3 of the way through the book. Tolstoy will be leaving us soon.

“You love the computer more than you love me.” “You don’t do anything around the house.” “You don’t talk to me enough.” Those are my wife’s three main complaints. What are your spouses’ complaints about you?

Hahaha… my spouse recently appears unhappy that I am not of high enough prestige or rank in the online game Evony (server 33) to help him out now that he has formed an Alliance that consists of him and me (the newbie).


Back in the real world… he wouldn’t dare complain about a damn thing.

Delightful, david f
Tolstoy was indeed an opinionated fellow--he hated Shakespeare with a passion--but addictive to read. I think I've read his entire output, including War and Peace twice. I'm always struck by his excoriating authorial voice booming above the narrative.

My first wife's disposition was wholly unsuited to mine; she was ultra-conservative, and I've always been a radical (glorified fault-finder). Our epic clashes, then, ensued either from my being sarcastic or critical of her, or from her constantly seeking to reform me. These attempts at reform were doomed to fail, however, so she resorted instead to superimposing a socially acceptable exterior. Thus, whenever we were thrown among family, friends, or even the great unwashed, I was invariably cautioned to "mind my P's and Q's". This gratuitous refrain irritated me no end. But that was not all; generally, as we were about to sally forth, having completed my indifferent toilet, she would ask, "are you wearing 'that'?". "No, dear", I would retort, "I'm just trying it on"!
Ours was the unhappiest of unions, though my wife could not be persuaded that it was so.
Therefore I aver that whatever other feelings obtain between two parties intent on becoming one, be sure that your politics are congenial!

My partner's occasional complaints about me generally stem from my god-like influence over the elements and animals - particularly when I'm away from home, which is when I arrange for unseasonal gales and frosts in my absence, and for our domestic animals to develop wanderlust and go walkabout.

The more frequent complaints derive from my absolute refusal to reduce the number of books in my study (and elsewhere...)

Did somebody mention the amount of time they spend on the computer?

Davidf,

My wife has only 2 complaint about me.......Everything I do and everything I don't do.
And me, My complaints of here.......err nothing dear.

Boom boom an oldie but a goodie.
Cheers ;-)

Dear David f,

My husband's basic complaint about me is the fact
that I'm not adventurous enough. I'm not a very
good traveller - whereas he is, has a cast iron
stomach, and loves to be on the move, discovering
new places, new people, new adventures. If he could
he'd spend his life travelling. I'm more of a home-body.

Also at present we've got family commitments that we
just can't pack up and leave. I know that he's itching
to 'get away from it all ASAP - but at present we just
can't. And, I know he finds it all very frustrating.

Today is my husbands Birthday.

[smile]

You're excused from any more posting obligations for the night.

[wink]

My second wife (partner if you like), is quite delightful, and fully 16 years my junior! She makes me feel both young and old (we have 9 month old twins).
When I'm unreasonable, Kerry always remains bafflingly unruffled. Confronted with such equanimity, I soon find myself sidling up to her and begging forgiveness.

Foxy,
I'm on your side; my home is my favourite destination.
...Though I do enjoy a spot of whaling with Ishmael and Quiqueg, or tarrying behind on foot with Sancho while the Don makes a fool of himself.
I do like your stanzaic form btw

Here is a first instalment of a favourite essay by Gore Vidal that seems apposite: "The Birds and the Bees"

Recently, while assembling forty years of bookchat,
I noted with some alarm--even guilt--that I had
never really explained sex. True, I have demonstrated
that sex is politics and I have noted that the
dumb neologisms, homo-sexual and hetero-sexual, are adjectives
that describe acts but never people. Even so, I haven’t
spelled the whole thing out. So now, before reading skills further
atrophy, let me set the record straight, as it were.
First, the bad news: Men and women are not alike. They
have different sexual roles to perform. Despite the best efforts
of theologians and philosophers to disguise our condition,
there is no point to us, or to any species, except proliferation
and survival. This is hardly glamorous, and so to give Meaning
to Life, we have invented some of the most bizarre religions
that . . . alas, we have nothing to compare ourselves to. We are
biped mammals filled with red sea water (reminder of our oceanic
origin), and we exist to reproduce until we are eventually
done in by the planet’s changing weather or a stray meteor.
Men and women are dispensable carriers, respectively, of
seeds and eggs; programmed to mate and die, mate and die,
mate and die. One can see why “love” was invented by some
artist who found depressing the dull mechanics of our mindless
mission to be fruitful and multiply.

....Apparently, the first human societies were tribal-extended
families. Then the pre-nuclear family was invented. Skygods
were put in place--jealous ones, too. The monotheistic religions
from which we continue to suffer are fiercely grounded
on the only fact that we can be certain of, Man plus Woman
equals Baby. This, for many, IS the Natural Law. Inevitably,
if unnaturally, natural lawyers thought up marriage and monogamy
and then, faced with the actual nature of the male
and the female, they created numerous sexual taboos in order
to keep the population in line so that the senior partners in
the earthly firm could keep the rest of us busy building expensive
pyramids to the glory of the Great Lawyer in the Sky.

(“It’s all in the vagina, dear”) Freud, noted, all those
fierce do’s and don’ts have created discontents, not to mention
asthma and date rape. In fact, everything that the Book
(from which comes Judaism, Christianity, Islam) has to say
about sex is wrong. Of course, practically everything the Book
has to say about everything else, including real estate, is wrong
too, but today’s lesson is sex.
The male’s function is to shoot semen as often as possible into
as many women (or attractive surrogates) as possible,
while the female’s function is to be shot briefly by a male in
order to fertilize an egg, which she will lay nine months later.
Although there is nothing anywhere in the male psyche that
finds monogamy natural or normal (the scientific search for
monogamous, exclusively heterosexual mammals has been
sadly given up, while our feathery friends--those loving
doves, too--have let the natural lawyers down), the monogamous
concept is drilled into the male’s head from birth because,
in the absence of those original tribal support systems
that we discarded for the Book, someone must help the
woman during gravidity and the early years of baby rearing.
If one starts with the anatomical difference, which even a
patriarchal Viennese novelist was able to see was destiny,

...then
one begins to understand why men and women don’t get on
very well within marriage, or indeed in any exclusive sort of long-range sexual relationship. He is designed to make as
many babies as possible with as many different women as he
can get his hands on, while she is designed to take time off
from her busy schedule as astronaut and role model to lay an
egg and bring up the result. Male and female are on different
sexual tracks, and that cannot be changed by the Book or any
book. Since all our natural instincts are carefully perverted
from birth, it is no wonder that we tend to be, if not all of
us serial killers, killers of our own true nature.
It is a fact that, like any species, our only function is replication.
It is a fact that even the dullest and most superstitious
of us now suspects that we may have overdone the replicating.
Five and a half billion people now clutter a small planet
built for two. Simply to maintain the breeders in the United
States we have managed to poison all our water. Yes, all of
it. When I was told this by a member of the Sierra Club, I
asked, so what do we drink? And he said, well, some of it’s
less poisoned than the rest. Despite the fulminations of the
Sky Lawyer’s earthly representatives, some effort is being
made to limit population. But the true damage is already
done, and I would not bet the farm on our species continuing
in rude health too far into the next century. Those who would
outlaw abortion, contraception and same-sex marriage, while extolling
the family and breeding are themselves the active agents of
the destruction of our species. I would be angrier if I had a
high opinion of the species, but I don’t, and so I regard with
serenity Pope and Ayatollah as the somehow pre-programmed
agents of our demise, the fate of every species. Hordes of furious
lemmings are loose among us; and who would stay
them,

particularly if they have the Book to throw?
But while we are still here, I suggest a change in attitude
among those few capable of rational thought. Let us accept
the demonstrable fact that the male has no exclusive object
in his desire to shoot.
The Day America Told the Truth is a recent book in which
a cross section of the population expressed its ignorance on
many issues and confessed to some of its most dreadful deeds
and reveries. Since 91 percent of the population admit telling
lies habitually, I can’t think why the authors should take
too seriously the lies new-minted for them; but then, lies often
illustrate inadvertent truths. A majority of men and women
like oral sex (as the passive partner, presumably). Next in popularity
was sex with a famous person. Plainly being blown by
George or Barbara Bush would be the ultimate trip for our
huddled masses.
Although the authors list twenty-three sexual fantasies
(such as sex in a public-pubic?-place), they do not ask
about same-sex fantasies, which tells us where they area, as we
say in pollster land, coming from. But in what peopled do,
they report that 17 percent of the men and 11 percent of the
women practice same-sex. This strikes me as low--even mendacious.
It is true that in the age of AIDS both sexes are very
nervous about same-sex or even other-sex, but not, surely, in
experimental youth. In the pre-war Southern town of Washington,
D.C., it was common for boys to have sex with one
another. It was called “messing around,” and it was no big deal.
If the boy became a man who kept on messing around, it was
thought a bit queer--sexual exclusivity IS odd and suggests
obsession-but no big deal as long as he kept it quiet.
If he didn’t, our natural lawyers would do their best to deprive
him of his inalienable rights. In any case, I don’t think
the folks have changed all that much since 1948, when 37 percent
of the men told Dr. Kinsey that they had messed around
in those years.

.........Certainly, women today are more candid about their preference
for other women. Although this “preference” has been
noted for millenniums, it was thought by shootists to be simply
a coming together of two unhappy wives for mutual solace.
Instead, there seems to have been a strong sexual element
all along. But then a pair of egg-layers will have more in common
(including a common genetic programming for nurturing)
than they will ever have with a shootist, who wants to
move on the second he’s done his planting--no nurturing for
him, no warm, mature, caring relationship. He isn’t built
for it. His teats may have a perky charm but they are not connected
to a dairy. He can fake a caring relationship, of course,
but at great cost to his own nature, not to mention battered
wife and abused little ones. The fact that couples may live together
harmoniously for decades is indeed a fact, but such
relationships are demonstrations not of sexuality but of
human comity--I dare not use the word “love,” because the 91 percent who habitually he do so about love.
Unfortunately, the propaganda to conform is unrelenting.
In a charming fable of a movie, Moonstruck, a middle-aged
woman discovers that her husband is having an affair with
another woman. As the wife is a loving, caring, warm, mature
person in love with her husband, why on earth would he
stray from her ancient body, which is ever-ready to receive his
even greater wreck of a biped? Why do men chase women?
Why do they want more than one woman? She askse veryone
in sight and no one can think of an answer until she herself
does: Men fear death, she says--something that, apparently,
women never do. Confronted with this profound insight, the
husband stops seeing the other woman. Whether or not he
loses the fear of death is unclear. This is really loony. It is true
that sex/death are complementary: No sex, no birth for the
unlucky nonamoeba; once born, death-that’s our ticket.
Meanwhile, fire at will.

And the last little bit.
Now we can go back to being romantic about it all.
"...When people were few and the environment was hostile, it
is understandable that we should have put together a Book
about a Skygod that we had created in our own image--a
breathtaking bit of solipsism, but why not? The notion is
comforting, and there were no Book reviewers at the time of
publication, while later ones, if they wrote bad Book reviews,
were regularly condemned to death by natural lawyers employing
earthly hitmen, as Salman Rushdie can testify. Then
our Skygod told us to multiply in a world that he had put together
just for us, with dominion over every living thing.
Hence the solemn wrecking of a planet that, in time, will do
to us what we have done to it.
Meanwhile, “the heterosexual dictatorship,” to use Isherwood’s
irritable phrase, goes on its merry way, adding unwanted
children to a dusty planet while persecuting the virtuous
nonbreeders. Actually, the percentage of the population that
is deeply enthusiastic about other-sex is probably not much
larger than those exclusively devoted to same-sex--something
like 10 percent in either case. The remaining 80 percent does
this, does that, does nothing; settles into an acceptable if dull
social role where the husband dreams of Barbara Bush while
pounding the old wife, who lies there, eyes shut, dreaming of
Barbara too. Yes, the whole thing is a perfect mess, but my
conscience is clear, I have just done something more rare than
people suspect-stated the obvious."

Dear Sqeers,

Thank You for your Gore Vidal montage.
He's such a clever man - but a bit too
cynical about love and marriage.
Though who can blame him with divorce
skyrocketing.

Opening ourselves to love makes us vulnerable
to loss. Many people, particularly if they lost
someone close in their early lives, protect
themselves from this pain by keeping love, and lovers,
at a safe distance. Unfortunately they miss out,
and so does everyone around them. As sex and marital
therapist David Schnarch says: "Loving is not for the
weak, nor for those who have to be carefully kept,
nor for the faint of heart..."

You, dear Squeers, are lucky!
You seem to have it all - you've found what you
need to nurture your soul, to give life meaning.
You've found your significant other...

Well thank you, Foxy, for those nice thoughts. Gore vidal does push a rather bleak line. I think he does this for effect; human delusion is such that the brains often have to be bludgeoned with a large (rhetorical) hammer to have any sense knocked into them. I thought the essay was topical in the thread, especially after the Pied Piper's persiflage. Anyway, 'twas nice to see a thread that promised a bit of charm.
I am very lucky I s'pose, but like humanity in general, I suspect, I still manage a few grumbles about my lot--nature of the beast!
:-))