11 February, 2024

My days of wine and roses

Some of the things I write in this post are excerped from things I have previously written here. But with Valentine's day looming over us, I felt inclined to do a summary. Below is the famous poem behind my heading:

"They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.


They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream"

In other words, one is expected to have some happy years in one's youth which soon vanish never to return.

I have been much luckier than that. My days have been good most of the time. I have drunk much wine and given many roses. I count my good days as the ones I have been in happy relationships. And in my last 60 years that has been most of the time.

In April, 2021, when I was 76, however, I came out of a long relationship. The older one gets, the harder it becomes to form new partnerships so my prospects of more wine and roses seemed bleak. Many old people die alone.

But my luck held. There were two episodes still to come which were notably good.


1). At the very end of that year, I met Zoe, a lady of Serbian origin, also in her '70s.

It was not love at first sight but we did like one-another from the beginning and that soon deepened. The biggest surprise is that she and I are about as incompatible as it gets. I fail to understand her strong European accent a lot of the time and I am as unfit as she is super-fit. She jogs for miles every day and I walk only short distances. She is still pretty good-looking for her age while my looks break cameras these days. And that's just the start of our differences.

So compatibility is not all it's cracked up to be!

So what works between us? Hard to say definitively but I think it begins with us liking one-another. And we are both around top of the IQ range. She once said: "I used to go for handsome men but they are all stupid!"

I think the main influence that keeps us together is a principle I have always followed: If you find two good things in another person all the rest can be negotiated or adapted to. And the two things I particularly look for in women are a high IQ and a liking for classical music.

And my little Serb has both of those two rare qualities. She is even strongly moved by the music of J.S. Bach. That latter would mean nothing to most people but it is huge to me as I feel the same way about Bach. Mine are minority tastes but as an academic I am stuck with them.

We are also both high-functioning autistics so understand one-another's autistic behaviours when they emerge. The fellowship of the autistics is an unlikely concept but something like that does seem to work for Zoe and me at times. And aging does mellow one. At my age I have nothing to prove and no need to achieve. So I can just sit back and just enjoy a relationship for what it is.

On Christmas day, 2022 we just lay in bed talking for most of the time together -- with her doing most of the talking, as usual. She spent some time talking about Trajan, which is a pretty intellectual topic. I am myself interested in Roman history so I knew what she was talking about. She has a lot of intellectual interests -- principally in ancient history, European literature and clinical psychology. We have shared high culture interests and that pleases both of us. On one occasion, when Zoe wanted to mock me as being idle (I am) she quite appositely referred to me as being an Oblomov, which is an allusion to a classic 19th century Russian novel.

On another occasion, Zoe gave me an extended lecture in moral philosophy. She likes Erich Fromm's rejection of relativism. I said nothing in response but I was familiar with her topic. I have had a few academic articles on the topic published.

Zoe also has a good sense of humor and a liking for kisses and cuddles. She often falls asleep in my arms and I like that. So there was a lot of affection between us. It lasted for two years and I have many good memories of it. It still seems amazing to me that I had many days of wine and roses so late in life.



2). And my days of wine and roses did not end there. I recently experienced more such days with another fine woman. Anna is actually one of the tenants in my house but we took to one another from the first time we met. So we quite often had meals together. We have become very good friends and I appreciated her companionship. As an 80-year-old it is a privilege for me to have a young and pretty face opposite me at dinners.

She is of Fijian Indian origin, born 5/12/88 so now aged 35. Her parents came with her to Brisbane from Fiji when she was 5. Her skin is not much darker than a suntan would deliver so she would be seen as high caste in India. Having done all her education up to degree level in Brisbne she is culturally Australian and speaks unaccented Australian English. She also speaks Fijian Hindi. She is tiny: short -- 5' -- and slim but with a strong personality.

She has a degree in nursing -- B.Nsg -- from QUT but has not trained as a nurse. She works as an assistant at a Brisbane hospital. She does dog-minding in her spare time. She says dogs are her best friends.

From the beginning we got on well and she soon started accompaning me on my evening walk. I saw her as a very nice person so enjoyed her company. It wasn't long before I started asking her out for meals -- breakfasts, lunches and dinners. And our meals together were very congenial. I found her interesting to talk to, perhaps in part because she has a nursing degree and has thought a lot about relationships. We also seemed to agree on most things. It was very easy to be with her.

She does not have a classically female figure but I still really like her looks and quite admire the way she walks. She seems to glide silently rather than actually walk. She is clearly light on her feet.

There is however a huge age gap between us. She is 35 and I am 80 so a relationship between us is out of the question. For that reason we have enjoyed one-another's company but have never kissed or cuddled, though we have had some affectionate hugs. But despite limits we still became very close to one another. I would seek her out and she would seek me out. There were days when we saw one another 3 times in the one day- morning, noon and night.

We enjoyed that for some time but in the end she saw that we were getting too close and that being in a semi-relationship with a man old enough to be her grandfather was unseemly. I could see her point so did not dispute it. We have virtually stopped seeing one-another but still occasionally talk to one another via text so I am happy with that outcome. For a time she gave me a wonderfully close relationship quite out of the blue and an experience that an old guy like me could not expect. It was one of my life's best experiences and I am glad I lived long enough to experience it



This note originated as a blog post. For more blog postings from me, see
DISSECTING LEFTISM,
TONGUE-TIED,
EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL,
GREENIE WATCH,
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, and
AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. I update those frequently.



Much less often, I update Paralipomena , A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and most days I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.