Look! I have friends! And other miscellany

Three days in a row, including tomorrow, I will spend at least a few hours a day with friends. As in, leave my house and deliberately go somewhere to spend time with people I don’t live with. I’m always a little bit amazed when this happens. I forget, sometimes, that I have friends who want to and can spend time with me.

Yesterday I had lunch with a flatmate from last year, who just got a PhD place here. So yay! She’s coming back to town! It’s very exciting! Especially since she’s the one flatmate from last year that I’ve kept in consistent touch with. And it’s inspired me to at least think about getting back to my own research stuff. I started reading Pearl last night. It’s slow going, but Middle English always is.

Today I was sitting on my bed, slowly getting ready for the day (not unusual), in my bathrobe and towel-turban, when there was a knock on my door and a friend called “BREAKFAST!” So I got dressed and he treated me to breakfast. Then he accompanied me to my initial counseling session, and after that was over, we went to Nottingham Contemporary for the Star City (art and propaganda surrounding the Soviet space program) exhibit.

And while we were doing that, I got a text from another friend, inviting me for coffee before she leaves next week. But I was, of course, unavailable, so I suggested tomorrow instead (we’re meeting for lunch). I’m going to miss her sooooo much when she goes.

I really like Nottingham Contemporary as a gallery. As a building, it’s growing on me although I still think it looks out of place. But as a gallery, it’s lovely. The current exhibit (their second), as I said, focuses on the Soviet space program. It’s named Star City, after the cosmonaut quarters outside of Moscow. It’s primarily modern art, although there are some prints of propaganda posters. It’s also a multimedia exhibit, with a few video and audio things complementing the visual art. The first two galleries also had a sort of electrical theme to them. There was really only one piece that stood out to both me and my friend as “good”* - a sort-of abstract representation of a womb with a red fetus and a black fetus (twins). The red one had a small picture of Castro and the black one had a small picture of Kennedy. I can’t remember the full title, but “We are twins” was a part of it. There was also a giant spacesuit – able to be walked through – representing Tereshkova. One of the things that the Soviet space program did so much better than the US space program was diversity, especially inclusion of women.

*We both agreed that we don’t really “get” modern art in many cases. I was reminded of that Murphy Brown episode, as I almost always am while at contemporary art galleries.

For my birthday, my awesome housemates got me the DVD set of Casualty 1900s, which I had been wanting for a while. And I am obsessed, and can’t stop watching it. There are only 10 episodes at this point, and no word yet on whether there will be another series (season), but I love every single one. It’s so well-produced, well-written, well-acted, and above all, historically accurate. Historical fiction of the highest quality, with a touch of the soaps thrown in. It’s made me ever so interested in medical history, as well as the personal histories of the characters. (Like the lead romantic couple, Dr Culpin and Nurse Bennett, who did get married in real life, eventually.) It’s also helped me clarify my “modern” history/literature interest, which is absolutely Edwardian. Give me 1901-1919 and I’m happy. Much past that, and you get into officially modernist territory, which I really don’t like as much. Even my true literary love, Forster, is more appealing to me in the early works (Room with a View was 1906, Howards End 1910). I knew this before, of course, but this has helped me actually formulate it.

Hawthorn and Cauliflower

The unluckiest day to get married is a Saturday in May, at least according to English superstition. My best friend and I discovered this last night as we were browsing Oxfam’s online shop¹ for wedding dresses.

It’s such a stereotypically girl thing to do – and neither of us is dating anyone² so it’s really more of an academic exercise than anything else. But some of these dresses were actually really amazing. Some of them were the trendy strapless kind, of course, which are lovely but not for me³, but I think I found my hypothetical wedding dress.⁴ Some of the dresses are not so amazing. There was one in particular that was just horrifyingly bad. It overemphasized the hips and butt area, and didn’t look like it would fit an actual woman. My eyes, they burned. But some of the dresses were great, and in the fictional world where I get married and have a wedding⁵, I am at least looking at Oxfam first.⁶

Not all the dresses were white, either. There was a silver one and a gold one and one with a tartan train. It got us thinking about the traditions and superstitions around weddings. Most people know “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” but did you know that Saturday used to be considered unlucky for weddings? Wednesday was the best day to get married. And May used to be an unlucky month. July and August weren’t bad, but November and December would bring you the most happiness. There are also superstitions about the dress colour and what day you buy the ring. And of course there are the traditions within the ceremony itself: the bridesmaids’ role as decoys, leaving the bridal outfit unfinished until the morning of the wedding, the cake, the confetti, shoes on the back of the car.

But my favourite by far is the medieval Breton tradition around the proposal. This just fascinates me. A suitor would leave a hawthorn branch outside his beloved’s door on May Day. If she accepted, she would leave it there. If she rejected him, she would replace it with a cauliflower. This brings all sorts of questions to my mind. What if the girl was away for the day? What if there was more than one marriageable daughter in the house? What if a girl had more than one suitor? What if someone interfered and stole the hawthorn branch, or the cauliflower? What does a boy do if he wants to propose on a different date? On the surface it seems like such a simple procedure, but I am afraid that it would be more trouble than it’s worth. But as long as they don’t get married on a May Saturday, I’m sure everything would work out.

¹Did you know that Oxfam sells wedding dresses through its online shop? Did you know that Oxfam has an online shop? They do. I volunteer there.

²She only seems to attract creepy guys, and I only seem to help guys figure out that they want someone else.

³I’d be too worried about it falling down, no matter how tightly it was taped and bound.

⁴My views on marriage and weddings are firm, although not immutable, and very similar to my views on children: great and wonderful and special….when they’re other people’s.

⁵That order is deliberate.

⁶I think I'm done with the footnotes now.

I tried to do the jumping-footnotes thing, but it didn't work....I'll learn html better and then come back and fix them. Sorry for making you all scroll up and down.

Eighteen months to go.....

The dissertation has been turned in; I’m not completely happy with it, to the point where I almost want to apply for a PhD just to have the external motivation to make it better, but it has been turned in and there’s nothing I can do now but wait and hope that I haven’t disappointed my supervisor and second reader.

Today (September 12) marks eighteen months until my thirtieth birthday. In some notebook somewhere I have a list of ‘things I want to have accomplished before I turn 30’. I should find that list. I know one of the things on it is ‘make a decision about a PhD’….so I give myself eighteen months to decide. Another thing I know was on the list was ‘get the novel into publishable form’. So I have eighteen months to get that done, too. I can’t remember what else was on there, other than ‘be or have been in a long-term relationship’ which is not something I can control in the same way…

What else should be on my list?

Poetry day!

In the hypothetical world in which I get married, one of the songs I will have at the reception is The Beatles’ Here, There and Everywhere off the Revolver album. I firmly believe that this is one of the most romantic songs of all time. (I don’t know what copyright restrictions there are about posting complete poems and lyrics and things, so I’m not going to risk it. I got the lyrics from here.)


Let’s start with the very first line:
To lead a better life, I need my love to be here
Now, I am not advocating obsessive and possessive behavior, but I do believe that having a happy relationship/being a happy person will help you lead a better life. It’s like the line from whatever movie: “You make me want to be a better man.” [As Good As It Gets? I don’t know, I just know the line from previews/commercials/etc.] Love should make you want to lead a better life; it should give you the emotional security to be able to do so.

A few lines later:
Nobody can deny that there’s something there.
True happiness is radiant. The best couples that I know have almost visible chemistry together. Friends and strangers alike look at them and know that they are, or should be, together.

Both of us thinking how good it could be.
The best couples that I know are partnerships. Both parts of the couple are invested in the relationship, and involved in the relationship to a similar level. If one person is more ‘in love’ than the other, the relationship is unbalanced, which doesn’t bode well. This line implies that the relationship in the song is equal. They’re both thinking how good it could be – the singer (he, from now on, because it’s The Beatles) isn’t just longing for someone he can’t have.

Same with the next line:
Someone is speaking but she doesn’t know he’s there.
This also shows the girl having an active part of the relationship – she’s just as interested in and captivated by the singer as he is by her. And I’ve totally been in that situation, where I’m with someone I’m interested in and completely forget that there are other people around. It’s a lovely feeling, especially when it’s mutual: when neither of you notice that you're surrounded by other people. *sigh*

Knowing that love is to share
Each one believing that love never dies
More proof that this is not a one-sided, unrequited relationship. This is a relationship that at least has the potential to last a lifetime. This is not a fling, where you expect it to end; this is an actual relationship with all the possibilities that involves.

Every line is like this; the lyrics are perfect. Almost every word either points to the equality of the relationship or the depth of their feelings. They show a couple that is equally dedicated to each other, not just unrequited infatuation like so many ‘romantic’ songs. And the melody is sweet and relatively simple. It’s soft and slow and singable. What better song to play at a (fictional) wedding reception, a celebration of love and partnership and the future?

Fear of Commitment, continued

"Calling All Cynics"

This is, I feel, a good definition of skeptic, cynic, and pessimist. It’s like the definition I heard or read once for introvert vs. extrovert – I can’t remember where I heard or read it, but I have completely adopted it – where an extrovert is someone who recharges by being around other people and an introvert recharges by being alone. With that definition, I am definitely an introvert. I need to be around other people sometimes, or I go stir-crazy, but being around especially large groups of people definitely drains me.

I feel the same way about the definitions given here, especially when it comes to me and love. I think I’m somewhere between a skeptic and a cynic. I trusted, and was betrayed/let down, and it was devastating. I was devastated. By that criteria, I’m a cynic. But I don’t think that I refuse to trust now. I am reluctant to trust, definitely, but I don’t think I completely refuse to trust. There are people I have met recently that I trust.

But then I think about how I was with my last ‘boyfriend’ – I was and am still totally crazy about him, and wish we hadn’t had to end things, and am going to miss him terribly when he finally leaves town. But I deliberately told myself I wasn’t going to fall in love with him. I wouldn’t let myself – even in my own head – use those terms. I like him a lot, and there’s no one else I’d rather spend time with right now, and talking to him in any form makes me happy, and seeing him (especially dance) with other women makes me insanely jealous to the point where I feel physically ill. But I won’t let myself, even in the privacy of my own head, say that I’m in love with him. Whenever I started coming close to that idea, I would remind myself of the reasons that it would never work long-term, or I would force myself into an emotional or communication distance – deliberately so that I wouldn’t get too close to him and fall in love. So, yeah, I suppose that, with him, I refuse to trust. I suppose that I am, when it comes to relationships, a cynic.

This also plays into my previous post about what-ifs. What if I’d let myself get closer to him and fall in love with him – or admit it, at least – and just let myself go all-out emotionally, the way I did with CD? Would things be different now? Would we have been willing to at least attempt a long-distance relationship? Or would I just be devastated again, and have lost him from my life completely? Obviously, there’s no way of knowing, but I can’t stop myself from dwelling on it.

It’s like the article says, “Deep inside all skeptics and most cynics is a deep ache to trust again, but to do so without the fear of being let down, disappointed, betrayed or devastated.” I doubt that he reads this blog, or even knows that it exists, but I almost wish that he did. I wish I could say these things to him, but I can’t. I don’t trust him – or really myself – enough to think that it would make a difference. The cynic in me can’t believe that it would make any difference. Even though deep inside I want to be proven wrong, I want to have that chance, I can’t and won’t let myself take that emotional risk. And I will be stuck with these what-ifs forever.

Crazy talk

At what point in a new relationship should romantic history be brought up? And how?

Of course you don’t want to start off a new relationship by comparing it to your previous ones. But past experience informs – sometimes to a large extent – present behavior. And knowledge of someone’s past experience can explain their present behavior – not necessarily excuse it, but make it more understandable. (“Oh, thaaat’s why she does that…. She needs to get over it.”) So telling a new boy/girl friend a bit about your past might be useful for explaining seemingly crazy behavior and getting through those first tenuous weeks/months.

For example, and this is a minor example in my personal arsenal of crazy, when my guy and I go dancing, I tend to watch him and be aware of where he is as much as I can. Part of it is that I really like watching him dance – he’s a good dancer and very fun to watch – but the other night I was watching him and thinking about it and realized that a part of the reason that I watch him so much is because of the time that I was abandoned at a dance by a date who left with someone else. [People who have ever talked to me about my love life may remember this story as “the date who brought a date to our date”.] Obviously that is not the full reason (he’s really fun to watch!) but it is a part of the reason.

And that’s not the only example. I have any number of paranoias – and I say paranoias deliberately because intellectually I know that they are irrational – about relationships. I know exactly where they come from – almost to the day in some cases. I can recognize their effect on my thought patterns and I am sure that they affect my actual behavior to an extent. Being trapped in them, I can’t objectively evaluate their impact on my behavior, but I’m sure it’s there. And I feel like it might help if people involved with me know about these paranoias and the triggers for them, so that they know that I’m not trying to act like a lunatic. I just don’t know what the best way to bring it up would be.

What if.....

The greatest stories come out of “what if” questions. Personally, I really like speculative fiction, especially parallel universe and time travel stories. They usually come out of the biggest “what if” questions. What if the Axis powers had won World War 2, or the Confederacy had won the Civil War? What if JFK were never assassinated? How would the world be different?

“What if” questions are also why I write romance, when I write anything non-academic (an increasingly rare occurrence). Since most of my what-ifs revolve around my love life (or lack thereof), my story writing is a way for me to come to terms with my own what-ifs. The biggest one is, of course, the summer before I went to Slovakia. What if I’d stayed in the US instead? My life would be incredibly different right now.*

What-ifs often present themselves right away. You walk away from a situation thinking, “Oh, I should have done x or said y”. You torture yourself for minutes, hours, or days with different variants of what you could have done or said to make things turn out differently. But the thing about what-ifs is that you can’t really evaluate them until time has passed, until your life has progressed beyond that turning point. I don’t want to get all fatalistic about stuff, but if things are meant to happen, they will happen. What-ifs suck at the time – and for years afterward in some cases – but in the end you may end up where you are supposed to be, even if it’s not where you planned and imagined.

And that’s why I write romances based (loosely) around my what-ifs. I love my life right here, right now, but I need to explore my what-ifs, and give myself a chance – even if it’s a fictional chance – to live out the life I am not leading.

*Of course, the what-if in that case has nothing to do with my actually going to Slovakia, since that was all in place before the what-if moment. But it’s complicated to explain without going into details, so it’s easier just to blame the what-if on Slovakia.

The Flanders Panel

I just finished reading The Flanders Panel by Arturo Perez-Reverte. It was pretty good, right up until the end. It wasn’t exceptional, and if I’d had anything waiting that I was anxious to read, I doubt I would have finished it, but I did enjoy it – right up to the end.

See, here’s the thing. You can’t do something “for” somebody when the somebody DOESN’T WANT YOU TO DO IT. And most of the time, when someone uses the excuse “I did it for you!” they’ve done something either illegal or really, really ill-advised that they knew (or at least suspected) you wouldn’t like. In the book, it’s killing people. In real life, it’s often breaking up with someone else, or moving, or something slightly less extreme but still life-changing.

Rule of thumb: unless the person says the words “do this for me,” you are not doing it “for” them. You may do it in the hopes that the person will like it, but you are not doing it “for” them.

Every time I have had someone tell me that they’ve done something “for” me, it has been something that I don’t want. Earrings, plans, breaking up with their girlfriend….it’s become kind of a peeve of mine, which is why I think I hated the ending of The Flanders Panel so much. Granted, killing people is a little bit more extreme than any of my stuff, but still – if the person doesn’t want you to do it, you are not doing it for them. You are doing it for yourself. Just admit it already.

The excuse wasn’t the only bad thing about the ending of the book, though – it kind of didn’t really make sense at all. But it’s the part that bugged me the most about it.

Carmens I have seen

Georges Bizet's opera Carmen premiered in 1875 to popular disapproval. It was a critical failure, and Bizet died thinking so. The plot is fairly simplistic. A soldier (Jose) falls in love with a gypsy girl (Carmen). He deserts his commission and his fiancee Michaela for her and joins her band of smugglers. Carmen tires of him (or doesn't, depending on how you interpret a couple of things) and Jose becomes violently jealous of her relationship with the toreador Escamillo, ultimately killing her.
It is my favourite opera.

The first time I saw Carmen was at college when a touring company of the London City Opera came through. The performance was fantastic. The staging was beautiful. The singing and acting was incredible. Don Jose and Michaela were perfect, literally perfect. Frasquita and Mercedes were excellent. Carmen....was not.
Personally, I picture Carmen the character in her early 20s. She is old enough to know and enjoy her effect on men but still young enough that she hasn't become disillusioned and/or isn't ready to settle down. The Carmen in the LCO production looked to be in her mid-40s. Vocally she was fine, but not great, but the worst part was that she confused "sex" with "sexiness". Sinuously moving your hips while dancing? Sexy. Humping the bench in the prison scene? Not sexy. Trailing a flower along someone's cheek? Sexy. Trying to mount your boyfriend while doing so? Not sexy. In every way that she could, this Carmen came down on the side of not sexy.
This wouldn't have been as much of a problem if Don Jose and Michaela hadn't been perfect and I do mean perfect. In Act One, you couldn't help believing that Jose and Michaela were childhood sweethearts who were deeply, passionately in love with each other. You believed wholeheartedly that when Michaela was delivering messages from his mother, she was really delivering them from herself. You believed wholeheartedly that Jose was just serving out his mandatory military service and when it was over, he would go back to his village, marry Michaela, and never think of the city again. Jose didn't ever so much as look at Carmen until she smacks him with the flower. There was no reason with the performance that night that Jose would be at all attracted to Carmen, or that he would continue to look at her even after she hit him with the flower. However, Jose's performance was so good that once he was "in love" with Carmen, you believed that he was in love with Carmen. Carmen's performance was just so bad that you didn't believe the reason.

The next time I saw Carmen was in Nottingham. Carmen as a character was much better; Jose wasn't but was still quite good. I really don't remember much about that performance, so it must not have been either really terrible or really great.

The third time I saw Carmen was in Banska Bystrica two years ago, and it totally changed the way that I approach this opera. Carmen herself was physically perfect - exactly the way I picture her. Jose wasn't great. Michaela was pretty good, even though no one has ever come close to the Jose and Michaela of LCO.
The thing that made it incredible was just a little thing, but it totally changed the show. During the second half of the overture, when Carmen's theme is playing, Jose was standing at the front of the stage, facing away from the audience. Through the bars of the city gates, Carmen's funeral procession went by.
This is seriously one of the coolest things ever, and I have not stopped telling people about it since then. By having Carmen's funeral procession at the beginning, and especially by having Jose watch it go by, the whole opera becomes Jose's memory of his relationship with Carmen, rather than pretending to be the actual events. By turning it into Jose's personal flashback, any script believability problems are taken care of. Of course Jose is going to idealize his relationship with Michaela and pretend that it's more about his mother. Of course Carmen is going to be an almost caricatured temptress that cast a spell on him with the flower. It's the way Jose remembers it - must remember it - to justify his actions. It is perfect.

I have seen Carmen twice (time numbers four and five) at the State Theatre in Kosice. Both times were fine. The first time I went with Katie, and it was only the second opera she'd seen. The first had been The Magic Flute, and she was amazed at the level of story-telling in this one compared to the Mozart. The second time I went with one of the Slovak teachers. We were sitting in a box on the left side and had a perfect view of the percussion section. There was this one guy playing the triangle that was pretty cute. He had this look on his face of "I am a classically trained percussionist.....playing the triangle." It wasn't an unhappy face - more sort of resigned and wry.
The other thing about the State Theatre is their main dramatic tenor. I like his voice fine, but when he sings, he only sings out of one side of his mouth. It makes it look like he's had a stroke.

The sixth time I saw Carmen, this past week, it was done by Monumental Opera, a touring company out of Germany. It was performed at the hockey arena, so in terms of acoustics it was like when Kirsten and I saw Simon and Garfunkel at the Excel Center. Luckily we were sitting essentially straight in front of the stage, so we could hear fine (except when Michaela's microphone cut out during her first scene. Normally I object to microphones during operas, but at a hockey arena it is inevitable).
The staging was very simplistic. Most of the set pieces were chairs, with a bench in Lilas Pastias's bar and barrels in the mountains. There was a door in the back screen with steps coming down from it for certain entrances and exits, but most of the visual setting cues came from projections on the back screen. It was pretty interesting and they did some creative things with it. For example, during Michaela's song about how much his mother misses him, they showed baby/childhood pictures of Jose and the countryside where he grew up. During the tarot card scene, they showed the full moon going through an eclipse and growing larger and larger until it took up almost the whole screen. In this computer/digital age, it makes sense to do something like that to have fewer large set pieces to create, load, and unload, especially for a touring company.
I thought that the acting during the show was pretty good (Angelica disagrees with me). During the fight scene in Act One, for instance, it seemed that the girls were actually trying to kill each other (as opposed to at the State Theatre when they were more like "Oh, no, keep me back.....eh") Vocally, people were fine, except for Carmen's vowels which got very flat more often than they should have, in my opinion. Escamillo was superb: very metrosexually flamboyant and confident and perfectly on pitch and in character. The one thing that was distracting was Don Jose. He was.....well, there's no better way to say it. He was rectangular. He was a head stuck on a cube (technically, I suppose, a prism), with no neck. His voice was fine, but when he walked out to relieve the guard, the first thought that came into my mind was "No WAY is that Jose." And then he started singing Jose's part and I had to admit it. It was like if Chris Farley had been an opera singer. And half a foot shorter. There is almost no way that he could have been less physically right (in my mind) for the part. I hate to sound that shallow, and his voice was fine, and I got used to it by intermission, but ... he had no neck. And he was a cube. Or technically a prism.

So I suppose my ideal Carmen, based on the six that I've seen so far (oh, I will definitely be seeing more during my lifetime), would have the Jose and Michaela from LCO, the Escamillo from Monumentalna, any Carmen except the LCO one, the interpretation of Banska Bystrica, and the triangle player from the State Opera. And myself as either Frasquita or Mercedes, of course. Priorities must be kept. :-)

The Office: The Chairmodel/Parking

I have other things to post here, too, but before it gets too late (and another episode airs) I just wanted to talk about last week’s episode of The Office. Now I am not going to talk about Michael being an absolute, complete, and total ass who is still living in a dream world – I mean, come on, I’m only in my late 20s and I’ve accepted that the movie/romance novel scenario is not going to play out in real life. Although the bit where he accidentally calls Jan is hilarious and I do think that it was subconsciously deliberate (if that’s not a contradiction in terms) and that they’ll be on again by the end of the season. I am also not going to talk about Dwight being sweet for Michael in a rather creepy, Dwight-like way. Or how awesomely pathetic Kevin is. Aw. I love Kevin.

No, the reason I watch the show – the reason I kept watching the show, rather, after the shuddering cringing horribleness of the first couple of episodes (I hate Diversity Day, I don’t care what people say) – is Jim and Pam. I adore Jim and Pam. I want to be Pam and have a Jim (although, see above about the movie/romance novel scenario).

I read a bit about The Office. Not living in the US, it’s the only way I can legitimately keep up with the show. This week, I read ew.com’s analysis, and the weecap and forums at televisionwithoutpity. Most of the commentators and posters seemed to think that the fact that Jim had bought an engagement ring for Pam a week after they started dating was creepy and spelled DOOM for them. I could not disagree more. (And luckily for me, one of my favourite internet television commentators agrees with me, calling it “legitimately romantic….more romantic than a proposal.” I definitely agree, and swoon.)

Jim has been in love with Pam for ages - not even in love with an idealized Pam although that was certainly a risk, but in love with Pam, herself, even when she was engaged to Roy, even when he tried not to be by dating Karen, even in episodes like "The Fight" or the end of "The Client" when she wasn't speaking to him for a little while. Once they actually went on a couple dates, and he realized that this was not just a case of wanting what he can't have, of COURSE he's going to start planning how to propose. I have absolutely no fear that they will break up, at all, whatsoever. It's just a matter of waiting for Pam herself to be ready - which is the other thing.

Some people commented that her face when Jim "ties his shoe" is terrified, not anticipatory, but I just don't see it. I think it was more of an "I'm not ready for this yet and the cameras are here" not "I don't want him to propose at all." I mean, she was with Roy for so long - and engaged to him for what, almost five years? Just because she wants to take this a little bit slower doesn't mean that she doesn't think that she and Jim are going to get married eventually. I think, if anything, she's not letting herself think that far in advance, BECAUSE of what happened with Roy. She doesn't want to start taking Jim and her relationship with Jim for granted; she wants to enjoy what it is right now before they move on to the next level (which makes relationships sound like a Nintendo game or something, but you know what I mean). It's not that she doubts that they're going to move on to the next level; she just wants to enjoy this one first. And Jim KNOWS that and accepts that, which is why he has the ring already - being prepared for the next level - but hasn't proposed yet - because she's not ready for that yet. But it is important to him and to them as a couple that they both are consciously aware that yes, this is serious, and yes, they will be getting to that point. And that’s what this episode was about, in their relationship – him letting her know that he is in it the whole way, and that when the timing is right – meaning when they are BOTH ready – it will happen.

Or maybe I’m just reading too much into fictional characters.