The Sunday Spinster Sermon: Part 16: Redemption

Hello dear readers.

It has now been six months since I began this little project and it takes my breath away how much has changed. I'm still enchanted by poetry and sculpture and myth and song but the essential part of me that has lasted for my 36 years has finally been shaken off. The yearning. 

At the end of the world, or Lamma Island off Hong Kong to be precise, at 7.11pm on Friday 21st December, I took part in a mighty powerful ceremony. Casting off old stories. Moving into new ones. We were all encouraged to write mini lifestories and burn them... Mine reads like a love story. As this whole post does really. So if you're feeling cynical, I'd look away... now! :)

Here is mine:

I was born into a world with beautiful things just out of reach. I began to yearn at an early age. I’d cocoon myself in black and white movies where life is sumptuous and glamorous and all endings are happy. Reality was not my friend.

Yearning was my chief activity. Yearning for a lover. Yearning for another life. Yearning for something more. Yearning for the movies I’d glue myself to. Yearning for the adventure I read about in books.

I’d smile and be happy but yearn for things others found so easy to attain. Boyfriends. Husbands. Families. Children. I’d join in with friends but wonder why I was not allowed to have this life myself.

And then on Friday 7^th December, something changed.

I suppose it had changed when I left Hong Kong to live in England and find a husband. When I was working in a hotel and wearing out shoes. When I bought the ticket to Burning Man. When I arrived in Vegas on 25^th August 2011. When I booked the flight on the 13^th April 2011. When I bought the red dress. When we became friends. And I fell in and out of lust and lived through a hard winter on the Welsh borders.

Or maybe it was after Clockenflap, on the 1^st of December, when we were stranded outside the temple on Hollywood road with no keys, in a drunken heap, the day I signed on my flat. When you loaned me your cash card to pay my deposit. When you met me the next week with champagne and sausage rolls. When you didn't comment on my liaisons with a Lithuanian finance professor. When you helped me find furniture even though I was freaking out. When we had dinner. When you let me pay but chose cheap wine and beer so I wouldn't spend too much…

And then on the 7^th, when you introduced me to your friends, and took the wooden wine box back to my house and we sat in the windowseat and drank wine. And then you walked me back to the boys and I asked if you were going to kiss me or what?

And we kissed.

And now you send me poems. And we’re meeting at an airport in Melbourne on Christmas Eve. And I’m not yearning anymore. I don’t want something else. I want this.

Oh, and I have a beautiful flat, amazing friends and a great job. But it’s always about the romance.

Le sigh.

Le shift.

Thank you

And there endeth the sermon... :)

Or I suppose there's a bit more. So we met at the airport in Melbourne on Christmas Eve and spent the next 10 days together without a moment apart? Which is ridiculous. And bizarre. And lovely.

I think we out romanced romance novels. There was hand holding on beaches. Trips to Narnia exhibitions. Romeo & Juliet in the park. Swooping bats. Long boozy lunches in botanical gardens. Holding hands at every meal, down every street. Ginormous phallic flowers. Boxing Day Cricket. Laughter. Never ending conversation. Skyping families. Lingerie shopping. French bistros. Road trips. Kangaroos. Point Break movie sets. Chocolate champagne spa mornings. Butterflies. Champagne VIP Hobbit watching. Dragonflies. New Year's Eve fireworks. Rock pools. Full moons.

Just a shame there's no sexual chemistry... :)

Although a couple at the New Year's Eve party did try and pick us both up with the peculiar comment, 'I can tell you guys have the most amazing sex together!' Well, I thought that was peculiar, but the young man approached my man later and asked him what his stance was on strap-ons...

The eloquent response was, 'Definitely not on a first date.'

Strange folks out there.

So, I have a boyfriend. He's ace. 

The Spinster Sermons will need a new title.

Thank FUCK!

Peace be with you all.

Wishing you love and happiness and a distinct lack of yearn.

Happy New Year!

xxx