100th post

I've managed to spend the last few weekends in the city that the Rebelletriste misses so much. It's been fabulous. I've been to the ballet, to the theater, to brunch in some lovely venues, to museums. I love that place with a love that is, as Dr. Crazy would say, pure and true, precisely because I don't have to make it love me back or try to live there on an academic's salary. I have a very satisfactory relationship with the big midwestern city where I live now, as well as nurturing relationships with other cities, such as the big one in the area I'm from, and the places where they keep manuscripts I care about, and then of course we'll always have Paris. So I can treat the Rebelletriste's Tar Baby as a weekend fling, greet it enthusiastically, adore its little quirks, spend my money on it, and kiss it goodbye without looking back.

Except this weekend, when I came back to my Undisclosed Location last night, and now I'm so tempted to go back in for one last afternoon/evening there. I'm exhausted after yesterday's long tramp round a famous museum (why is walking slowly so vastly much more tiring than dashing about?), and I need to pack (going home tomorrow!) and finish taking notes out of a book that has to go back to the library here.

(The book is bristling with sticky notes marking passages, but most without any notes on them: the worst of all possible worlds. Had I not marked any passages, I'd return it without a second thought; had I taken notes on the computer, I'd be done now; had I even written out details on the sticky notes, I could just unstick them. But having gone to the effort of marking, I want to know what I marked.)

Well, maybe I'll just play hard to get with that city. If I show up, I show up; and if not, it'll just have to wait till I get back again. It does, after all, have a life of its own.