Summer Garden

I want to visit the roses
In that lonely
Park where the statues remember me young
And I remember them under the water
Of the Neva. In that fragrant quiet
Between the limes in Tsarskoye I hear
A creak of masts. And the swan swims
Still, admiring its lovely
Double. And a hundred thousand steps,
Friend and enemy, enemy and friend,
Sleep. Endless is the procession of shades
Between granite vase and palace door.
There my white nights
Whisper of someone's discreet exalted
Love.
And everything is mother-
Of-pearl and jasper,
But the light's source is a secret.


- Anna Akhmatova


a realization: the subtext of my previous relationships has always been "i like you enough to invest my time and emotional energy in you" for both people. that's the baseline for friendships: you know that each of you is choosing to be there, in a certain basic sense.

work relationships are predicated, however, on the fact that "i have to work with you." there's no room for personal taste, except over and above that. i keep looking for friend-relations when i really should be forming good co-worker-relations.

with one of my co-workers, i repeatedly say "i don't report to you" when i feel put-upon. i couldn't figure out what it was that was driving this, but I think it's just my discomfort with the work-relationship and insistence on a friend-relation. i want people to like me on my own terms. which isn't fair, but which i can understand.

now to go about being better at this.