3 August - molly's cheats

Molly shows me some text exchanges with her ex much loved lover. Who aside from cheating on his wife with her, found the time to also cheat on my friend, and his now with second wife but still not averse to casting his net further. Molly does this a few feet away from her current live-in boyfriend who is ignoring us and wisely watching the cricket. The texts are nothing major and v. short. Just a quick shorthand reminder of having meant something to each other. It amazes me that these few words can still represent a world of possibilities or at least nourishment for my friend, as am sure the person who wrote them fired them off w/o meaning that much. But I also have extracted whole hours and days of fulfilment from similar exchanges which to anyone but me would seem as inconsequential as a hair on the surface of a swimming pool (this being a good moment to mention I am a substantial texter ie. I don’t engage in backwards and forward one liners but write long ones and don’t go on for more than 2 or 3 exchanges in one go). I think however logic your mind is and however in charge it is at all times, it deliberately likes to suspend all this ‘science’ occasionally to just buy into delusions for a while. Delusions are fantastic stuff, the cousins of dreams surely.
Why would a one line text from an ex lover mean more than the first text my sister finally sends after two weeks incommunicado in Burma? I was very happy to receive it, proof she was alive and well in some inhospitable territory, but not ecstatic, not clicking to see the message time and time again to re-create with each read the same beatific sensation, the smile that spreads on your face as you sit on the tube to work. Is this because there is no surprise in being reminded that she loves me, I love her, we always did, we’ll always will? Whereas lovers words are transient? Another friend, who’s the mistress of romantic fantasies calls this ‘Making wedding cake out of crumbs’.