I need to buy an outfit for my niece’s wedding in June, and to avoid running down my meagre savings any further than necessary, I have been keeping a watching brief on the local charity shops.

On Friday afternoon I saw the perfect dress – a sleeveless crimson sheath with low v neck and matching jacket. But, of course, it was just a little too tight for comfort.

Before I saw it, I had no clue what I was looking for. Now, I can’t get it out of my mental image, but the chances of finding anything similar that will fit are non existent.

During my Sunday stroll by the river, I was pondering this, and another of those eternal conundrums, namely, why it is that a man who formerly seemed so ardent should without warning stop texting in mid-conversation.

And it struck me that, although I profess not to know what I’m looking for, with each unsatisfactory sexual encounter I gain a clearer idea of what it is that I’m not looking for, and hence, in the negative space left behind, a clearer outline of what I do want. But the more that outline begins to be fleshed out, the more difficult it seems to find him.

Is it a greater error to cast the net too broadly or too narrowly?

Life is planned in generalities, but lived in specificities.

Between the two lie the cracks into which good intentions fall.

Here is part of a blog post I wrote last year, in which I refer to the Crystal Space:

I thought about the Crystal Space again, and felt it opening around me, the threads leading away into the future or futures, the neurones flashing and sparkling in the gaps between the here-and-now and the still-to-be. Wherever I am, I am at the centre, the glittering paths extending infinitely into the gloom around me.

I thought about Monday night, his eyes and hands and lips on me, ‘I just want to make you happy’ for that small sliver of time, we talked about meeting again, as we always do, ‘better planning next time!’, yet who can say when that might be, the long spaces open out between us again, perhaps it’s better that way, but are we both too diffident, each waiting for the other? Or is it just that life is too complicated? Or perhaps if we saw each other more often, it would all burn out, perhaps there is an upper limit on the time we can spend together and we are making the most of it, stretching it out, extending it, as good love-making should be.

The Crystal Space requires some explication. It is the n-dimensional space of possibility, the network of cause and effect, where we follow the threads through from all that has gone before to all that might be to come. For me it is a holding place, but one which is open to the possibilities, a sort of node or cross roads where there may be lots of different paths leading into different futures. It also relates to the Buddhist concept of ‘conditioned arising’.

The phrase came to me as a mis-hearing of something said in passing by my meditation teacher (who later denied ever saying any such thing).

The idea caught hold with me and I googled it, which led me to the poetry of Phyllis Webb, particularly the following quotation:

‘I merely make a statement, judicious and polite,
that in this poise of crystal space
I balance and I claim the five gods of reality
to bless and keep me sane’.