The Third Way

'Carry my joy on the left
Carry my pain on the right'
                                  -- björk

Yes or no? Stay or go? Rain or snow? Some questions should have binary answers, a simple on or off. Yet women have a knack for finding the third option, the route hitherto undreamt of by the plucky young male enquirer. And is this third way a good one? Never! An outright denial can be dealt with, consigned to experience, forgotten, an affirmation can be happily accepted, but the third way is neither a promise nor a demise. It is an enigmatic puzzle of an object to be turned over late at night and observed from every angle, never offering a solution, never offering solace. And so each day we live in limbo, lurching from pole to pole, elated, deflated, debilitated.