Reduce yourself to nothing. Boil yourself down until you are nothing but eyes and ears. And a heart. And then re-assess the importance of things.
Meaning and value are what's important here. They say lessons repeat until they're learned. Well this is my daily lesson:
Here is as good as there.
I've played at being a housewife. A domestic goddess, a grown-up who sweeps the kitchen floor. Living alone allows for this kind of reinvention. I've played at being a well-heeled drunk. Luckily I was only playing. I enjoyed the pose of the lush: sleeping late, staggering up and down the stairs to stock up on Tesco discounted wine. Knocking back 2am mint tea, lukewarm and pointless, missing the yoga sessions which I always miss anyway, sobriety aside.
I flirted with drug abuse. But too many waking hours made me depressed. Being awake when all others are sleeping and I can obsess alone over the missing screw on my mailbox does little for my sense of worth. Couldn't a human hand fit in there? Couldn't they then easily turn the latch? Doesn't the postman know very well that it's loose and know very well that a single white female lives here alone, slightly saner and less tough than Jodie Foster. What's that? Oh, a pigeon fluttering busily on my roof. But what's that? It's the ventilation being rattled by the wind... isn't it? Given enough time in the dark and I will beat myself up so no one else has to.
Give myself a kicking for not renewing my driving licence photograph since it expired in 2009. Trip myself up with my lack of an NHS number. Oh God. Must register with a doctor. Must get a GP to discuss a few things. And what about this definitely-chipped bone in my elbow which should surely be more painful? Look at this stack of unread newspapers, building up along with the tidemark of my own guilt. I really should read up on what's happening in Libya. And what about Japan? Everyone's forgotten about them. And my Amnesty membership has lapsed. Must phone them and donate. And get internet. And fix the fucking washing machine so I can stop hand-washing or just buying new clothes whenever I run out – which I never will because I cant stop buying new clothes on a daily basis. At least the profits are going to charity. So prattles my inner monologue. While the other half goes 'Hmmm another cuppa tea/piece of chocolate/chicken/beer/line/cigarette/shag? Of course'.
Which is why it's better when I'm on a bicycle. Or a dancefloor. Or in a book. I can hypnotise myself with another activity, distract the child in my head for 5 minutes of peace.
Like most 21st century females, I have settled into an uncomfortable obsession with looking 'hot' or 'stylish' or 'cool' or 'clever'. When really, none of those things are related to how I look. I should be spending time nurturing feeling all of those things for good reason – like just having completed a really amazing short story.
So here it is...
The Journey From The Door to the Edge of Sanity.
'A trip of three steps down the palette to tap, at three on the teeth.'
I am continually searching for meaning. Of course I am. Aren't you? And I cannot find it on a screen. Who cares if 'Kylie Goes 3d!' who cares about 'hot girls in tights?'
Too much information. Absolute Information Fucking Overload. My mind freezes like a PC when I just click click click refresh. Anything but refreshed. Click through rates, traffic, but the traffic is actually a sedentary person looking for meaning, sitting frozen in a chair looking for meaning. They will not find it here. Leave! You will not find it here.
Check out my own lack of meaning. Check out my unbridled confusion. I want to return to the 70s when everything was on vinyl and you had to go to a library to look up a fact. Really. I am not joking.
And the fact that this is the first uninterrupted 26 minutes I have spent all day is proof of the scourge of the internet. The erosion of my concentration is proportionate to the amount of windows I have open, multiplied by my number of facebook friends and cubed according to how near a Friday (or Monday) my current situ actually is.
Fucking heck – life with your face in a book and a honeyed tea on your table is so much sweeter. So much slower.
A return. A hark back. I'm off. Off to the country hopefully to slow things down a little.
I wonder what I would have been like if I'd never encountered the internet. Or hair dye. Or rizlas.
If I'd been a 70s child would I have grown my pit hair because it was a political statement?
If I had a clue.
Showing posts with label a fit of musing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label a fit of musing. Show all posts
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
Monday, 31 January 2011
The Things I Lost In The Fire
So I'm back. And life goes on. Untouched, it feels, by the great leaps made by our hearts, our heads as we journeyed around South America.
Typing from a London desk, a place I thought of often, too often, and at this very moment the rawness of the whole four months feels completely absent. Etched nowhere. Why is the grass always greener?
Why do we live our lives in the places we can never venture: the past, and the future?
I wish I had written to my future self, posted a few notes for use at a later date. For reference when I was on the road. It could have prevented me dreaming of home when I was exactly where I needed to be. The notes I write to my current self, pointlessly, are 'You wanted all this. You came back. You missed your life. You pined for the missing life...' And now that I am indeed back, I can't negate the returning desperation to escape.
It is not quenched. It has not abated. Does everyone feel this??????
So, when people say 'how does it feel to be back?' And I smile and say 'good' it is not really a lie...but it felt better not to be back. Or at least it does right now. As i sit and dream and try to recall just how it FELT to be so far away, and I find I can only conjure the London me. Deskbound, dutybound. Being home feels normal. I feel abnormal. I have returned to my reality. And the trip was a complete unreality. Like hitting dry sand at speed. It feels like I need to lie in a room with the windows open to breathe and relive everything. Instead of banking more memories, more time, more life; I just need things to STOP for a second.
Typing from a London desk, a place I thought of often, too often, and at this very moment the rawness of the whole four months feels completely absent. Etched nowhere. Why is the grass always greener?
Why do we live our lives in the places we can never venture: the past, and the future?
I wish I had written to my future self, posted a few notes for use at a later date. For reference when I was on the road. It could have prevented me dreaming of home when I was exactly where I needed to be. The notes I write to my current self, pointlessly, are 'You wanted all this. You came back. You missed your life. You pined for the missing life...' And now that I am indeed back, I can't negate the returning desperation to escape.
It is not quenched. It has not abated. Does everyone feel this??????
So, when people say 'how does it feel to be back?' And I smile and say 'good' it is not really a lie...but it felt better not to be back. Or at least it does right now. As i sit and dream and try to recall just how it FELT to be so far away, and I find I can only conjure the London me. Deskbound, dutybound. Being home feels normal. I feel abnormal. I have returned to my reality. And the trip was a complete unreality. Like hitting dry sand at speed. It feels like I need to lie in a room with the windows open to breathe and relive everything. Instead of banking more memories, more time, more life; I just need things to STOP for a second.
Sunday, 31 October 2010
The Coca Contradiction
She tells me her name is Naomi. ´Is this your place?´ I ask, impressed. ´No no, solo trabajo.´ I dont believe her for a second, this middle aged, glamourous woman and the owner of the world´s first cocaine bar. I´d be cagey too.
So we found Route 36. Emerging blinking with the kids into the sunlight after 12 hours of darkness on Halloween night, we feel another box has been thoroughly ticked. The place has no windows so you never know how horrifyingly light it is outside. It is full of vampires, people who thrive on darkness and deviance, and it shows me the glaring coca contradiction in pure crystaline form.
Coca is an essential product for the people of Bolivia. Not only because of the economic benefit. It is tightly bound in their tradition, a ritual. It is thought that 90% of the population chew coca leaves. They stave off hunger, cold, pain. They reassure and provide nutrients and energy. They give the overworked a crutch, something sparkley to help you feel good.
Rewind to a silver mine in Potosi, the highest city in the world. We are shown the distressingly narrow mines by an ex-miner. We stoop then crawl into the hot tunnel, scarves protecting mouths from the asbestos dust, but due to the exertion at altitude we are all soon breathless and boiling, forced to remove the scarves in order to breathe. Greeted with a shaft that winds down further still, so narrow we have to wriggle on our bellies and i feel a rising panic. Get me out. NOW. Rushing backwards, I don{t care to look for the tiny rocks of silver with the others, i need fresh air in my lungs and sunlight on my face. We feel a hint of coolness and a see glimmer of light ahead. I run into the light and relief floods my lungs as i breathe easy once more.
The miners work 14 - 18 hour days in these conditions without food or water. We didn{t even go as far into the mines as they do - not even halfway and I was forced to turn back. Coca gets them through the day, eases the pain of their lives. The average life expecatancy is 40. And yet they continue - to ease the burden of their families poverty, each hoping that they will be the last miner in their family.
"My father coughed up blood, suddenly, his eyes started rolling. There was no warning. He died before he was 50. I can feel the lung disease too" he says, this ex-miner who spent 8 years down there before his command of English enabled him to become a tour guide. Saved by education.
In the coca museum we read a part of a poem referring to the coca legend. God said to the Andean people;
"Guard the leaves with much love and when you feel the sting of pain in your heart, hunger in your body and darkness in your mind, take them to your mouth and softly, draw up its spirit which is part of mine.
You will find love for your pain, food for your body and light for your mind.
But if your torturer, who come from the North, the white conqueror, the gold seeker should touch it, he will find in it only poison for his body and madness for his mind for his heart is as callous as his steel and iron garment.
And when the COCA, which is how you will call it, attempts to soften his feelings it will only shatter him. As the icy crystals born in the clouds crack the rocks, demolish mountains."
It will only shatter him. And that is exactly what cocaine does to Western Society. Crime, addiction, greed. A plant which so benefits one shatters another. I think of the zombies trooping into the daylight from Route 36, dazed, vacant and tasting the demolition.
So we found Route 36. Emerging blinking with the kids into the sunlight after 12 hours of darkness on Halloween night, we feel another box has been thoroughly ticked. The place has no windows so you never know how horrifyingly light it is outside. It is full of vampires, people who thrive on darkness and deviance, and it shows me the glaring coca contradiction in pure crystaline form.
Coca is an essential product for the people of Bolivia. Not only because of the economic benefit. It is tightly bound in their tradition, a ritual. It is thought that 90% of the population chew coca leaves. They stave off hunger, cold, pain. They reassure and provide nutrients and energy. They give the overworked a crutch, something sparkley to help you feel good.
Rewind to a silver mine in Potosi, the highest city in the world. We are shown the distressingly narrow mines by an ex-miner. We stoop then crawl into the hot tunnel, scarves protecting mouths from the asbestos dust, but due to the exertion at altitude we are all soon breathless and boiling, forced to remove the scarves in order to breathe. Greeted with a shaft that winds down further still, so narrow we have to wriggle on our bellies and i feel a rising panic. Get me out. NOW. Rushing backwards, I don{t care to look for the tiny rocks of silver with the others, i need fresh air in my lungs and sunlight on my face. We feel a hint of coolness and a see glimmer of light ahead. I run into the light and relief floods my lungs as i breathe easy once more.
The miners work 14 - 18 hour days in these conditions without food or water. We didn{t even go as far into the mines as they do - not even halfway and I was forced to turn back. Coca gets them through the day, eases the pain of their lives. The average life expecatancy is 40. And yet they continue - to ease the burden of their families poverty, each hoping that they will be the last miner in their family.
"My father coughed up blood, suddenly, his eyes started rolling. There was no warning. He died before he was 50. I can feel the lung disease too" he says, this ex-miner who spent 8 years down there before his command of English enabled him to become a tour guide. Saved by education.
In the coca museum we read a part of a poem referring to the coca legend. God said to the Andean people;
"Guard the leaves with much love and when you feel the sting of pain in your heart, hunger in your body and darkness in your mind, take them to your mouth and softly, draw up its spirit which is part of mine.
You will find love for your pain, food for your body and light for your mind.
But if your torturer, who come from the North, the white conqueror, the gold seeker should touch it, he will find in it only poison for his body and madness for his mind for his heart is as callous as his steel and iron garment.
And when the COCA, which is how you will call it, attempts to soften his feelings it will only shatter him. As the icy crystals born in the clouds crack the rocks, demolish mountains."
It will only shatter him. And that is exactly what cocaine does to Western Society. Crime, addiction, greed. A plant which so benefits one shatters another. I think of the zombies trooping into the daylight from Route 36, dazed, vacant and tasting the demolition.
Friday, 30 October 2009
Tramp Party
So, smelling my way to work - from the overflowing drain in the yard past the bacon sarnies of the factory workers opposite, through the Olympic stadium where they are seemingly building the foundations with manure and onto the stinking canal, I smell the party before I see it.
Now, one of the benches along the Union Canal has been inhabited by two tramps for a while. Every morning I pass them, worried about waking them up with my bell as I alert the other cyclists to my presence in the tunnel. They hunch, coats zipped tightly over heads, sleeping upright - or more probably not sleeping upright. I wonder about the feeling they have when their situation dawns on them. When they stop dreaming and realise they are outside on a bench in North London.
Anyway, yesterday as I rode home there were three of them. All awake and drinking - seemingly in high spirits.
This morning, there were about seven, all smokes and jokes in the orange light. Safety in numbers.
Now, one of the benches along the Union Canal has been inhabited by two tramps for a while. Every morning I pass them, worried about waking them up with my bell as I alert the other cyclists to my presence in the tunnel. They hunch, coats zipped tightly over heads, sleeping upright - or more probably not sleeping upright. I wonder about the feeling they have when their situation dawns on them. When they stop dreaming and realise they are outside on a bench in North London.
Anyway, yesterday as I rode home there were three of them. All awake and drinking - seemingly in high spirits.
This morning, there were about seven, all smokes and jokes in the orange light. Safety in numbers.
Thursday, 25 June 2009
Monday, 15 June 2009
Yesterday
My mum called me and told me my father had had a stroke. I'd been up cavorting all weekend. I wrote this poem about it.
The way it went this weekend was predictable.
I've done it all before.
A hurried, pre-party meal,
An inappropriate feel,
Some wine, a line
A stolen rhyme,
Spinning around on the wheel.
A fist fight or two?
Nintendo for cash?
And everything disappeared.
All that occurred on Friday,
Can never be contained here.
Friday is a promiscuous thing, cares little,
Spreads herself around.
Gets high, fucks anyone.
The way that was Friday stretched,
Roughed up, raped, pumped full of narcotics,
Misshapen, malnourished, abandoned, abused,
It's a regrettable thing.
Her young and excitable voice morphed suddenly and deeply into Sunday,
His languid desperation,
His throaty growl outplaying her young cries.
Old Friday became too real, too visceral,
Evading my gaze.
I didn't see her leave, no backward glance.
Or lingering trail.
(My eyelashes nearly touched the sun,
As I suddenly saw I was unprepared,
With one brief phone call,
On this new and unwelcome Sunday,
For what will inevitably occur.)
Faintly comforting myself with the sympathetic touches,
I stem the endless flow of unshed tears.
Swimming away from the edge, paddling hard upstream, back-peddling
To shallower, sunnier waters, to smiles and lines, I drink a beer
And write a memo:
Do It Tomorrow.
The way it went this weekend was predictable.
I've done it all before.
A hurried, pre-party meal,
An inappropriate feel,
Some wine, a line
A stolen rhyme,
Spinning around on the wheel.
A fist fight or two?
Nintendo for cash?
And everything disappeared.
All that occurred on Friday,
Can never be contained here.
Friday is a promiscuous thing, cares little,
Spreads herself around.
Gets high, fucks anyone.
The way that was Friday stretched,
Roughed up, raped, pumped full of narcotics,
Misshapen, malnourished, abandoned, abused,
It's a regrettable thing.
Her young and excitable voice morphed suddenly and deeply into Sunday,
His languid desperation,
His throaty growl outplaying her young cries.
Old Friday became too real, too visceral,
Evading my gaze.
I didn't see her leave, no backward glance.
Or lingering trail.
(My eyelashes nearly touched the sun,
As I suddenly saw I was unprepared,
With one brief phone call,
On this new and unwelcome Sunday,
For what will inevitably occur.)
Faintly comforting myself with the sympathetic touches,
I stem the endless flow of unshed tears.
Swimming away from the edge, paddling hard upstream, back-peddling
To shallower, sunnier waters, to smiles and lines, I drink a beer
And write a memo:
Do It Tomorrow.
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
Onwards
It's over.
My heartstrings have been wrenched from my chest and strummed to the last,
I try to look back over my shoulder, recall the force of the blast,
And all I can see are the miles of the smiles
Of my friends, the survivors, waving from the banks,
As I sail away, the day after my birthday.
My heartstrings have been wrenched from my chest and strummed to the last,
I try to look back over my shoulder, recall the force of the blast,
And all I can see are the miles of the smiles
Of my friends, the survivors, waving from the banks,
As I sail away, the day after my birthday.
Friday, 29 May 2009
Today Is
Butterflies are flying round a big, echoey, fluttery expanse of bubbling excitement.
Quite nervous today as well as being mega-excited.
It's my 28th birthday. This day everyone must unsurely recount what has gone before? Chart the incline away from youth...
(It must be said before you continue reading that this post is of a vastly personal nature and you will not know WTF I'm talking about unless you know me. If you don't then I rejoice, for someone who does not know me has had the immense good fortune to stumble across my blog. If you do, then lucky you, you've been chosen as one of the few who I let in to the secrets of Foxy Loxy.)
Onwards with the quest to remember....Last year, The Boy and The Cubs cooked me dinner. Then I had a big dinner party with some of my favourite friends.
The year before it was a beach party in that weird bar on Boscombe front followed by an after-party in a big, empty house. Before that, there was a BIG ol' beach party followed by mini-golf.
Previous to that, a garden party at the beautiful Chine, a Summer Ball, followed by a beach party and sunny sex in an ants nest on the edge of a cliff. No jokes.
The year before that was The Bays in Consortium I think....hundreds of frisbies on the beach, Hawaiian blues from King Bong. Uh-oh.
Before that I've lost count. Can't think of any besides a garden party BBQ in Wales, and before that (my 17th) a drunken, 2 day free party near Shrewsbury with Brendan by my side.
For the record, I realise that all of them have been completely and utterly debauched. That, as I've come to say far too regularly, is evidently how I roll...
Maybe this year will be the last year of lashing myself quite so heavily. Who knows? Something in me is vaguely twitching for change, or at least a cleaner way of life. But the excitable techno-loving dancefloor part - which will always be alive and kicking it somewhere - keeps me wanting more and more.
As I approach 30 I'm getting more jittery. Less stable? There is nothing calm about the life I lead. And there is certainly a craving going on deep down to retreat to the country, to a house with a big garden and ivy on the walls and wild roses and maybe a baby or two....
Live in the now has always been my motto - so why can't I take my own advice?
Tomorrow Maybe, Today IS.
Quite nervous today as well as being mega-excited.
It's my 28th birthday. This day everyone must unsurely recount what has gone before? Chart the incline away from youth...
(It must be said before you continue reading that this post is of a vastly personal nature and you will not know WTF I'm talking about unless you know me. If you don't then I rejoice, for someone who does not know me has had the immense good fortune to stumble across my blog. If you do, then lucky you, you've been chosen as one of the few who I let in to the secrets of Foxy Loxy.)
Onwards with the quest to remember....Last year, The Boy and The Cubs cooked me dinner. Then I had a big dinner party with some of my favourite friends.
The year before it was a beach party in that weird bar on Boscombe front followed by an after-party in a big, empty house. Before that, there was a BIG ol' beach party followed by mini-golf.
Previous to that, a garden party at the beautiful Chine, a Summer Ball, followed by a beach party and sunny sex in an ants nest on the edge of a cliff. No jokes.
The year before that was The Bays in Consortium I think....hundreds of frisbies on the beach, Hawaiian blues from King Bong. Uh-oh.
Before that I've lost count. Can't think of any besides a garden party BBQ in Wales, and before that (my 17th) a drunken, 2 day free party near Shrewsbury with Brendan by my side.
For the record, I realise that all of them have been completely and utterly debauched. That, as I've come to say far too regularly, is evidently how I roll...
Maybe this year will be the last year of lashing myself quite so heavily. Who knows? Something in me is vaguely twitching for change, or at least a cleaner way of life. But the excitable techno-loving dancefloor part - which will always be alive and kicking it somewhere - keeps me wanting more and more.
As I approach 30 I'm getting more jittery. Less stable? There is nothing calm about the life I lead. And there is certainly a craving going on deep down to retreat to the country, to a house with a big garden and ivy on the walls and wild roses and maybe a baby or two....
Live in the now has always been my motto - so why can't I take my own advice?
Tomorrow Maybe, Today IS.
Friday, 22 May 2009
Muscles
Talk of body builders drinking their own cum – a free dose of protein – is what happened after I was woken at 6am by a tall man who really wanted us to get in a car bound for a psy trance party on Brighton beach. Arriving from a 12 hour, Valium fuelled sleep, it felt possible, but unwise. Arose to find the tail end of another party in our kitchen, and then the stragglers from the first party – the one which swirled from Friday to late Saturday night – a wonderful and inspiring time which glows and gives me a warm tummy when remembered, came knocking at our door. All very well in this time of no time lines; no routines, dancing in the dawn, dosing in the afternoon, leaving my worries piled up on the doorstep to be considered on Monday morning.
Two hours of hospitality is what I extended my guests before kindly but firmly kicking them out. My day has nicely begun with welcome contrasts; me on the right side of sleep for once, while the aliens from last night wish they were where I was.
Two hours of hospitality is what I extended my guests before kindly but firmly kicking them out. My day has nicely begun with welcome contrasts; me on the right side of sleep for once, while the aliens from last night wish they were where I was.
Thursday, 21 May 2009
The Record
It's May 2009. A few days from my twenty-eight birthday. As of today, right now, I have been in London for 1 year and 7 months. I've been meaning to document this strange and terrifying move but have only just begun to publicly record. If you're reading, I'm glad.
New friends are piling, one on top of the other, haphazardly into my life. Rugby tackling me as I wander, mouth agape, through my days. Brilliant people, who variously illuminate passions I have and expose new parts of me – things they see which I don't.
Peeling off layers of my sanity, I wantonly strip my brain naked, become insane, shrugging off the shackles of expectation and responsibility I feel insanely free to say and do whatever will make me laugh. A mental striptease.
Wanted all over London for cutting lights and drinking on the tube, this time, in Bow, is, we are all realising more and more, The Time. The Sugar House has been given to us for a reason, and is our hub, the control room, the HQ. In view of the Colosseum that is the Olympic Stadium which can be seen from our roof and impresses all the new friends who troop periodically into our home, offering insights, distractions and laughter, and enriching this nebulous and organic development of people, and ideas.
One by one they become ensnared in the web, become tangled in the sticky fabric of our lives; a clashing blend of colours, textures, synthetic and natural, indigenous and foreign; mongrels in it for the crack with open minds and the good fortune to have found each other.
New friends are piling, one on top of the other, haphazardly into my life. Rugby tackling me as I wander, mouth agape, through my days. Brilliant people, who variously illuminate passions I have and expose new parts of me – things they see which I don't.
Peeling off layers of my sanity, I wantonly strip my brain naked, become insane, shrugging off the shackles of expectation and responsibility I feel insanely free to say and do whatever will make me laugh. A mental striptease.
Wanted all over London for cutting lights and drinking on the tube, this time, in Bow, is, we are all realising more and more, The Time. The Sugar House has been given to us for a reason, and is our hub, the control room, the HQ. In view of the Colosseum that is the Olympic Stadium which can be seen from our roof and impresses all the new friends who troop periodically into our home, offering insights, distractions and laughter, and enriching this nebulous and organic development of people, and ideas.
One by one they become ensnared in the web, become tangled in the sticky fabric of our lives; a clashing blend of colours, textures, synthetic and natural, indigenous and foreign; mongrels in it for the crack with open minds and the good fortune to have found each other.
Monday, 18 May 2009
Blue Monday
'And I was feeding on the need for you to know me, devastated at the rate you fell below me.'
In times of hardship, I turn to Fiona Apple, to Donna Tartt, Gwendoline Burns, to the strongly artistic, creative women I admire. Women who explore and express their own hardships in their art.
Reading back, it's always on a MONDAY that I quote songlines which grate my emotions raw, wring them out, stretch them over my body, wear them as clothes, my beating heart transparent beneath.
It's always on a Monday that I make my plans to run away, Pack my knapsack, knot a red spotted handkerchief and sling it glibly over my shoulder, meeting the eye of no one as i slink off to a new life where no one knows me and responsibility is something you can shrug off like an itchy old jumper. Discard for the dogs to chew and scrap over. I want no part of it.
By Tuesday I'm reconciled to staying where I am, picking up the pieces, re-assembling, feeding on the great and the good. Wednesday improves with age, Thursday is positively industrious, Friday and the glow stretches from here to there, from me to you. A lifetime of temporary relief?
In times of hardship, I turn to Fiona Apple, to Donna Tartt, Gwendoline Burns, to the strongly artistic, creative women I admire. Women who explore and express their own hardships in their art.
Reading back, it's always on a MONDAY that I quote songlines which grate my emotions raw, wring them out, stretch them over my body, wear them as clothes, my beating heart transparent beneath.
It's always on a Monday that I make my plans to run away, Pack my knapsack, knot a red spotted handkerchief and sling it glibly over my shoulder, meeting the eye of no one as i slink off to a new life where no one knows me and responsibility is something you can shrug off like an itchy old jumper. Discard for the dogs to chew and scrap over. I want no part of it.
By Tuesday I'm reconciled to staying where I am, picking up the pieces, re-assembling, feeding on the great and the good. Wednesday improves with age, Thursday is positively industrious, Friday and the glow stretches from here to there, from me to you. A lifetime of temporary relief?
Thursday, 9 April 2009
Easter And What It Means To Me:
Four days off.
The time to relax fully into my drunkenness instead of having to reign it in for Blue Monday.
Dancing.
The luxury of looking at the clock* to ascertain the day - not the time.
Smiles.
Daydreams.
Reading away the hours.
Wearing my most inappropriate clothing.
Experimenting with interesting narcotics.
Hunting for eggs.
Hopefully dancing on a roof.
Hopeful dancing.
Grinning from ear to ear.
Cracking a good bottle of red.
Over a heated discussions head.
Going out at 4am.
Coming home with new friends.
Rolling in the hay.
My salad day days.
*Except, inexplicably, when I least want to know the time - ie when 10 pm has rolled round again and i still haven't slept.
The time to relax fully into my drunkenness instead of having to reign it in for Blue Monday.
Dancing.
The luxury of looking at the clock* to ascertain the day - not the time.
Smiles.
Daydreams.
Reading away the hours.
Wearing my most inappropriate clothing.
Experimenting with interesting narcotics.
Hunting for eggs.
Hopefully dancing on a roof.
Hopeful dancing.
Grinning from ear to ear.
Cracking a good bottle of red.
Over a heated discussions head.
Going out at 4am.
Coming home with new friends.
Rolling in the hay.
My salad day days.
*Except, inexplicably, when I least want to know the time - ie when 10 pm has rolled round again and i still haven't slept.
Tuesday, 7 April 2009
Backlash
Well. Everyone's up in arms about the G20 police aggression. Looking at it from the inside out and the feeling is that it's old news. Already forgotten. News only lasts a day.
'What a difference a day made, 24 little hours' croons Dinah Washington.
From where I'm sitting things are a little different: I now know just how many people are with me on this - am reassured by how many faces I recognized in the Climate Camp - the place which represented my views and my person the most accurately. There is a community, a scattered community of people who are passionate about living a sustainable existence and the ones I know are young and clever and proactive.
It's heartening. I feel hearted by the G20 protests - I may be in the minority here though.
'What a difference a day made, 24 little hours' croons Dinah Washington.
From where I'm sitting things are a little different: I now know just how many people are with me on this - am reassured by how many faces I recognized in the Climate Camp - the place which represented my views and my person the most accurately. There is a community, a scattered community of people who are passionate about living a sustainable existence and the ones I know are young and clever and proactive.
It's heartening. I feel hearted by the G20 protests - I may be in the minority here though.
Friday, 20 March 2009
A & E
Everyone should spend an hour in A & E to reaffirm their self-love and redress the balance of smiles over scowls. It very effectively quashes the niggling, maggoty itches of irritation with your life and your lot as it thrusts you deep inside the lives of those who are a lot more fucked than you are.
'Hi honey' a *junkie drawls languidly as I pass. Oh God.
Taking my Colles fractured wrist and Phillip Roth with me, the barking receptionist at Royal Barts Accident and Emergency room appraises me testily and does her best to ignore my politeness. The collection of poor souls collected here on this uncharacteristically sunny Friday - exactly a week since the fated Friday 13th incident - are, for the most part, in more pain than me and wretchedly moaning.
I crave health, sun, freedom and a friendly face/gin and tonic. I have a sudden burning lust for my life and it's populace. Being immobilized is a worthy - if annoying - exercise in appreciation of the simple things and the delay of my gratification is necessary to bang this particular lesson where it belongs - in my face. When the fun and the freedom finally arrive it will taste all the sweeter.
*An assumption, a hasty jump to conclusion and a vastly unfair stereotype. But I'm the boss.
'Hi honey' a *junkie drawls languidly as I pass. Oh God.
Taking my Colles fractured wrist and Phillip Roth with me, the barking receptionist at Royal Barts Accident and Emergency room appraises me testily and does her best to ignore my politeness. The collection of poor souls collected here on this uncharacteristically sunny Friday - exactly a week since the fated Friday 13th incident - are, for the most part, in more pain than me and wretchedly moaning.
I crave health, sun, freedom and a friendly face/gin and tonic. I have a sudden burning lust for my life and it's populace. Being immobilized is a worthy - if annoying - exercise in appreciation of the simple things and the delay of my gratification is necessary to bang this particular lesson where it belongs - in my face. When the fun and the freedom finally arrive it will taste all the sweeter.
*An assumption, a hasty jump to conclusion and a vastly unfair stereotype. But I'm the boss.
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