Thinking about thinking

This feels like the point where I'm going to grab it by the neck and go, no, you're not dragging me down, I'm going to change and get better. Somehow. I can't quite picture it right now. IT involves a new haircut. It involves being slightly more lithe. I don't know how I shall achieve lithe, but I shall. At the moment I have lost weight and become an under-worked shape of limbs and ligaments, bits of body hung off other bits, wanting to be strong and whole.

I am going to start climbing, I am going to continue ballet, I am going to start swimming in a bikini and get some vitamin D. I am going to go to lindy hop at the 100 club. I am going to wear hats. I want to become a strong whole thing, with a strong brain to top it off. I want to look good and feel good. I don't know how to do this right now, I can't really picture the new. I can't imagine what I can be like. It was like when I was young and got asked, what do I want to be when I grow up, and I answered 'I don't know what there is'. If I only have my own frame of reference, I don't really know what there is.

I remember when the other girls went to dancing on a Saturday, and I went to Brownies on a Monday. I remember being jealous but just accepting that some people have some things and others have others. It never occurred to me to beg my parents to let me go dancing on a Saturday. I just didn't realise I had options. Or maybe I just wasn't an eight year old cow, and was just a bit too fair. I remember it was about this time that my dad told me 'you think too much'. How much is too much? If I want to know what there would be if there wasn't life, that's not really too much. It made me think that certain amounts of thought are no-go areas, for sure.

So when I was asking her about Deluze and Baudrillard, and she just rattled it off, I just started thinking, I want to be that intelligent. I want to think that much. Not poppy musings like this stuff, but proper hard difficult intelligence. But then to make it sensical, you have to be around people where philosophy is its own language. We're communicating about communicating kinda thing. My intelligence has dropped off lately. I would love to be so clever and active and deep and destructive. Powerful. How will I be it? What will I be next? Can I still wear shorts and t-shirts with dirty legs? If I get an internship what the hell will I wear??

Wasting Time?

Just starting to feel like intellectualising things is a bit much. I do feel feral. Like, I need to eat, do, love and be loved, sleep and all these other base, un-evolved things. I could have just slept on the beach for a week. Not out of lazyness, just out of pure enjoyment, like an animal basking in the sun. I am on the hunt for fun, for engagament, for things to connect with people on. Guards are dropped, importance is shifting. I want reality. It was interesting that thing he said about ability, and ability being hampered. It wasn't a negative connotation, more like, this is my potential, this is the point where I am, on like 40% of my potential, so in a way I am dis abled. It's not bad, it's just I'm not as good as I can be.

You should know that I started this post almost twelve hours ago. I am switched off. I am floating and I don't feel connected to anything, like I'm almost just existing. Whilst last week I felt like a hardback book with the pages all blank, this week I feel like an unraveled thing, like the centre of a pass the parcel, as though I am new and small and don't have any context. Unraveled. Those two feelings are quite polar in a way. One is me as a shell with my insides missing, the other is a strong little thing without its resistance to the world, yet. Like a small dinosaur out of it's egg. The middle of a kinder egg. lots of egg analogies.

My memory has gone terrible. Where before I really was aware of its fleeting nature, but didn't have to deal with it, I am finding myself in conversations saying, 'I'm sorry, I can't remember right now'. What did I just pick up from the car boot sale, just now? Well, a skirt that needs adjusting and, and...er I can't remember right now because I am making a cup of tea and I can't seem to multitask. So understandably writing is difficult. I have to think of what to say and what to type AT THE SAME TIME. This is normally a subconscious act, but so is memory recall. I am a bit ill.

I think the programme about mental health at work was very interesting. I like that woman that offered her staff 'duvet days', as if you know they are available, you'll probably want to be strong. Just like if I knew I had someone to hug me in the house, I could just get on with working, but because there isn't anyone, I really want for it. Anyway I think all the health labels are very interesting. They are modern tags for symptoms that are evolving and no-one really gets the brain so we have to label things to make sense of them. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps there are actual chemical, as opposed to physical, definitions of all the brain's afflictions. But it's harder to make it real as it's not something you can point to and prove.

So I spent all day getting rid of stuff, so I have places and money for new stuff. My gut instinct on the visual is a bit off, kind of nothing looks, right, nothing really matters outside of my coping. That's worrying in a way, but it happend before a few years ago when I stopped buying things, stopped caring about how I looked quite so much, because if my course was going wrong what did it matter if I was tonally perfect? I probably didn't look too bad but it didn't sing. It was about the point where I started making whole cakes for one, freezing them, and eating portions night by night, microwaved with cream. I mention this as I found myself in Iceland today thinking frozen food is ok. It's very not ok. Ironic fish fingers are one thing but chicken dippers are quite another.

Sans Titre

She sent me a link to 'What Is Love' and I decided the 90s was a truly beautiful time in the musical landscape, I was just a bit young. Imagine dancing to that now. I can't fucking wait for serious 90s clubs, loads of post-Alice Dellals wearing baggy t-shirts and no knickers. Maybe. I did not fit in at ALL last night, I was dressed for a school disco and they were party fuckers. Hippy ones. I have eaten too much crap, or just too much , though my Australian burger was really good, as was my breakfast.

Brighton had this really weird aesthetic of 90s hippie and 00s organic. I saw an organic hairdressers, I mean come on, that doesn't even make any sense. It makes less sense than the guy that wasn't actually on stilts, he was that tall, and the girl who wasn't on her knees, she was that short. And no I'm not waiting for the face painting. Why would I be waiting for face painting? Perhaps because I'm dressed like a school disco? It took me out of my comfort zone and I think I need to be refreshed right now.

I'm worried about getting rid of too many possessions. I don't want to be hasty and chuck stuff I actually like just for the sake of recalibration. But you know in your soul, like the Sta Prest skirt, things that are just too good to go. Trousers that cost £6.99 and no longer fit, on the other hand, are looking for new love. They are good, but they fall down, and they have to go.

I'm broken

I am just feeling absolutely numb and my brain has gone through a process of shutting things down, and hibernating. I can't rememeber who I've said what to, what time I'm supposed to be there tomorrow, what room that meeting is in. What does this coffee taste like, I don't know, it's like you're just talking maths to me right now. Things are just making less sense. And I'm not bloody doing it on purpose, it's like I've been drugged. My water is spiked with somthing a tad stronger than agnus castus, which I don't even like.

I have never been here before. I amsomehow finding it difficult to spell?? Scary. I feel drugged and drunk and tired. Not even like 'oh I'm so tired' more like, I am yawning aren't I, I'm sorry it's holding me up I must submit. My worry has shifted round, which is entirely healthy, but I feel I need a diary or a book to go by right now. I need to plan excatly what needs to be done and don't even swerve off it. I think I might also need to write 'brush teeth' in there. I can't honestly think whether I did them thi morning. I must have, but I don't think I did. It's like some undercompensating style of OCD. And it took me a second or three to think of 'OCD' back then, as though I was translating it fom another language.

Urgh I am held up. And I keep doing crappy social mistakes, talking over people ungraciously, forgetting things, repeating myself, froming bad sentences. Not thinking ahead of my speach. Dangerous. I guess if you stopped from communicating for a few months, no speech or writing, you'd come out of it a bit broken, like Jodie Foster in that film, which I can't bloody rememeber of course. Glad I even remembered it was her. Ugh I don't want to to trapped here for too long, aloof is fun for a while but it doesn't fit into real life.

Am excited about the final project, for sure.

Yellow Shoes

I was thinking I would only start writing here again when I feel 'myself' again, when things I write won't tend towards melancholic outpour. But I am still myself, I didn't go on holiday, I didn't have a sex change, I'm not ill and I'm not drunk. I am myself still (so would all these options be). So there's no reason to stop as I might never start. Perhaps just keep an eye on the progress and rein myself when it gets too Cosmo.

I have been repeating myself lots. I have been told about it, but I've not realised. The sense is disordered in a way. Perhaps I have been trying to hold on to my sense, but then forgetting who I have told it to, then telling the same person twice. I'd rather be kicked sooner rather than later so I don't spend all that time feeling stupid. People listening to my stories politely, thinking, she's already said this.

I think you only put stupidity upon yourself. One feels stupid. People can jibe, but one feels stupid. Not a very productive feeling. I am typing this now and my hands are fizzy, as though I can feel fizziness running through, as though I haven't slept too well, and I am still running. I guess that thing I said the other day about sleep being restorative. It does reset the brain to deal with new problems, but with somehting of this proportion it takes more than a cycle to reset. Does one ever reset? Or a longer cycle.

I am in waves, I forget, and feel proud for forgetting, and then I remember suddenly and everthing comes on in waves, I am shaking and I feel sick and my limbs go pins/needles to numb. My hands are doing that now, which is strange as I never said to my hands, 'I'm getting upset, go numb', they just came over with it. I am glad I held it together at work. It would've been good to completely wallow but the situation, again see, isn't a Cosmo one, it's a lot more melancholic (again) than that. Conventions are cliches and I need a new mode.

I want to go back to bed right now, more than anything. Not even in a 'I can't face the day' way, more like, I need to reset and recalibrate. This presentation is going to be awful. I'm not feeling interested or at all lyrical. I walked past Harrods yesterday and saw the Falke socks in the back and got a little 'wow I like Falke socks', but it passed as we walked and I haven't got it since. Music is too fast, words are too heavy, food is too big. Outfits seem impossible, they aren't new enough, they are repeats of old and not what I want. Almost like I want a new world all together.

I apologise that the posts will most likely not be as interesting as of late (if they ever were), as I am not feeling quite myself. I did just think though that only passionate people get this upset, so I just need to wait quietly for it is shift back round. I might buy the yellow shoes today.

A poem?

Sick-shivers and incredulous waves
swallowed down and in or rejected
up and out, the real, me, really,
really? I don't quite believe it.

Poetry is difficult, how on earth. It is the art of language? I will look it up. I sneezed and was nearly sick, the reflex pulling the hate out. I lay in bed and didn't close my eyes for an hour I'm sure, I can't even see, but I was making some pictures there in front, whizzing past. Pictures of confusion and digest. I knew it didn't I, I was hanging all week and I didn't know why. Some things you just don't expect.

Ugh the words are in this ball of sick but I don't want to sick it up as my tea was yet again yumdrops. Oh have I left my punctuation on her table again? Perhaps next to my clue?

Living the dream?

I was working as a vegetable delivery driver a few years ago, when I delivered to a house near the park with a knock-through kitchen and a life I wanted. It had concentric stacks of Mason Cash bowls, a heavy-weight light-coloured oak table, and a collection of cookbooks that included a few Jamies and Delia one two and three. I scanned over it as I dropped the bags and thought, I could never have a palm that big, a table that heavy, a bookshelf so heaving. Maybe I'm not so far off after all.

It's hard to know whether to go with something you know well, and galvanise it with your own look. I got excited at the Petit Bateau catalogues today, shit, I'm going to make an OBJECT at the end of this. How will it look? Will it be revolutionary? Will it be lovely? Will it have, NEON?? Do I go with food and subvert it, go my way, really hammer it, or do I start with something I have only a slight knowledge and go at it from a research aspect? What am I trying to achieve?

I just got back from an amazing dinner (you know who you are!) and I have some gift beans. I am quite excited about them and I want to paint them. I want to paint them and then pop them and salt them with crystals. It put a spin of reality on my day where there was only frozen moments of impossibility. I CAN'T be this lost, my brain can't have died, they can't not have my size in any of the underwear I want to buy. I hope this is a transitional experience and not all coming days pan out to be as exhausting as the last three. Creativity can't be this hard.

It is strange how sleep rejuvenates. It feels like a new, peeled version of self. A new layer, like a new calender date, a new post it note, a new box of cereal, a new chequebook. Newness for the sake of it. I hope I start to feel more myself soon. I can't quite figure out exactly what I need or what the problem is. I'm sorry I feel I have made nonsense I have had wine and am exhausted and seem to have left my punctuation on someone else's kitchen table

Synapses

I asked him today about whether you are supposed to feel the different halves of the brain working, as I'm sure I can. He said no unless you were on loads of drugs. But I think I can. Maybe it's the Omega 3. I feel a tension, or perhaps it's a different area of satisfaction, from a thought to an action. 'Oh, look a thought, ah, it's quite good, I shall externalise it before I forget, ah look, a thought on a page. Wow.' And, 'oh look, a really well made jug of milk, look, my physical intervention into the science of protein molecules, the slight adjustments I did subconsciously to make smooth milk, and I didn't even think a single thing, it just happened, ahhh!'

Then, I was thinking about typing. I want to say something that sits at the front of my head, and I want to say it as fast as my mouth would say it if you were a real audience, so I will dance over the keys and my hands will remember as fast as my thoughts where all the letters live. Or, as in this case now, my hands are a bit broken and hurt and soemthines the keys aren' tin the right place and the letters hive moved and the chain is eomhoew broken. Like why do I alwasy tyoe soemtimes like that. Whih part of my brain switches those two lettwes round, s-o-e-m, s-o-m-e. It's like a misfire. Adn since my new RSI imjury tyoing is coming out like this when I go at normal spped. The synapse is shorting.

Maybe I am also tired, but there are definitely different parts of the brain for different activities. Like when you have a mental block, and it's heavy and fuzzy, which part is that? Anyway, I shall have to save all these questions for when I meet my favourite neuroscientist. I don't know what to do my project on. I am trying to bridge the gap between being original and also being mainstream. Like, be new and exciting, but not too much, as people don't, like, like it. You will be speaking to a narrow audience. Sometimes (I just corrected that spelling FYI, happens EVERY time no joke) as narrow as me (in my head here) and me (on the screen here). I'm speaking to myself. Not in a schizophrenic way, just like, my opinions and thoughts are externalising themselves, shaking hands with each other. I barely think at all in my head, I wish I did, I wish I was bursting with ideas, but they only seem to happen when I write them out. Not like what she was just saying about having too many. Maybe my way is better, means I can get to sleep no problem.

But yes I have this theory that the reason I get myself so knotted is that I am a) pessimistic and b) have a bad memory. So I will forget most things I have achieved or thought, and the slight choices I do focus on will be pessimistic! It's quite sad really. I feel like I have only just landed from last weeks work, and I don't feel too confident about that outcome, so I am focusing on that rather than things being new and exciting. Which is only human really. But then with one problem/deadline out of the way I find myself focusing on the next problem down the list, which I shalln't write here but I know it. Always looking for soemthing to be sad about. Maybe I'll be positive tomorrow and grab things.

The Oracle

How to establish one's knowledge and par level within 5 seconds of a conversation. 'It's ok, this is our level, I know, Waitrose Food Illustrated, that you're not on a par with Tesco's magazine, but you don't know that I know, to you I'm nobody who knows nothing, and you to me are the oracle. GRRRRR. I hate ringing people, I HATE it. The balance is so wrong, I don't know what I'm doing, whilst knowing a bit about everything, you know excatly what you're doing whilst knowing little about everything. But whilst we chat and I wait for your wisdom, I am hung on the edge of a crater, holding on, hoping you will grab my hand and lift me out of it. "I;m sorry, I don't understand the question." "That's funny, neither do!" "Why have you rung?" "I don't know, is this not what journalists do??"

Whilst I am glad that only the first part of that conversation was true, I'm sad that the last part is true but unsaid. I feel like such a fraud. The only interview I have done so far that felt ok, was the one with the Buck boy, and this was because we were the same age and had the same references. I baked bread so perhaps I was one up. But every other call has made me feel small and stupid. Stupid and small and hanging onto the edge of a crater. Help me! Grab my hand and say something amazing!

This might well be the sign that journalism isn't my calling, or it may just be beginners nerves. I'm just never normally shit at things. I can normally bluff out through anything. Just didn't think it would wash to gush over Waitrose cream teas or homebaked bread when all that mattered was I didn't know to ask for the 'media pack'. 'I'll send you the media pack', 'ok thanks, WTF is it?'

Finding it hard to write an essay, report, however you may call it, where I'm torn between my own unsubstantiated opinions, and finding words to support these whims. Please say something I can be backed up with! My voice est rien. Nowt. Whim. Who's idea is it if everything I think has to be backed up by someone else's words? Proof. It's a weird shift between academic and journalistic writing, especially when blogs are now acceptable too. I just don't feel quite ready to give up my personality yet.

Triumph of Life

I'm just looking on the V&A website, at the hats exhibition, wondering if I need to go and see it in order to finish my article. I had originally stayed away, not only because I hate venturing further west than Marble Arch en velo, but because I didn't want to get wrapped up in the loveliness. I know I love hats, I love created things, beautifully mastered objects, and that isn't the point I was trying to convey in the feature. But when I interviewed him last week and I couldn't make the cultural reference, I felt like a fool. 'Yeah, but you don't actually need to see the exhibition, right', but it did feel like I was jumping a gap that I hadn't earned.

Anyway, the website is pretty comprehensive. I may have decided not to go. I will go one day, and that looks more likely now I know it's open till 10pm on Fridays. But it will most likely seduce me into wanting to be a milliner rather than a writer. I thought it was interesting when he said, but you don't want to speak to these people, you just want to be them, as though what I'm doing is just researching the options. I thought that was interesting. I liked it. Humans and reality and demonstration and plainness. This is what I am, this is what I do, do you fancy it too? But for now I am a writer, and I'm seeing how I can get on (or not...)

http://www.vam.ac.uk/microsites/hats-anthology/the-exhibition/inspiration.html

I'm scrolling through these thumbnail images, and instinctively picking out ones which grab me. A real visceral choice. It's forever beguiling - I give you 10 options and you want to find something to like there. I keep going back to this 1700 linen crochet cap, plain structure but intensely intricate. I like that. I also like the shocking pink feather one. I picked out 5 or so that I liked, I was interested by, I wish I had made. I naturally went for the positive, instead of picking something I don't like. The story I was reading last night talked about the 'erotics of dislike'. Something Barthes said, which was then related back to "The real meaning of our dislikes is that they define us by separating us from what is outside us; they separate the self from the world in a way that mere banal liking cannot."

It was said that something disliked was "a triumph of life" and definition. I just tried to pick out hats I disliked. I found myself landing upon heavy choices, objects which had a lack of grace, a heaviness, almost a joke. A lack of sophistication, in my opinion. A pointed red satin hat, a felt crumpled creation. A heaviness. It always got me where these opinions, my tiny thoughts, fitted into universal truths. Is the red satin hat heavy and unsophisticated? Or is it just so within my frame of reference?

She was talking yesterday about tutorials, listening to the head of the RCA as though some medieval oracle. You are paying to be here, with your life on hold (or heightened), and you must accept these truths gracefully. If I tell you the work you applied to be on this course with 2 years ago is better than a painting you did last week, then you believe it. You are paying to hear the truth. But what happens when your own truth is saying something different? I have learnt that your own truths are the only ones you believe, your visceral instincts. They can't be unpicked or analysed, they are your atman. I couldn't find an English word for that feeling.