I always think of you when I think of surface tension, I told her. She was pleased about this. So was I. I just iced the most beautiful pistachio cake, it's unrefined gloss just brimming, the example of a perfect sugar lemon ratio, button nuts like some square snowman, popped on a lid on top of the vegetarian flavour pie I made earlier. Next to the parsnip soup from a 25p bag of 'nips and an apple. Same colour as my blender. I'm a smug bastard right now.
I've been quite frustrated for a couple of days. My words aren't in place, and I miss them, but you can't call, they don't run. I can only busy myself with comforting domesticity, 50s and 60s radio shows buffered with various types of chopping and mixing and floor-based exercise. Oh, what it is, is that I didn't have any weekend. So I seem to have given myself one. At the same time as having a right stress about not doing anything. In truth I have been held up by the impending 7 days on/1day off/2 days on/xmas day thing.
The lack of production, if one suddenly becomes quite expectant of one's creative ability, can be a bit of a shocker. I even dreamt he brought out one of those Faber poetry pamphlets, overtook me again before I could even lay claim to it as an idea. I was weirdly calm when he came into the shop, a nod as my attention magnetised from the dishes corner, though he still made it into my dreams. How strange the other one would turn up on the same day, how annoying I would have to stare into those pale blue depths in the last three minutes of my shift wearing my most disgusting jumper. It swathed me in melancholy for at least two days. No-one likes a pointer towards non-success.
It seems things do come in threes. The next day, I had gladly forgotten he'd be there, scolded shit as I saw him roaming, chewing in leather. He embraced me awkwardly, after I'd ignored him on purpose, lolling on plastic chairs like some wanton dog. We had nothing to say to each other. Later I sat round the happy gift dinner table, watched their long-haired pictures, arms around girls, as for now they were the same person. Watched girls flick their hair and show their teeth appreciatively, one of those times I'm holding back some scornful face of pure cynicism. What was I thinking.
I found myself browsing profiles last night. I felt completely sick at myself. Like seeing these three in two days had alerted me to the fact that I seem to have abdicated from the game. I canceled a potential last Thursday so I could go ballroom dancing at the Wapping Project. For example. He'd rode past me on the street, our quickfire revealed I couldn't care for instant gratification. I contemplated this. I decided however good one night, one month, could be, is it worth feeling this rubbish three months later. Of course I'd rather go dancing. But I can't lie, it would be pretty nice to share this culinary serendipity.
Tuesday 14 December 2010
Saturday 27 November 2010
Gemütlichkeit
Perhaps it would seem awfully indulgent and somewhat wasteful to sit in bed all of Saturday. I have been here since the sun came up over there, and will stay until it completes its low winter arc over there. Ten hours sleep wasn't enough, so I have stayed here through three rounds of snacks and hot drinks, and I still am not bored. I decided as soon as I am bored (read dissatisfied, edgy), this must mean my normal level of consciousness is restored, and I am no longer ill. As it is, I am trying to shift the glitch so I can go dancing tonight.
Always so much pressure to perform on a spare Saturday. When 3 miles away in the metropolis, the minions are at work under heavy crowds and shouts, mounting our performance rites, twists turns, sorrys, yes it's too early to buy it for Christmas, there's nine people waiting do you want to wait, when the minions are at work and one is not, well, there is usually a feeling of utter redundancy. Not today. I learnt of the Ministry of Stories at the same time as reading it, I watched The Beauty of Diagrams, I pictured cinnamon pear cake, thought saving is a waste and spent time researching boat living. I scribbled and thought and basked, because overachieving is overrated. Like he said yesterday, 'not pursing a career (anything) at the moment' didn't used to be a bad thing.
I know I have lost the art of contentment. It takes foreignness to jolt this into me. With such a bombardment of options and choice, it becomes difficult to know what one truly wants. London is heavy, I saw it when I left the station on Thursday, when I clock-watched yesterday to Big Ben over the river in the afternoon's arc. The denseness becomes a metaphor for the affects on a person. I love leaving, because I love the comparison on return. London is not a pretty city, at least not to my pocket. I am not allowed historical steeping, a visual warmth, you would never say the east is good-looking. There is something to be said about the visual not being something that needs blocking out. Whilst I live in the best British city for me right now, it's not necessarily the best city.
I didn't intend to miss the second day of the Tino Seghal workshop. I wasn't sad to miss it, only to deprive another of the chance. Had I felt itchy last night I would've given up my place there and then, but the ills came on quite sudden. Almost a year to the day, bizarrely. It has got very cold. Hibernating shouldn't be a guilty thing. That word came up, the Danish one, this time in Dutch. From the German Gemütlichkeit, comes the idea of 'cosiness' not just as an adjective, but as a verb. Being. Belonging, social warmth, and the key one, quality time. I am all about the Gemütlichkeit from now on. I wrote a list in Le Pain Quotidien at St Pancras, in the last half hour of my holiday. I like to think a trip incites learned moments, maybe 'being busy' is not at the top of that list.
Always so much pressure to perform on a spare Saturday. When 3 miles away in the metropolis, the minions are at work under heavy crowds and shouts, mounting our performance rites, twists turns, sorrys, yes it's too early to buy it for Christmas, there's nine people waiting do you want to wait, when the minions are at work and one is not, well, there is usually a feeling of utter redundancy. Not today. I learnt of the Ministry of Stories at the same time as reading it, I watched The Beauty of Diagrams, I pictured cinnamon pear cake, thought saving is a waste and spent time researching boat living. I scribbled and thought and basked, because overachieving is overrated. Like he said yesterday, 'not pursing a career (anything) at the moment' didn't used to be a bad thing.
I know I have lost the art of contentment. It takes foreignness to jolt this into me. With such a bombardment of options and choice, it becomes difficult to know what one truly wants. London is heavy, I saw it when I left the station on Thursday, when I clock-watched yesterday to Big Ben over the river in the afternoon's arc. The denseness becomes a metaphor for the affects on a person. I love leaving, because I love the comparison on return. London is not a pretty city, at least not to my pocket. I am not allowed historical steeping, a visual warmth, you would never say the east is good-looking. There is something to be said about the visual not being something that needs blocking out. Whilst I live in the best British city for me right now, it's not necessarily the best city.
I didn't intend to miss the second day of the Tino Seghal workshop. I wasn't sad to miss it, only to deprive another of the chance. Had I felt itchy last night I would've given up my place there and then, but the ills came on quite sudden. Almost a year to the day, bizarrely. It has got very cold. Hibernating shouldn't be a guilty thing. That word came up, the Danish one, this time in Dutch. From the German Gemütlichkeit, comes the idea of 'cosiness' not just as an adjective, but as a verb. Being. Belonging, social warmth, and the key one, quality time. I am all about the Gemütlichkeit from now on. I wrote a list in Le Pain Quotidien at St Pancras, in the last half hour of my holiday. I like to think a trip incites learned moments, maybe 'being busy' is not at the top of that list.
Monday 1 November 2010
Couleurs
I was just hanging out my washing, and I re-realised it is actually one of the most pleasing visual things I do. After the unpleasant unfurling of twisted legs and arms, I take the mentionables outside, place the unmentionables on a chair for inside inside. I hook the heavy pile over my forearm like some borne offspring, and present them to the line. Our line is loose, so the first piece always billows too much, so I never choose a sacred first item. My display unfolds colour truths, decisions I don't even make, my week laid out in close-toned primaries: Red, yellow, blue. Mmmmm.
The fact that these shades are so me, so honest, must mean I constantly have to block out unpleasing shades. Think of all that warm blue, all that paled yellow, reds too hollow to clock. I'm doing my day on constant hue watch, step back, step back, with your wrong choices! My versions are ridiculously particular. I love that. I might even go and look at the line now, just to check, yes I do still like things. So long as they come in a red with a tomato undertone, a yellow that knows mustard, a blue of petrol slick or fly body.
I just bought some new glasses. It's a weird experience. Like buying a haircut but one which won't grow out. It's been difficult this time. Now that glasses are so fucking trendy, we don't even have the preserve of our own quirk. Obviously untrue out of London, take those rad frames out in the provinces, and well, you may as well have punk spikes or two noses. I forget this. Anyway London, London, everything is just a nod towards the ever-fading American Apparel. Most things I put on my face said Californian whore or Shoreditch twinkle. This is unfair, we can't even make our foible our own anymore? The fuckers.
Anyway I shot round it by not going to Cutler & Gross, or vintage, but going to local optician with good value handmade frames that felt right and looked minorly wrong. I like a problem. They're not oversized, they're not 'sexy', they're not London 2010, they're not lets-see-if-those-lenses-are-real-I-can-tell-they're-not-because-the-angle-of-your-face-is-the-same-when-I-look-through-them-how-dare-you. These ones are David Hockney. They are black with a keyhole bridge and you can see my eyebrows. They make me look like my mum, which basically means they make me look like me. Like I said, I like problem.
I have spent a while Googling 'girls in glasses'. I was thinking more Miss Moneypenny than Jenny Eclair. Annie Hall..? Er, I can't even name 5? The Wikipedia entry is full of cool men in history, but the only women mentioned are Anastacia, Dame Edna Everage (who is a man) and Deidre Barlow (who isn't even real). The girl in the shop said "you either go geeky or sexy", which I found fun, as surely you can be a sexy geek (but clearly not a geeky sex). Anyway I went for classic black rather than tortoiseshell, which I will own one day once the trend has blown over, and I can afford real ones. I just hope the black successfully dilutes those beloved primaries. And I never hear the words geek chic.
The fact that these shades are so me, so honest, must mean I constantly have to block out unpleasing shades. Think of all that warm blue, all that paled yellow, reds too hollow to clock. I'm doing my day on constant hue watch, step back, step back, with your wrong choices! My versions are ridiculously particular. I love that. I might even go and look at the line now, just to check, yes I do still like things. So long as they come in a red with a tomato undertone, a yellow that knows mustard, a blue of petrol slick or fly body.
I just bought some new glasses. It's a weird experience. Like buying a haircut but one which won't grow out. It's been difficult this time. Now that glasses are so fucking trendy, we don't even have the preserve of our own quirk. Obviously untrue out of London, take those rad frames out in the provinces, and well, you may as well have punk spikes or two noses. I forget this. Anyway London, London, everything is just a nod towards the ever-fading American Apparel. Most things I put on my face said Californian whore or Shoreditch twinkle. This is unfair, we can't even make our foible our own anymore? The fuckers.
Anyway I shot round it by not going to Cutler & Gross, or vintage, but going to local optician with good value handmade frames that felt right and looked minorly wrong. I like a problem. They're not oversized, they're not 'sexy', they're not London 2010, they're not lets-see-if-those-lenses-are-real-I-can-tell-they're-not-because-the-angle-of-your-face-is-the-same-when-I-look-through-them-how-dare-you. These ones are David Hockney. They are black with a keyhole bridge and you can see my eyebrows. They make me look like my mum, which basically means they make me look like me. Like I said, I like problem.
I have spent a while Googling 'girls in glasses'. I was thinking more Miss Moneypenny than Jenny Eclair. Annie Hall..? Er, I can't even name 5? The Wikipedia entry is full of cool men in history, but the only women mentioned are Anastacia, Dame Edna Everage (who is a man) and Deidre Barlow (who isn't even real). The girl in the shop said "you either go geeky or sexy", which I found fun, as surely you can be a sexy geek (but clearly not a geeky sex). Anyway I went for classic black rather than tortoiseshell, which I will own one day once the trend has blown over, and I can afford real ones. I just hope the black successfully dilutes those beloved primaries. And I never hear the words geek chic.
Tuesday 12 October 2010
A kind of magic
Hello, he answered furtively. Hi, this is Zoe, you just tried to call me, I said, pretending I hadn't just Googled his 0208. I'M LOCKED IN MY HOUSE! he exclaimed. Brilliant. Absolutely terribly brilliant. A teacher of magic, locked in his own frigging house, told with inherent tongue-in-inherent-cheek. I've had this feeling twice in two days, this edginess where I'm all misaligned, I'm overslept for Powerpoint, I'm too artired (v.knackered feeling from over-exposure to art, crowds, bad air conditioning) for The Magical Consciousness. I'm operating under a pull which doesn't feel right, but I have to go to computer class, I have to go to mysticism, because not only have I paid, but surely my heaviness is just laziness or a temporary inability to see the optimism in things? 'It'll be alright when I get there'?
Yesterday, I scuttled out of bed and onto bike in 15 mins, all awkward and wrong, and made it into B4 for the 10am start. I was promptly told I had to leave the room due to 'funding regulations', having missed last week's class due to a second-hand cold. But I thought it'd waste less money if I came, I protested, quite half-arsed and clearly doing a really bad job of acting like I gave a shit about Microsoft Office. I swanned out into London (capital L thankyou) all pleased with myself, realigned and glad to be alive. Today, I got home from Tate Modern mania, verbally moaning about not wanting for any magic tonight, only to receive a call from the man himself telling me he was tentatively awaiting a locksmith. Ah I do feel realigned. So much so I had energy enough to dance round an empty kitchen to James Brown's Gettin' Down To It and a million versions of Stormy Weather, drinking a terrible indulgence that is Colebrooke Row rhubarb gin and apple juice. Don't tell anyone.
Ok, I admit it's now tomorrow. My wild freedom led me to sorting out speaker systems and re-sorting papers upstairs till 2am. Rather wild that. I thought again of heading out to a Cocktail Week bar, alone but not lonely, but decided against the success of the Boundary Rooftop. All of a sudden, I am super, make that hyper-conscious of my Londonitus. And not just due to my accounts. I know I've been ploughing through with extra-curricular activities for some time, but people have started to notice. Three times in the past four days. I look forward to hearing about your escapades, he said. You've always got so many options of things to do, she commented. London's perfect for you, he said, aren't you a journalist? I felt uneasy. Ugh, ugh, still now, ugh, still, again now. I am consuming, yes, I'm eating London thanks, tasty, but (I know/do I)* I need to process this information? Is re-hashing my experience denouncing it dirtily as fodder, a displacement activity for want of something truly creative? Does the experiential, unrendered version stay sweet, or just smack wasted purity into my face?
I've been bored for seven years, I said. I keep telling them but I'm telling myself. Let me indulge a while. I do worry I will skate the surface of things, become addicted to the art of cultural intake, but really, I know I'm just Enjoying Myself. I feel I do have to be careful that I continue to appease these treats, and not be in turn consumed by them. Canceled computers led me to tea at Bea's of Bloomsbury, pondering life as a baker, whilst reading The Gentlewoman, pondering life as both a journalist and 'as a Julia Davies'. In Selfidges bar, Tanqueray Man told cocktail histories that excited the gin joint landlady in me, Nars sparked my makeup artiste, and the basement graduate show twanged my art string. Too Many Things. Even that as a list feels heavy. Imagine it in my head on a daily basis. And I swear I'm being honest.
Skate on the lightness, but be wary of the heaviness. Let it up and in, keep it down. Have plans, have them broken, book tickets, turn up on standby, make dates, selfishly cancel, don't leave the house and get frustrated, chat to strangers if they'll let you, run into people, pretend to be someone, pretend to be you. In short, trust in the future of things a little. And if I am allowed to cite my own aphorism, Let problems evolve...
* I couldn't pick one, oh my democracy
Yesterday, I scuttled out of bed and onto bike in 15 mins, all awkward and wrong, and made it into B4 for the 10am start. I was promptly told I had to leave the room due to 'funding regulations', having missed last week's class due to a second-hand cold. But I thought it'd waste less money if I came, I protested, quite half-arsed and clearly doing a really bad job of acting like I gave a shit about Microsoft Office. I swanned out into London (capital L thankyou) all pleased with myself, realigned and glad to be alive. Today, I got home from Tate Modern mania, verbally moaning about not wanting for any magic tonight, only to receive a call from the man himself telling me he was tentatively awaiting a locksmith. Ah I do feel realigned. So much so I had energy enough to dance round an empty kitchen to James Brown's Gettin' Down To It and a million versions of Stormy Weather, drinking a terrible indulgence that is Colebrooke Row rhubarb gin and apple juice. Don't tell anyone.
Ok, I admit it's now tomorrow. My wild freedom led me to sorting out speaker systems and re-sorting papers upstairs till 2am. Rather wild that. I thought again of heading out to a Cocktail Week bar, alone but not lonely, but decided against the success of the Boundary Rooftop. All of a sudden, I am super, make that hyper-conscious of my Londonitus. And not just due to my accounts. I know I've been ploughing through with extra-curricular activities for some time, but people have started to notice. Three times in the past four days. I look forward to hearing about your escapades, he said. You've always got so many options of things to do, she commented. London's perfect for you, he said, aren't you a journalist? I felt uneasy. Ugh, ugh, still now, ugh, still, again now. I am consuming, yes, I'm eating London thanks, tasty, but (I know/do I)* I need to process this information? Is re-hashing my experience denouncing it dirtily as fodder, a displacement activity for want of something truly creative? Does the experiential, unrendered version stay sweet, or just smack wasted purity into my face?
I've been bored for seven years, I said. I keep telling them but I'm telling myself. Let me indulge a while. I do worry I will skate the surface of things, become addicted to the art of cultural intake, but really, I know I'm just Enjoying Myself. I feel I do have to be careful that I continue to appease these treats, and not be in turn consumed by them. Canceled computers led me to tea at Bea's of Bloomsbury, pondering life as a baker, whilst reading The Gentlewoman, pondering life as both a journalist and 'as a Julia Davies'. In Selfidges bar, Tanqueray Man told cocktail histories that excited the gin joint landlady in me, Nars sparked my makeup artiste, and the basement graduate show twanged my art string. Too Many Things. Even that as a list feels heavy. Imagine it in my head on a daily basis. And I swear I'm being honest.
Skate on the lightness, but be wary of the heaviness. Let it up and in, keep it down. Have plans, have them broken, book tickets, turn up on standby, make dates, selfishly cancel, don't leave the house and get frustrated, chat to strangers if they'll let you, run into people, pretend to be someone, pretend to be you. In short, trust in the future of things a little. And if I am allowed to cite my own aphorism, Let problems evolve...
* I couldn't pick one, oh my democracy
Wednesday 29 September 2010
Chemin
Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life? Cripes I do not know! I wish wish wish I knew! I always think of this quotation, I looked in the mirror at the 30s German party, admiring my smooth hair and frankly beautifully darkened eyes. Asked myself, what do you want? What do you want, look at your eyes, what is it you want?? I was only slightly lucid, there was no answer in that mirror.
I think I honestly like too many things. I am equally fired by cooking an immense 4 hour 2 course meal for 6, as I am eating mash out of a bowl with garlic mayo past midnight. I am as excited about Homework tomorrow night as I am about ballet on Thursday, as I am about dancing Saturday, as I am about The Approach Sunday. I am as edgy about writing a new sentence as I am about making a new mark, as thrilled by a new colour-fabric combo from the gods as visiting cookshops and dripping over the financier tins and Mason Cash batter jugs.
I have flitted a fair bit since I moved to London. I have been like an overexcited child, one moment studying writing and making things for Shona, doing duty to most excellent coffee and answering phones and bigger things at the School. Now I am working three days in order to 'write', whatever that may be, or whatever else it could be. I'm going out a lot. I'm having the fun of a 21 year old under the weight of (almost) twenty eight shoulders. I'm trying to live a dual existence, one which concurrently erases and undermines, and trusts and builds on my histories. In short, I'm all over the shop.
I'm too tired for resolutions or interesting words here, apologies, I just ran out of pen ink and needed to out. All I believe, is that a conversation in reality can eke out things I've not even realised I thought yet, so I am looking forward to meeting with him tomorrow, in whatever context. All I know, is that in light of a potential change, today wooshed by as quick as hell. Efficency came as a byproduct of lightness, an excitment that things might change, things need to change. Sadly, they do. Leave the party whilst it's still good, get your haircut when it suddenly looks ok, ish. You know change is whipped up in the wings and denying it is a very wrong thing.
I think I honestly like too many things. I am equally fired by cooking an immense 4 hour 2 course meal for 6, as I am eating mash out of a bowl with garlic mayo past midnight. I am as excited about Homework tomorrow night as I am about ballet on Thursday, as I am about dancing Saturday, as I am about The Approach Sunday. I am as edgy about writing a new sentence as I am about making a new mark, as thrilled by a new colour-fabric combo from the gods as visiting cookshops and dripping over the financier tins and Mason Cash batter jugs.
I have flitted a fair bit since I moved to London. I have been like an overexcited child, one moment studying writing and making things for Shona, doing duty to most excellent coffee and answering phones and bigger things at the School. Now I am working three days in order to 'write', whatever that may be, or whatever else it could be. I'm going out a lot. I'm having the fun of a 21 year old under the weight of (almost) twenty eight shoulders. I'm trying to live a dual existence, one which concurrently erases and undermines, and trusts and builds on my histories. In short, I'm all over the shop.
I'm too tired for resolutions or interesting words here, apologies, I just ran out of pen ink and needed to out. All I believe, is that a conversation in reality can eke out things I've not even realised I thought yet, so I am looking forward to meeting with him tomorrow, in whatever context. All I know, is that in light of a potential change, today wooshed by as quick as hell. Efficency came as a byproduct of lightness, an excitment that things might change, things need to change. Sadly, they do. Leave the party whilst it's still good, get your haircut when it suddenly looks ok, ish. You know change is whipped up in the wings and denying it is a very wrong thing.
Friday 24 September 2010
One is fun
We tossed a coin and it was wrong, you're disappointed, he said, you should go. I stuck out my arm and paid two pounds and before I could feel the burden I was stomping down Old Compton Street. Pockets, a tenner and a house key, I felt free. I skipped the familiar with lightness offered by those shoes, like nature, they know what to do. Hopping up kerbs and down pavements, noticing no-one, I spotted the grail of a sign that is Wardour Street W1. What the fuck am I doing, I smirked, it didn't work last time, maybe it was the mojitos but my doubt now was quite the fallacy.
I paid in past the ropes of privilege and was dancing before I thought about it, Tim Jumpin' Jive stashed my coat in the dj box and became my ally. Tim Jumpin' Jive! With his itchy suit and grim pallor, he chatted at me and for once I listened because, I don't know anyone here, I'm out, alone. He warmed. He actually warmed, smiled, looked at me and I swear we touched cheeks on some of those turns, and I don't like that memory one bit. I like it less than remembering being snared by a man in more eyeliner than me. I re-read my sentences and don't know which one turns the El Salvador in my stomach more. Let us not think about it.
Anyway, wannabe-models and kids and application forms for cool clubs aside, I had a fun time without the potential heaviness of a sole self. There was a lovely glorious moment, when I went outside to cool off, where I dipped into the 30th anniversary book. I'm not late, you're lucky. Hang on. I'm not late, you're lucky. Shit! That wonderous mono-thought of a quote which stuck in my head, stuck on my old college toolbox, was Emin to the bouncer at Gaz's when she worked the cloakroom back in the day. I love that. That sort of thing makes me so calmed, when you feel like a circle you never planned rolled round your way. A marker of things being right.
I'm leaving, you coming, he said. No, I smirked. It's over anyway he said. It was over but I'm glad I lost him. What the fuck was I acting. Glad I had the last minutes where I danced on the stage with the man himself, who so pissed fell over, missed the record ending, and dropped his wallet. I checked the contents, pulling out a grubby tenner and a membership card, pushing them back cus it wasn't mine, and look at him, he fucking needs it. I watched him lech on a cute vacuous thing, a puzzled look on my face at her bewilderment. A lost animal. It was over now.
I almost walked home. Instead I walked to Kings Cross and bought a Twirl and didn't buy a Big Mac. I don't know if I'll go there ever again. I'm not sure I need to. It feels like an experience which stands for something, a story in itself that can't be re-read. I imagined it a certain way, it hit certain marks and offered reasons and examples. I acted my way through the evening, with no-one watching, the self is ultimately loose. Character building really. I gave him my last two pounds and got on and that was the end of that. Delia was right, One Is Fun.
I paid in past the ropes of privilege and was dancing before I thought about it, Tim Jumpin' Jive stashed my coat in the dj box and became my ally. Tim Jumpin' Jive! With his itchy suit and grim pallor, he chatted at me and for once I listened because, I don't know anyone here, I'm out, alone. He warmed. He actually warmed, smiled, looked at me and I swear we touched cheeks on some of those turns, and I don't like that memory one bit. I like it less than remembering being snared by a man in more eyeliner than me. I re-read my sentences and don't know which one turns the El Salvador in my stomach more. Let us not think about it.
Anyway, wannabe-models and kids and application forms for cool clubs aside, I had a fun time without the potential heaviness of a sole self. There was a lovely glorious moment, when I went outside to cool off, where I dipped into the 30th anniversary book. I'm not late, you're lucky. Hang on. I'm not late, you're lucky. Shit! That wonderous mono-thought of a quote which stuck in my head, stuck on my old college toolbox, was Emin to the bouncer at Gaz's when she worked the cloakroom back in the day. I love that. That sort of thing makes me so calmed, when you feel like a circle you never planned rolled round your way. A marker of things being right.
I'm leaving, you coming, he said. No, I smirked. It's over anyway he said. It was over but I'm glad I lost him. What the fuck was I acting. Glad I had the last minutes where I danced on the stage with the man himself, who so pissed fell over, missed the record ending, and dropped his wallet. I checked the contents, pulling out a grubby tenner and a membership card, pushing them back cus it wasn't mine, and look at him, he fucking needs it. I watched him lech on a cute vacuous thing, a puzzled look on my face at her bewilderment. A lost animal. It was over now.
I almost walked home. Instead I walked to Kings Cross and bought a Twirl and didn't buy a Big Mac. I don't know if I'll go there ever again. I'm not sure I need to. It feels like an experience which stands for something, a story in itself that can't be re-read. I imagined it a certain way, it hit certain marks and offered reasons and examples. I acted my way through the evening, with no-one watching, the self is ultimately loose. Character building really. I gave him my last two pounds and got on and that was the end of that. Delia was right, One Is Fun.
Wednesday 22 September 2010
Catharsis
I haven't done any writing for some time, I said to him, I'm really worried, I haven't done any writing for ages, I said to her. I kept saying it as though a mental marker to myself, something I hoped would trigger off a train of brain thought that would tip the idea into a good vat of action. I had that thing a few years ago, where I would begin to say ideas and plans out loud, and believing it was the place where they first bed down, take root, make sense, exist.
It seemed to correlate with the time I'd spent on him the past month, see, I've been missing for a month, and yes there's been festivals and train journeys and sunny outings and locality explorings, shows and eats and films and a fucking lot of walking actually, but mostly, it was time spent with a boy. Not volume of time, but mentality. Remember that weird bit between 2004 and 2008 where I didn't really do anything? Rememember I stopped talking to myself, stopping the jottings, diaries, collectings, pastings, paintings. Ideas? And remember thinking this was an 'odd thing' but this must be a 'good thing', what a relationship is for in essence, to be able to stop the talking to oneself like a mentalist and say these things out loud?
Well I believe I have a problem. If I can only put my creativity (there must be a better word but I like how shit this one is, as shit as that talk, which if I can get a sentence out of for 8quid, maybe it was worth it) ... into one direction at a time, outward or inward, well I'm just setting myself up for implosion. I'm attempting a vacuum either way that is boundlessly fruitless, frustration-definite and self destroying.
Or more plainly, it might just be the meet a new boy tell him your surname he Googles you and is watching thing. Suddenly instant self-publishing feels violating and a bizarre self-censorship ensues, where you can't think him into the present as it's too close, he'll end up in words and you'll both be waiting to read them. Best not post for a while then. I hate that. We were talking last night about the instantaneous nature of a blog, the power, the frailty. We were talking on Saturday about the left/right hand fact/fiction thing. We were talking Monday about the melting of catharsis into creation. Again there must be a better word but I'm sorry.
Or maybe all of these times I was saying out loud what I should be saying to the page. I sat down half an hour ago, for it takes 30 minutes to write one of these bites, and my arms were full of that thing they learned May Oh Eight. Full of what, words, ideas, repression, stress, blood, electricity, the Sage? Whatever it is, it dripped onto the keys, tapped from a brain place, slight but different to the pen, a mix of catharsis and creation. I'm wanting to evolve, the truth depends on the melange and I can only trust in the unknown. This is just wordy words for 'get on with shit'.
It seemed to correlate with the time I'd spent on him the past month, see, I've been missing for a month, and yes there's been festivals and train journeys and sunny outings and locality explorings, shows and eats and films and a fucking lot of walking actually, but mostly, it was time spent with a boy. Not volume of time, but mentality. Remember that weird bit between 2004 and 2008 where I didn't really do anything? Rememember I stopped talking to myself, stopping the jottings, diaries, collectings, pastings, paintings. Ideas? And remember thinking this was an 'odd thing' but this must be a 'good thing', what a relationship is for in essence, to be able to stop the talking to oneself like a mentalist and say these things out loud?
Well I believe I have a problem. If I can only put my creativity (there must be a better word but I like how shit this one is, as shit as that talk, which if I can get a sentence out of for 8quid, maybe it was worth it) ... into one direction at a time, outward or inward, well I'm just setting myself up for implosion. I'm attempting a vacuum either way that is boundlessly fruitless, frustration-definite and self destroying.
Or more plainly, it might just be the meet a new boy tell him your surname he Googles you and is watching thing. Suddenly instant self-publishing feels violating and a bizarre self-censorship ensues, where you can't think him into the present as it's too close, he'll end up in words and you'll both be waiting to read them. Best not post for a while then. I hate that. We were talking last night about the instantaneous nature of a blog, the power, the frailty. We were talking on Saturday about the left/right hand fact/fiction thing. We were talking Monday about the melting of catharsis into creation. Again there must be a better word but I'm sorry.
Or maybe all of these times I was saying out loud what I should be saying to the page. I sat down half an hour ago, for it takes 30 minutes to write one of these bites, and my arms were full of that thing they learned May Oh Eight. Full of what, words, ideas, repression, stress, blood, electricity, the Sage? Whatever it is, it dripped onto the keys, tapped from a brain place, slight but different to the pen, a mix of catharsis and creation. I'm wanting to evolve, the truth depends on the melange and I can only trust in the unknown. This is just wordy words for 'get on with shit'.
Tuesday 31 August 2010
That place
I was just doing a bit of scribbling, long time since, and I wondered that what I’m doing is poetry, because I’m making a fictional world out of fact. I’m not ‘making things up’. I’m not into fabrication, fake worlds, dreamy realities, alternative outcomes, I’m into here now me, I’m doing this and it is affecting me, now, here, and I’m not making things up, and this is where the passion and ache lies, and I want you to see it the way I don't even know yet.
It comes from somewhere I can't even fathom. It lies in the same place that she riffed from, with a jazz backing, making my sore itchy-ill hands clap like they had no shame, shouting from the back with praise that I wanted to be heard but kind of not too as she was a little fearful. I listened to her lyrical virtuosity, ploughing at speed through personal and historical reference with an honest delicacy and burning yearning. She's digging to that unknown that I love, her own, and it chimes and calls out to mine.
Within minutes of this gig, if you can call it that, I wasn't so ill anymore. I had laughs and smiles. It glowed, what’s missing when I'm ill? Humour, rhythm, base emotions that makes an animal a human, things that attach the body and the mind and hold the soul up. These unknown crucialities that keep us sane, that when we stifle them, think we can command them, stop listening to the Sage or whatever, double-back and poison us.
When she had said about the brain being a a cool function, when Ruby Wax was talking about neuroscience, I made the mistake of thinking that understanding the functionality made it comprehensible. Er, no. It doesn't work this way. You'll never know the root of everything, the where what why is this happening, so just get on with discovering the unknown. It is timely to reflect on what you know to be right for you, and what is on offer. It's not about risks, but like an explorer setting off with a map, plans and knowledge. Go.
It comes from somewhere I can't even fathom. It lies in the same place that she riffed from, with a jazz backing, making my sore itchy-ill hands clap like they had no shame, shouting from the back with praise that I wanted to be heard but kind of not too as she was a little fearful. I listened to her lyrical virtuosity, ploughing at speed through personal and historical reference with an honest delicacy and burning yearning. She's digging to that unknown that I love, her own, and it chimes and calls out to mine.
Within minutes of this gig, if you can call it that, I wasn't so ill anymore. I had laughs and smiles. It glowed, what’s missing when I'm ill? Humour, rhythm, base emotions that makes an animal a human, things that attach the body and the mind and hold the soul up. These unknown crucialities that keep us sane, that when we stifle them, think we can command them, stop listening to the Sage or whatever, double-back and poison us.
When she had said about the brain being a a cool function, when Ruby Wax was talking about neuroscience, I made the mistake of thinking that understanding the functionality made it comprehensible. Er, no. It doesn't work this way. You'll never know the root of everything, the where what why is this happening, so just get on with discovering the unknown. It is timely to reflect on what you know to be right for you, and what is on offer. It's not about risks, but like an explorer setting off with a map, plans and knowledge. Go.
Friday 27 August 2010
Held up
You don't look like you've got a cold, she said, when I have cold I look terrible. I tried to explain the cold was two days ago, now it's chest-ways, the bit where it can get me and I have to call the ambulance while he just lies there passed out. Another story. My physiognomy hides it well, but I'm actually concentrating very hard, I'm a slave to the virus, my lungs are broke, I'm out of control.
Yesterday I was fine enough to get a haircut and drink whisky, today I woke up with a paltry whimper knowing I had to call in sick, but I also had to wait a few hours as it was only 5am. Sad pathetic lonely whimper. Nothing like an illness to smash your independence down to size. Dependence, someone to hang on, someone to remind you you're alive and rub your back and buy you caramel digestives, that's what an ill thing needs.
I'm angry now. I've missed two days of work, and a weekend of bank holiday revels will no doubt have to slide. I'm deeply sad about that, I didn't want to put life on hold, look how exciting it was, is, look, look at my plans and designs. Why is it fair that I'm separate from what I want? Then I think back to Sunday, Monday. A hanging dread of change where the colourful bits were blurs and I was looking for extraneous light.
Being ill, a time to slow down. A time to be angry at your body, see it communicating with your mind, see it lighting your soul. They're all connected, but it's easy to let the mind think it's the thing. It makes me appreciate things, that my eyes mostly sparkle, my feet have a rhythm, and words are (hopefully) a lot more inspired by these ones. Maybe the recalibration needed a physical jar, to jolt everything into step. I know I'm not well when I'm neither laughing or twirling, physical outcomes married from the mind and soul in a happy accident.
Yesterday I was fine enough to get a haircut and drink whisky, today I woke up with a paltry whimper knowing I had to call in sick, but I also had to wait a few hours as it was only 5am. Sad pathetic lonely whimper. Nothing like an illness to smash your independence down to size. Dependence, someone to hang on, someone to remind you you're alive and rub your back and buy you caramel digestives, that's what an ill thing needs.
I'm angry now. I've missed two days of work, and a weekend of bank holiday revels will no doubt have to slide. I'm deeply sad about that, I didn't want to put life on hold, look how exciting it was, is, look, look at my plans and designs. Why is it fair that I'm separate from what I want? Then I think back to Sunday, Monday. A hanging dread of change where the colourful bits were blurs and I was looking for extraneous light.
Being ill, a time to slow down. A time to be angry at your body, see it communicating with your mind, see it lighting your soul. They're all connected, but it's easy to let the mind think it's the thing. It makes me appreciate things, that my eyes mostly sparkle, my feet have a rhythm, and words are (hopefully) a lot more inspired by these ones. Maybe the recalibration needed a physical jar, to jolt everything into step. I know I'm not well when I'm neither laughing or twirling, physical outcomes married from the mind and soul in a happy accident.
Monday 16 August 2010
Dancing
Consciousness, so hot right now. It seems I can't open a newspaper, browse a listings guide, walk through my day without thinking about that gap between my brain and my skull, some soul space, where I become me. It's grinding against itself, sometimes parched and scratchy, sometimes wet and lubricated, swizzles round on an non-axis, and I'm not sure I'm awake, I'm me, I'm alive, I'm alive I am.
I did a hell of a lot of dancing this weekend. I had the most fun I had in a long time. I thoroughly enjoyed her rumours?, not really rumours, of me 'being a dancer'. I enjoyed my definition based on passion, rather than my contracted hourly rate. I got lost, watching some lovely gay boys watching me and some girls and most of the public all over him and his lasciviousness. A good contrast. The brushed voice of a wholesome woman in furs, rolled in and out of bed the same, she said, smacking a compliment on me with that amazing Wig-un accent. So real, I wish I was her.
A lot of dressing up. I'm concerned, in general, that I don't sit tight anywhere. I don't have a niche a place a style a crowd a language a decade a collective a real solid mass of existence. One minute it's six count, next I'm all northern, a restrained tea frame, a wild thing, and I'm all, I'm loving all without a lie. But what am I? What Am I says the Science Museum poster. See, it's everywhere. Neurons, pathways, excuses and explanations, it's like we're boiling down our problems to a cool point. She said she lost her mysticism. I was kind of saddened. She'd done that cool thing, separated the body and soul.
I told him how I thought it was dangerous that one can just get lost in the dancing. I remembered that period when it took three classes a week just to blur my present, a survival style. Then it came to the time when I was sitting around the dance floor aching to read my book, get into my head, having to forget myself at the wrong time was incredibly frustrating. But it helped me change. It's happening again now. My reality is switched around me and I'm looking for new markers. But this time round, it's fun. I'm wrapping my lost consciousness up in hops and spins.
I did a hell of a lot of dancing this weekend. I had the most fun I had in a long time. I thoroughly enjoyed her rumours?, not really rumours, of me 'being a dancer'. I enjoyed my definition based on passion, rather than my contracted hourly rate. I got lost, watching some lovely gay boys watching me and some girls and most of the public all over him and his lasciviousness. A good contrast. The brushed voice of a wholesome woman in furs, rolled in and out of bed the same, she said, smacking a compliment on me with that amazing Wig-un accent. So real, I wish I was her.
A lot of dressing up. I'm concerned, in general, that I don't sit tight anywhere. I don't have a niche a place a style a crowd a language a decade a collective a real solid mass of existence. One minute it's six count, next I'm all northern, a restrained tea frame, a wild thing, and I'm all, I'm loving all without a lie. But what am I? What Am I says the Science Museum poster. See, it's everywhere. Neurons, pathways, excuses and explanations, it's like we're boiling down our problems to a cool point. She said she lost her mysticism. I was kind of saddened. She'd done that cool thing, separated the body and soul.
I told him how I thought it was dangerous that one can just get lost in the dancing. I remembered that period when it took three classes a week just to blur my present, a survival style. Then it came to the time when I was sitting around the dance floor aching to read my book, get into my head, having to forget myself at the wrong time was incredibly frustrating. But it helped me change. It's happening again now. My reality is switched around me and I'm looking for new markers. But this time round, it's fun. I'm wrapping my lost consciousness up in hops and spins.
Monday 9 August 2010
Chance
There was a sentence in the wall text at the Tillmans, which described his process as a sort of engineering of chance and consideration. We spent quite a lot of time chatting in there, reasoning it, pitting aesthetic against obsession, looking for longer. Well she reasoned and I alluded, slightly surprised at my thought processes, almost feeling these dormant areas light up in my brain. They want to be lit, but are extremely rusty, leaving me listening, silently computing at times I should be talking.
There was a bit in the film, where Larry David is addressing the camera at the end, about how the presence of chance in our lives has so much more weight than we would ever like to believe. Several bits of the film drop how the universe is drifting away from itself, and there's a bit where the Melody character is having a natter about entropy, which is really annoying. But after sitting through it, enduring this film, that bit sat well about the chance.
There is a bit coming up shortly on the radio, about The Flavour Thesaurus. It's on my Wish List, I've browsed it in Foyles, I was thinking about it cooking last night, the pairings and food rules, searching for a clue about cauliflower. I haven't listened to Woman's Hour in at least a month, but today, I slept in ten hours, sat back in bed, and checked the schedule online. Exactly what I want. It was chance delivered.
I got the train to Edinburgh last Saturday. I'd talked about the paper on the bench with the strangers, trying not to comment on his Rapha pinking as I felt her burning slightly at me. How is it today, is it worth it, I don't usually buy it as post work it's expired and almost Sunday. Anyway, I decided to buy it, always feels like a slight gamble queuing in WH Smiths, trying to ignore the Dairy Milk. I'm giving up book time and tea money to a pack of potential that sometimes falls flat.
But today, I was lucky. Smack bang on the front of the Review is a well-informed, well written feature about literary crossover events, replete with a photo from the Zadie Smith Bookslam that I missed because of my concussion, and write up from the Homework I'd been to that same week. I'd only seen the poetry at Latitude because I was meandering by myself after not managing to meet the School girls, only asked him about shows because I bought his book and only bought his book because I sat in the tent at the right time.
Perhaps it's just I live in London, bound forever to be an ultimate trend filter, a future cultural icon, he joshed with a sting. But still, I hadn't bought the paper since before I last heard Woman's Hour. The chances? It makes me want to buy the paper next Saturday, today, just to spite the chance and prove I will always find the right thing, no matter how delicate I am with universal return. Anyway, the point might be, just keep calm, and wait for these things that spark. Tick for the Taste Tours. Abandon myself to the ether.
I thought I had abandoned the blog for a more refined outcome. I felt like writing today. I will be here less often as my words go off to different schools.
There was a bit in the film, where Larry David is addressing the camera at the end, about how the presence of chance in our lives has so much more weight than we would ever like to believe. Several bits of the film drop how the universe is drifting away from itself, and there's a bit where the Melody character is having a natter about entropy, which is really annoying. But after sitting through it, enduring this film, that bit sat well about the chance.
There is a bit coming up shortly on the radio, about The Flavour Thesaurus. It's on my Wish List, I've browsed it in Foyles, I was thinking about it cooking last night, the pairings and food rules, searching for a clue about cauliflower. I haven't listened to Woman's Hour in at least a month, but today, I slept in ten hours, sat back in bed, and checked the schedule online. Exactly what I want. It was chance delivered.
I got the train to Edinburgh last Saturday. I'd talked about the paper on the bench with the strangers, trying not to comment on his Rapha pinking as I felt her burning slightly at me. How is it today, is it worth it, I don't usually buy it as post work it's expired and almost Sunday. Anyway, I decided to buy it, always feels like a slight gamble queuing in WH Smiths, trying to ignore the Dairy Milk. I'm giving up book time and tea money to a pack of potential that sometimes falls flat.
But today, I was lucky. Smack bang on the front of the Review is a well-informed, well written feature about literary crossover events, replete with a photo from the Zadie Smith Bookslam that I missed because of my concussion, and write up from the Homework I'd been to that same week. I'd only seen the poetry at Latitude because I was meandering by myself after not managing to meet the School girls, only asked him about shows because I bought his book and only bought his book because I sat in the tent at the right time.
Perhaps it's just I live in London, bound forever to be an ultimate trend filter, a future cultural icon, he joshed with a sting. But still, I hadn't bought the paper since before I last heard Woman's Hour. The chances? It makes me want to buy the paper next Saturday, today, just to spite the chance and prove I will always find the right thing, no matter how delicate I am with universal return. Anyway, the point might be, just keep calm, and wait for these things that spark. Tick for the Taste Tours. Abandon myself to the ether.
I thought I had abandoned the blog for a more refined outcome. I felt like writing today. I will be here less often as my words go off to different schools.
Monday 28 June 2010
Forty two
We met at the lights, he a sharp turn right across my onwards to catch my gaze at the turn of the green. Party, on a Monday? Oh yeah you're a free one, Mondays mean anydays and whatever sleeps you like. I told him I didn't fancy it, going home to have a think. Going home to have a think? Like I've got something to say on that matter, something to wonder and believe in? What happened? It was a pretty regular day, though I am rather enjoying my reborn swimming hobby. Water seems important, the sun something else.
So yes works a test, boring, and now it's fucking hot to boot and I'm making really really basic adding up mistakes. And getting angry at the cute flat white who just ripped his other ankle tendon, sorry, sorry, I think you're cute and your son leaves biscuits in your pockets and I do that too and I'm just not sure what drink you're asking me for. He apologised over and again, fetched his odd drinks, apologised again. A peppered real thing in the length of a show day. A guy who 'works for the conservatives' wanted to work here just cus we looked cool. Maybe he was right last night, it is a bit of a golden ticket.
I'm torn. I'm so so torn. One day I'm going to pack it all in and move to San Fransisco, the next I'm just putting in a mezzanine please, the next I'm seeing a room in a homely home, and suddenly googling Laban courses. Er, where is my motivation? Something, I don't know what, something dark and pongy lured me into Mysteries, a shop I've managed to avoid for almost two years. I browsed the divination books and went swimming. After lengths of weighing up the pros and implications of a tarot reading with Tanalise or whoever, luck (er?) was it that she'd knocked off for the day. I left with an i ching book to go with my spinach and ricotta roll.
I love the secret park. I'm not going to name it because I don't want you to go there. I sat on the wooden bench as though in a glade, throwing three ten p's on pastry bags in some ridiculously spiritual manner. Suddenly I was nervous. He saw me at the lights, cut across me to catch my attention, I swerved left. What have you been up to, he asked, philosophy class on the meaning of life, I said. Forty two, he replied. Really, I amazed, sounding sarcastic and false. I wondered at the coincidence of it being my first ever i ching reading, the counter reading of my progression at this stage being 21. My change is equal to half the meaning of life. Hmmmm. Absurd.
So yes works a test, boring, and now it's fucking hot to boot and I'm making really really basic adding up mistakes. And getting angry at the cute flat white who just ripped his other ankle tendon, sorry, sorry, I think you're cute and your son leaves biscuits in your pockets and I do that too and I'm just not sure what drink you're asking me for. He apologised over and again, fetched his odd drinks, apologised again. A peppered real thing in the length of a show day. A guy who 'works for the conservatives' wanted to work here just cus we looked cool. Maybe he was right last night, it is a bit of a golden ticket.
I'm torn. I'm so so torn. One day I'm going to pack it all in and move to San Fransisco, the next I'm just putting in a mezzanine please, the next I'm seeing a room in a homely home, and suddenly googling Laban courses. Er, where is my motivation? Something, I don't know what, something dark and pongy lured me into Mysteries, a shop I've managed to avoid for almost two years. I browsed the divination books and went swimming. After lengths of weighing up the pros and implications of a tarot reading with Tanalise or whoever, luck (er?) was it that she'd knocked off for the day. I left with an i ching book to go with my spinach and ricotta roll.
I love the secret park. I'm not going to name it because I don't want you to go there. I sat on the wooden bench as though in a glade, throwing three ten p's on pastry bags in some ridiculously spiritual manner. Suddenly I was nervous. He saw me at the lights, cut across me to catch my attention, I swerved left. What have you been up to, he asked, philosophy class on the meaning of life, I said. Forty two, he replied. Really, I amazed, sounding sarcastic and false. I wondered at the coincidence of it being my first ever i ching reading, the counter reading of my progression at this stage being 21. My change is equal to half the meaning of life. Hmmmm. Absurd.
Wednesday 16 June 2010
Little white skirt
So I kind of fell out with dancing today. Not sure how I feel about this. I stood there, watching sweaty backs and faux couples, just feeling a bit flat about the whole thing. The music was a bit generic or something. What are you doing, he initiated, as I missed steps for the fifth or so time. I'm tired, I laughed though it wasn't a joke. I span too much and failed to cover up my disinterest. I was thinking about boys.
Two days in a row I have had opportunities that I didn't quite take. The words weren't there, the preempted conversations destined never to happen in the right place at the right time. I'm working, I'm two lattes and two black americanos, making great milk, have you got any shows coming up, changing this bin bag, do you want cocoa on the cappuccino, putting stuff in the dishwasher, are you going to the party on Wednesday, maybe we should swap numbers. I'm not myself but I'm most myself.
I shrieked numerous times, the shriek I was told off for at Coffee Union. Everyone got a bit Wednesday loose. A couple on table six looked straight at me for too long, despite not wanting me professionally, as though our acts were offensive and too conscious. Too loose, like we were all testing our bored versions, seeing at what point they bent or broke, at what point we stopped believing in anything we were saying, doing, making. Of course we still believed in the coffee.
The dancing felt transparent and excessive after talking, being, all day. I saw the physical actions and just wanted to be at home writing or reading my book. The physical and mental seem to be leveling out, finally. I decided it was time to go home when the kind older man with glasses, tonight sporting some horrific eye injury-come-operation, told me I looked like I was going to get picked up. Picked up, I thought, I didn't fall, I'm just changing my shoes. Or, maybe this cute white denim mini did me more right than the unrealised conversations could ever have done.
Two days in a row I have had opportunities that I didn't quite take. The words weren't there, the preempted conversations destined never to happen in the right place at the right time. I'm working, I'm two lattes and two black americanos, making great milk, have you got any shows coming up, changing this bin bag, do you want cocoa on the cappuccino, putting stuff in the dishwasher, are you going to the party on Wednesday, maybe we should swap numbers. I'm not myself but I'm most myself.
I shrieked numerous times, the shriek I was told off for at Coffee Union. Everyone got a bit Wednesday loose. A couple on table six looked straight at me for too long, despite not wanting me professionally, as though our acts were offensive and too conscious. Too loose, like we were all testing our bored versions, seeing at what point they bent or broke, at what point we stopped believing in anything we were saying, doing, making. Of course we still believed in the coffee.
The dancing felt transparent and excessive after talking, being, all day. I saw the physical actions and just wanted to be at home writing or reading my book. The physical and mental seem to be leveling out, finally. I decided it was time to go home when the kind older man with glasses, tonight sporting some horrific eye injury-come-operation, told me I looked like I was going to get picked up. Picked up, I thought, I didn't fall, I'm just changing my shoes. Or, maybe this cute white denim mini did me more right than the unrealised conversations could ever have done.
Tuesday 8 June 2010
Dreams
The past two days I've been thinking about dying. A lot. Like the literal lack of oxygen in the place has made me feel like I could be dying. Could my lack of enthusiasm for being, coupled with the physical environment, actually cause my heart to just, stop. I thought it could. Jolt, jolt myself into seeing I'm alive, I'm here, if I was to die now, now, is that, that, the last thing I'd have wanted to be, to feel to exist as.
Sad thing is, not even those thoughts were enough to breathe life into me. It's been fairly grim these past two days. I put it obviously down to my one-day weekend. Not into them, not used to them, and do not see the civility in them at all. I was glad she was in today, told her so. Like I need a fellow dissenter, someone who will just flatly tell the truth of the travesty and drop the act. I swore a lot today. I felt angry a lot. My dancing around others' hermeneutics was really really staid. I'm not dancing around you today, so yes why don't you just fuck off out the shop as I'm answering your question, YES THE BAKED GOODS DO HAVE DAIRY IS THAT HOW YOU'VE BEEN BROUGHT UP.
I met the most beautiful man at the lights. Well we didn't meet, you know, he was turning right. But we bike checked, those fine leather grips and a tidy red frame, some Toms and a Waitrose Foodhall. I looked behind me, ready to shout over if no other cyclists were to bare it's witness. There weren't any. Now's the time, he's turning right. Nice bike, I said, nice glasses he said, nice beard I said, only I didn't because I was tired and off and reeked of the day. He looked over again. Really. Fuck. The lights changed, he turned right. I tutted and shook my head, tears within the mile.
I'm frustrated because I sparked the other day. And now, the double life of having to close off those thoughts, temper them as they don't pay, coffee pays, thoughts don't pay, so ssshh. And my head says, no, no, er, no, stop thinking about these sparks for even minutes and they'll go again, disappear, these precious things. I want them to breathe but there's no oxygen, and I'm thinking I could die. Like them. On Friday, I had a few amazing exchanges on only 3 beers, the resonance of my twisted Theodore Zeldin quotation, the best conversations being where you say things you've never even thought before.
I can think, can I? You can understand me, can you? We are, conversing? We're talking about ideas and this bizarre space we are making, together, for these concepts is almost real. I'm thinking. I'm saying things I've never thought before. I'm talking to artists and this makes sense and I need it and I'm not jealous I'm equal? Next day on milk I decided I am going to try and get into art school. It just came over me. Not even like I'm going to try and want to get into art school, but, plainly, I think I just need it.
Life is ridiculous and anything can happen. What makes most sense, what makes you cry with life. Do that. Fuck the excuses and work backwards from the ultimatum. I completely know it's not going to be easy, if even possible, but if I have a drive towards something, they I need to try. I am willing to coolly look at it, without romanticism or awe, and plainly put in motion steps to get me there. To be around people who want to theorise about and make art. Strangely, since this realisation, I have started to have dreams. Or started to see my dreams. I shall ask her about the science of this, but think this not so concrete evidence is pretty amazing.
Sad thing is, not even those thoughts were enough to breathe life into me. It's been fairly grim these past two days. I put it obviously down to my one-day weekend. Not into them, not used to them, and do not see the civility in them at all. I was glad she was in today, told her so. Like I need a fellow dissenter, someone who will just flatly tell the truth of the travesty and drop the act. I swore a lot today. I felt angry a lot. My dancing around others' hermeneutics was really really staid. I'm not dancing around you today, so yes why don't you just fuck off out the shop as I'm answering your question, YES THE BAKED GOODS DO HAVE DAIRY IS THAT HOW YOU'VE BEEN BROUGHT UP.
I met the most beautiful man at the lights. Well we didn't meet, you know, he was turning right. But we bike checked, those fine leather grips and a tidy red frame, some Toms and a Waitrose Foodhall. I looked behind me, ready to shout over if no other cyclists were to bare it's witness. There weren't any. Now's the time, he's turning right. Nice bike, I said, nice glasses he said, nice beard I said, only I didn't because I was tired and off and reeked of the day. He looked over again. Really. Fuck. The lights changed, he turned right. I tutted and shook my head, tears within the mile.
I'm frustrated because I sparked the other day. And now, the double life of having to close off those thoughts, temper them as they don't pay, coffee pays, thoughts don't pay, so ssshh. And my head says, no, no, er, no, stop thinking about these sparks for even minutes and they'll go again, disappear, these precious things. I want them to breathe but there's no oxygen, and I'm thinking I could die. Like them. On Friday, I had a few amazing exchanges on only 3 beers, the resonance of my twisted Theodore Zeldin quotation, the best conversations being where you say things you've never even thought before.
I can think, can I? You can understand me, can you? We are, conversing? We're talking about ideas and this bizarre space we are making, together, for these concepts is almost real. I'm thinking. I'm saying things I've never thought before. I'm talking to artists and this makes sense and I need it and I'm not jealous I'm equal? Next day on milk I decided I am going to try and get into art school. It just came over me. Not even like I'm going to try and want to get into art school, but, plainly, I think I just need it.
Life is ridiculous and anything can happen. What makes most sense, what makes you cry with life. Do that. Fuck the excuses and work backwards from the ultimatum. I completely know it's not going to be easy, if even possible, but if I have a drive towards something, they I need to try. I am willing to coolly look at it, without romanticism or awe, and plainly put in motion steps to get me there. To be around people who want to theorise about and make art. Strangely, since this realisation, I have started to have dreams. Or started to see my dreams. I shall ask her about the science of this, but think this not so concrete evidence is pretty amazing.
Monday 31 May 2010
Lightness
Getting to a weird point where I can comprehend where the Other Woman is coming from. You're skipping, you're asking; you're available, you're free. You, me. You me. You and me. A million yous and just the one me. I'm free. I'm light. I'm weightless. I'm juggling projections and none of You is real. You meld into one idea and I forget you are people. You are real, you have reality, backgrounds, and existence. And my popping into it, this free thing, poke, well it could have repercussions.
I'm not saying I'm being anything other than fine, but I can see the slope down into selfish abandon, a grey area where I matter, one of You matters, and well, no-one else fucking matters. So I can see how she operated. But that doesn't stop me feeling like I want to pull her hair out. I'll go and see the Picasso exhibition and if I recognise her, if I see her hair, I'll grab it. So I don't want to be like her. And I'm aware. There I go again just understanding, annulling.
It's been two weeks. I've called off the house search, called on the boy hunt. He was true when he said about the right things changing. I decided I wasn't going to find a domestic idyll through Gum Tree, that it could get different but it couldn't get better. I'm equally riled that I should have to wait until I'm romantically settled for a home with a capital H, and that I put such value on domesticity at all. Wasn't it that that stifled Me in the first place? The domestic is the matching of home and family, a house with human warmth. You can't lay your want on something so difficult to find, that ironically when it does appear, is just so simple and easy.
Part of me is still yearning for the Le Parfaits, white socks on wooden floors, a chair that's for reading while he cooks in the kitchen. A calmness. But. As it is, well, I'm here, I've got space to move, literally, and a lightness that I shouldn't bring back to neutral. A fake domesticity won't make me heavy. The real one, it made me heavy, in a bad why, so grr why do I still want it?? Anyway back and forth again, I have decided I can create a perfect nest of space for me inside a room I rent, and practice blinkers in the mess that other people cast. I can make a warmth that I want, and see if it breeds.
I tried to take two days off to practice my new calm. I didn't totally fail, but it didn't pass in a dreamy success. I'm still spinning back here. I am seeing new deadlines, finishing mid July, a summer, then two years have passed since I moved. I live in London now. I really do it well. I feel I have a pretty good hold on how to operate here. But, the bigger picture. Again, I am to remind myself about not so long back when the future wasn't possible, next Saturday was about fine, but further, blurred and abysmal. I'm thinking now about new focuses, and how much extra time I will have to make good use of come mid July. I'm aware I need to gather some strength from somewhere.
I'm not saying I'm being anything other than fine, but I can see the slope down into selfish abandon, a grey area where I matter, one of You matters, and well, no-one else fucking matters. So I can see how she operated. But that doesn't stop me feeling like I want to pull her hair out. I'll go and see the Picasso exhibition and if I recognise her, if I see her hair, I'll grab it. So I don't want to be like her. And I'm aware. There I go again just understanding, annulling.
It's been two weeks. I've called off the house search, called on the boy hunt. He was true when he said about the right things changing. I decided I wasn't going to find a domestic idyll through Gum Tree, that it could get different but it couldn't get better. I'm equally riled that I should have to wait until I'm romantically settled for a home with a capital H, and that I put such value on domesticity at all. Wasn't it that that stifled Me in the first place? The domestic is the matching of home and family, a house with human warmth. You can't lay your want on something so difficult to find, that ironically when it does appear, is just so simple and easy.
Part of me is still yearning for the Le Parfaits, white socks on wooden floors, a chair that's for reading while he cooks in the kitchen. A calmness. But. As it is, well, I'm here, I've got space to move, literally, and a lightness that I shouldn't bring back to neutral. A fake domesticity won't make me heavy. The real one, it made me heavy, in a bad why, so grr why do I still want it?? Anyway back and forth again, I have decided I can create a perfect nest of space for me inside a room I rent, and practice blinkers in the mess that other people cast. I can make a warmth that I want, and see if it breeds.
I tried to take two days off to practice my new calm. I didn't totally fail, but it didn't pass in a dreamy success. I'm still spinning back here. I am seeing new deadlines, finishing mid July, a summer, then two years have passed since I moved. I live in London now. I really do it well. I feel I have a pretty good hold on how to operate here. But, the bigger picture. Again, I am to remind myself about not so long back when the future wasn't possible, next Saturday was about fine, but further, blurred and abysmal. I'm thinking now about new focuses, and how much extra time I will have to make good use of come mid July. I'm aware I need to gather some strength from somewhere.
Monday 17 May 2010
Breathe
When you're making your own rules, how do you know what they are? She was talking about Blink, it came to mind numerous times in the last days, but there's that gap after the blink, and also the gap before the blink, where you have time to mull or sit upon your choice. You start to question the snaps. Do I want to move? Or is it what I keep saying, just changing something because I feel the need for change, and I already chopped my hair off. Maybe I'll get a car, or a baby, or a tattoo. Or maybe I'll just move house.
When I got back from Lisbon I disdainfully turned down Hermitage Road thinking where the fuck do I live. Trailing my case down a cowering residential street with grim signs of life, disheveled front lawns, free-for-all scraps tipping onto the pavement, a gated concrete development of hippies I have no time or care for. Sweeping, but felt. Where is my energy here, and whilst I might love baking and dancing round my huge room, she's right, these things are stagnant, autonomous, wasted, till taken out into the world. That'll be a fifteen minute walk and a tube, or 6 miles of pedaling then.
I had a brilliant day yesterday. Successful. A potential house, a real one, my favourite gallery, some street chips. I walked through the park in a downpour, giggling under a tree eating an apple for about twenty minutes. The storm stopped and I stayed. That's how long it takes me to eat an apple. I giggled and photographed the green ripe sycamore seeds for my mind, their bright-apple looking both fresh and alive, and dead and void. We browsed the garden centre, that delicious life smell, all oxygenated and wonderful and fresh. The cafe was closed, the other one was open. A weak peppermint took the chill off at our brief, spontaneous meeting, we chatted frankly and I got the bus and it was fine. It was.
There's that worry, horror, where you feel meeting someone you have lost touch with will be just so terrible awfully difficult. But I'm glad I knocked on my old home. Three homes in one day. We had a lot to say to each other, this flash-of-a-person who both hardly knows me but knew me mostly at the most difficult time. I realised I was an absolute and utter misery for the entirety of 2009, a transition of a year that had to happen. Sunday seemed to be a day of self congratulation, taking stock, being free and seeing choice.
I did that thing where potential change makes everyone appreciate the now, and you see your immediacy with peeled eyes. I got home, this one, and people are nice, and everything is a version of amazing, and cracks are pasted. Maybe it's fine. Maybe the real possibility of change gave me new height. But here I am, unshowered on a Monday afternoon, having the same crippling problems. Home-career-relationships. No arrows, no pointers, no handrails, no call backs, no shoves, no-one behind or in front. I am the blink. Blink. Wherever I want. I just wish I knew what needs to happen.
When I got back from Lisbon I disdainfully turned down Hermitage Road thinking where the fuck do I live. Trailing my case down a cowering residential street with grim signs of life, disheveled front lawns, free-for-all scraps tipping onto the pavement, a gated concrete development of hippies I have no time or care for. Sweeping, but felt. Where is my energy here, and whilst I might love baking and dancing round my huge room, she's right, these things are stagnant, autonomous, wasted, till taken out into the world. That'll be a fifteen minute walk and a tube, or 6 miles of pedaling then.
I had a brilliant day yesterday. Successful. A potential house, a real one, my favourite gallery, some street chips. I walked through the park in a downpour, giggling under a tree eating an apple for about twenty minutes. The storm stopped and I stayed. That's how long it takes me to eat an apple. I giggled and photographed the green ripe sycamore seeds for my mind, their bright-apple looking both fresh and alive, and dead and void. We browsed the garden centre, that delicious life smell, all oxygenated and wonderful and fresh. The cafe was closed, the other one was open. A weak peppermint took the chill off at our brief, spontaneous meeting, we chatted frankly and I got the bus and it was fine. It was.
There's that worry, horror, where you feel meeting someone you have lost touch with will be just so terrible awfully difficult. But I'm glad I knocked on my old home. Three homes in one day. We had a lot to say to each other, this flash-of-a-person who both hardly knows me but knew me mostly at the most difficult time. I realised I was an absolute and utter misery for the entirety of 2009, a transition of a year that had to happen. Sunday seemed to be a day of self congratulation, taking stock, being free and seeing choice.
I did that thing where potential change makes everyone appreciate the now, and you see your immediacy with peeled eyes. I got home, this one, and people are nice, and everything is a version of amazing, and cracks are pasted. Maybe it's fine. Maybe the real possibility of change gave me new height. But here I am, unshowered on a Monday afternoon, having the same crippling problems. Home-career-relationships. No arrows, no pointers, no handrails, no call backs, no shoves, no-one behind or in front. I am the blink. Blink. Wherever I want. I just wish I knew what needs to happen.
Thursday 13 May 2010
Grey
So blue I'm not even (mean) red, but well grey, gris if you want to glamourise it. Hmm. Transition is all I can call it, when you are most honest to yourself, and know you wouldn't be making up this mood. Who'd choose this? So actually, in amongst this colourless cloud, is the most honesty, that thing you love remember, so, well, it's only leading to a good place. ? .
Hope has been missing for around ten days now. Fading away. I don't want to stop, don't want to stop spinning, literally, because when I do, well everything else is still going and I'm not in there, I'm lost, it's losing me, I don't know where I am. I walk down Green Lanes and buy and eat Turkish biscuits, trying not to feel too crazy trying to humour the guy in Homebase over the one pound price discrepency of a plastic trough that I don't even like. Days off where I see myself lost, trying to trust the everyday, not quite succeeding.
I enjoyed dancing on Wednesday, I enjoyed dancing on Friday. The type where you're clock watching because you wish it would stop, and this could go on for time, not because you resent the day continuing. I kind of enjoyed the School food tour, I mean I literally enjoyed it, it's my world, but I was also labouring under a dual purpose. Oh, I work at Monmouth, I told the Dairy man, but I'm also interning for the School. I'm here twice. Art and artisan. I'm so confusing I can't even chat to these 'customers', I'm too much, too free, too knotted, old, inbetween, cheeky excess.
She asked me to tackle the cabinet today. I was taken aback with such horror I even surprised myself. It cut close, make it curious she said, I found myself doodling art old ideas out of context, pondering how much to think about this task. I already thought too much. I remembered what she told me the other year, about my level of complete and perfect being already a spliced cut of too much, and that if I just toned down and sat comfy in a simplified version of things, then, that might be enough! It eased as I shopped, but I returned to their ideas which made me cynical and cold. I used to know too much, enough, now I know hardly nothing and I can't communicate beyond this.
I'm having a confusing time. Encapsulated, I'm thinking of moving house, I need a career and/or (another story for another day) job direction, and I'm pretty grumpy at being consistently single. I don't know if I'm doing that thing where I roll my problems into one, or whether it is true that I don't feel at all anchored, and who wouldn't feel this way. Not even the swing lifted me last night. Until that is we'd decided to head home, and I had 4 dances of abandon follow that lost me and twirled things. I didn't pretend. Of all things, sitting grumpy seemed to garner interest in my plight, attracting more advance than ever. I think I just need to work this through honestly and frankly. And be open to being helped, as well as helping myself.
Hope has been missing for around ten days now. Fading away. I don't want to stop, don't want to stop spinning, literally, because when I do, well everything else is still going and I'm not in there, I'm lost, it's losing me, I don't know where I am. I walk down Green Lanes and buy and eat Turkish biscuits, trying not to feel too crazy trying to humour the guy in Homebase over the one pound price discrepency of a plastic trough that I don't even like. Days off where I see myself lost, trying to trust the everyday, not quite succeeding.
I enjoyed dancing on Wednesday, I enjoyed dancing on Friday. The type where you're clock watching because you wish it would stop, and this could go on for time, not because you resent the day continuing. I kind of enjoyed the School food tour, I mean I literally enjoyed it, it's my world, but I was also labouring under a dual purpose. Oh, I work at Monmouth, I told the Dairy man, but I'm also interning for the School. I'm here twice. Art and artisan. I'm so confusing I can't even chat to these 'customers', I'm too much, too free, too knotted, old, inbetween, cheeky excess.
She asked me to tackle the cabinet today. I was taken aback with such horror I even surprised myself. It cut close, make it curious she said, I found myself doodling art old ideas out of context, pondering how much to think about this task. I already thought too much. I remembered what she told me the other year, about my level of complete and perfect being already a spliced cut of too much, and that if I just toned down and sat comfy in a simplified version of things, then, that might be enough! It eased as I shopped, but I returned to their ideas which made me cynical and cold. I used to know too much, enough, now I know hardly nothing and I can't communicate beyond this.
I'm having a confusing time. Encapsulated, I'm thinking of moving house, I need a career and/or (another story for another day) job direction, and I'm pretty grumpy at being consistently single. I don't know if I'm doing that thing where I roll my problems into one, or whether it is true that I don't feel at all anchored, and who wouldn't feel this way. Not even the swing lifted me last night. Until that is we'd decided to head home, and I had 4 dances of abandon follow that lost me and twirled things. I didn't pretend. Of all things, sitting grumpy seemed to garner interest in my plight, attracting more advance than ever. I think I just need to work this through honestly and frankly. And be open to being helped, as well as helping myself.
Monday 3 May 2010
New Blog
He kissed me. Twice. One cheek, then the other, swiftly, passing me, stopping to make the gesture, do the gesture, a show of a thing. I stared at him till he felt a niggling obligation, having already past me he turned a moment back, bent down and did it. Maybe it was for the guy sitting next to me. A bit o rough. I quite fancy a bit o rough, and she's probably right, I do fancy a bit o gay.
It keeps happening. Weird, weird logic says it must somehow mean something reflected on me, like, er, maybe I am looking the wrong direction myself. It didn't surprise me all those years ago when he said he thought I might have been gay, well it surprised me a little, but it made me feel kinda cool, not obvious. Maybe I'm just a bit confused that hanging out with a best friend and two guys who are resolutely not interested is really honestly a lovely Sunday, but leaves one feeling marginally cheated. Questioning.
Old hot crush is back. He's not hot per se, he is a bit Eastenders if I'm honest, but crushes are so thin on the ground these days, it's like a dried out lawn with odd scrap of life languishing in the crumpled wiry threads. I've got my hand flat on this parched landscape, brushing over what used to be green and alive, now lain flat dead and dusty. Hand scouring dry earth, kind of nice in itself, a new texture, but remember the greenery, almost I can't actually. If the grass is greener on the other side, I want to go there please.
I am in a kind of stasis. I am, not on purpose I hope, feeling a little May Oh Eight. It's anniversary time and I'm sure it's there still a depth running under the plain and ok. Still getting expired memories, flashes of really, and real heavy longing yearning desperation for second chance. It's interesting. It's my own weight, but it's real too, can I shift it? And on weight, I am uncomfortable. I hope it's not psychosomatic but I look terrible lately. Tired grey, sallow saggy. Divorced, dispirited & ill. I still like them even if they are trite.
I just made a new blog. Or should that be faire-d. I had a name for it pacing the tube corridors a few weeks ago, escalator callings. Despite seeming ideal at the time, thought over and typed in it gave me niggles of a-n, not a good thing, an instinct to believe. So many single thoughts have been used, Googled names showed old and tired. I settled on Voir/Fair. A bit savoir-faire, a bit do make say think, a bit trite, a bit nice. It makes efforts into things I want to record and think about and share, without having to direct it to anybody in particular. It might be a new muse.
It keeps happening. Weird, weird logic says it must somehow mean something reflected on me, like, er, maybe I am looking the wrong direction myself. It didn't surprise me all those years ago when he said he thought I might have been gay, well it surprised me a little, but it made me feel kinda cool, not obvious. Maybe I'm just a bit confused that hanging out with a best friend and two guys who are resolutely not interested is really honestly a lovely Sunday, but leaves one feeling marginally cheated. Questioning.
Old hot crush is back. He's not hot per se, he is a bit Eastenders if I'm honest, but crushes are so thin on the ground these days, it's like a dried out lawn with odd scrap of life languishing in the crumpled wiry threads. I've got my hand flat on this parched landscape, brushing over what used to be green and alive, now lain flat dead and dusty. Hand scouring dry earth, kind of nice in itself, a new texture, but remember the greenery, almost I can't actually. If the grass is greener on the other side, I want to go there please.
I am in a kind of stasis. I am, not on purpose I hope, feeling a little May Oh Eight. It's anniversary time and I'm sure it's there still a depth running under the plain and ok. Still getting expired memories, flashes of really, and real heavy longing yearning desperation for second chance. It's interesting. It's my own weight, but it's real too, can I shift it? And on weight, I am uncomfortable. I hope it's not psychosomatic but I look terrible lately. Tired grey, sallow saggy. Divorced, dispirited & ill. I still like them even if they are trite.
I just made a new blog. Or should that be faire-d. I had a name for it pacing the tube corridors a few weeks ago, escalator callings. Despite seeming ideal at the time, thought over and typed in it gave me niggles of a-n, not a good thing, an instinct to believe. So many single thoughts have been used, Googled names showed old and tired. I settled on Voir/Fair. A bit savoir-faire, a bit do make say think, a bit trite, a bit nice. It makes efforts into things I want to record and think about and share, without having to direct it to anybody in particular. It might be a new muse.
Tuesday 27 April 2010
Facets
Within the hour we were already down to The Unbearable Heaviness of Not Being Able To Do Everything. I keep having these conversations, where I'm listing my alternate careers, with a sort of comic nonchalance that I don't quite believe, and wonder if anyone else detects. Air hostess, neuroscientist, ballroom dancer, painting MA. I flit like a crazy thing. He asked me yesterday if I'd seen the Goldsmiths programme, I wonder what it meant that I'd spent the same time listening to the Food Programme salivating (natch) over The School of Artisan Food. I emailed them though I didn't quite believe it, again. Cocktail bar tender. The list could go on.
We talked about repeating degrees. Said out loud it sounded silly, pointless, but kind of fragile and real. You can't go back, but can you do a Hegelian loop, back to A.2? Get me. Part of me thinks I can loop it straight back to the art place. What fires me? Well, different things at different times. Sometimes it's the perfect cookie jar, the feel of half-plain-flour dough, the new combination winner of salt-sugar-fat eat me up. Farm shops, chickens, growing greens, houses, men and babies. An end. Sometimes it's ideas, knowledge, philosophies, creation, the intangible. Art objects, art ideas, travel, new people, young free spirit. The potential I lost and mourn is always there, though I wonder if it still exists. Or am I just being historical.
What smacks is when I am sprung straight back to trains that went in 2004. This whole aphorism thing being super-trendy-over, the art writing now being a thing, foodie arty happenings. Things of which I am critical and find it easy to fabricate the pointlessness of, explained away as carelessly as that time that disappeared. Things I see myself as being a part of, if I'd been in the right place rather than the wrong one at the right time. On a good day there's still space for me there, on a bad day I'm kidding, hanging onto something long gone whilst keeping me from what could be a good thing for now. Baking bread. Is that enough? Would it dissolve the jealousy or just compound it? Was throwing pastry around the living room a sign that it wasn't enough, or merely desperation 2008?
I haven't written for a week. I've not had the words. Something is shifting in my head. I'm doing that thing that she said, where instead of writing lists, I just find myself doing things. Instead of reflecting lyrically perhaps I am actually interacting with people about the things that I am passionate about. How to read, how to lindy hop, how to drink coffee, how not to contemporary dance. Rock and rolling like crazy to forget the situation, sitting in a room for two hours to remember the situation. I certainly do love it when thinking is a Good Thing. I am trying to enjoy my time for the next couple of months, and indulge my 2010 self. Trying to pack as many facets in as possible, give myself a new go. Stop spinning Zoe! Enjoy? And if there must be spinning then maybe just take it to the dance floor? Though sometimes it'd be nice just to have someone in hold.
We talked about repeating degrees. Said out loud it sounded silly, pointless, but kind of fragile and real. You can't go back, but can you do a Hegelian loop, back to A.2? Get me. Part of me thinks I can loop it straight back to the art place. What fires me? Well, different things at different times. Sometimes it's the perfect cookie jar, the feel of half-plain-flour dough, the new combination winner of salt-sugar-fat eat me up. Farm shops, chickens, growing greens, houses, men and babies. An end. Sometimes it's ideas, knowledge, philosophies, creation, the intangible. Art objects, art ideas, travel, new people, young free spirit. The potential I lost and mourn is always there, though I wonder if it still exists. Or am I just being historical.
What smacks is when I am sprung straight back to trains that went in 2004. This whole aphorism thing being super-trendy-over, the art writing now being a thing, foodie arty happenings. Things of which I am critical and find it easy to fabricate the pointlessness of, explained away as carelessly as that time that disappeared. Things I see myself as being a part of, if I'd been in the right place rather than the wrong one at the right time. On a good day there's still space for me there, on a bad day I'm kidding, hanging onto something long gone whilst keeping me from what could be a good thing for now. Baking bread. Is that enough? Would it dissolve the jealousy or just compound it? Was throwing pastry around the living room a sign that it wasn't enough, or merely desperation 2008?
I haven't written for a week. I've not had the words. Something is shifting in my head. I'm doing that thing that she said, where instead of writing lists, I just find myself doing things. Instead of reflecting lyrically perhaps I am actually interacting with people about the things that I am passionate about. How to read, how to lindy hop, how to drink coffee, how not to contemporary dance. Rock and rolling like crazy to forget the situation, sitting in a room for two hours to remember the situation. I certainly do love it when thinking is a Good Thing. I am trying to enjoy my time for the next couple of months, and indulge my 2010 self. Trying to pack as many facets in as possible, give myself a new go. Stop spinning Zoe! Enjoy? And if there must be spinning then maybe just take it to the dance floor? Though sometimes it'd be nice just to have someone in hold.
Sunday 18 April 2010
Going Out
I am not at all dissatisfied with my evening. I packed a small purse and ran to the main road in a short tight skirt listening to the Kinks. I sat on the bus past my stop. It got later than £5 and I didn't think it through but all of a sudden I was scanning The Book Club queue for friends. Old friends half friends, non friends new friends. I made crucial mistakes early on which meant I didn't get to dance to the Correspondents alone in some sort of euphoria, but instead ended up in a pub with a bad dance floor, via McDonald's. Apple pie secret.
I have the same feeling tonight that I had of Going Out as a teenager. A confusion for what the whole experience was actually about. Why are we painting our faces and putting on short shapes, stomping town and buying drinks, getting tired, getting takeout, getting taxis. All I know is I wanted an adventure, the scariest thing. Once my dancing plan hit the floor I didn't really have a new pull. But I liked not feeling panicked by drifting, somehow taking hold of chance by actively not committing to a single thing. It's quite exciting to make these decisions.
What was my exercise here? I found out about this gig at 8pm, and despite having other plans (that I wasn't actually hot for anyway) I decided to go looking for a night out, and try for the first time to not let not having a comrade stop me. I'm single and I can do anything, anything, by myself. Well I stood in that queue, and it wasn't that I couldn't do it, but all of a sudden, was this actually what I wanted? After three failed attempts at warmth from strangers, I found that people aren't too open to new faces in London. I imagined some American outcome, where I am accepted and embraced for my individuality and spontaneity, lauded for my bare face.
I had a super fun, unconventional night. I don't know if I will try and Go Out by myself again, but I have learnt a few tips at least. I will eye up the queue from across the road rather than stomping straight down it clumsily. I will practice tactical conversations as hooks, not let error be an option. I wasn't prepared tonight, had a mere eight pounds on me, and it was unfamiliar territory. There is no reason for a girl to not go dancing alone. If I am alone, and no-one notices me, then it's almost like I am entirely free, as thought I don't even exist. And if someone does notice me, it will provoke intrigue, and that can only be a positive thing. I will definitely try it again. Though next time I won't tell anybody about it.
I have the same feeling tonight that I had of Going Out as a teenager. A confusion for what the whole experience was actually about. Why are we painting our faces and putting on short shapes, stomping town and buying drinks, getting tired, getting takeout, getting taxis. All I know is I wanted an adventure, the scariest thing. Once my dancing plan hit the floor I didn't really have a new pull. But I liked not feeling panicked by drifting, somehow taking hold of chance by actively not committing to a single thing. It's quite exciting to make these decisions.
What was my exercise here? I found out about this gig at 8pm, and despite having other plans (that I wasn't actually hot for anyway) I decided to go looking for a night out, and try for the first time to not let not having a comrade stop me. I'm single and I can do anything, anything, by myself. Well I stood in that queue, and it wasn't that I couldn't do it, but all of a sudden, was this actually what I wanted? After three failed attempts at warmth from strangers, I found that people aren't too open to new faces in London. I imagined some American outcome, where I am accepted and embraced for my individuality and spontaneity, lauded for my bare face.
I had a super fun, unconventional night. I don't know if I will try and Go Out by myself again, but I have learnt a few tips at least. I will eye up the queue from across the road rather than stomping straight down it clumsily. I will practice tactical conversations as hooks, not let error be an option. I wasn't prepared tonight, had a mere eight pounds on me, and it was unfamiliar territory. There is no reason for a girl to not go dancing alone. If I am alone, and no-one notices me, then it's almost like I am entirely free, as thought I don't even exist. And if someone does notice me, it will provoke intrigue, and that can only be a positive thing. I will definitely try it again. Though next time I won't tell anybody about it.
Tuesday 13 April 2010
He asked what was stopping me, I got that thing where my mind doesn't exactly go blank, not like a meditative state, but draws up an image of a blank page. Its in a book with a stiff spine, about the size of a Penguin edition, one of those nicely designed series on English Journeys or whatever. My mind flicks through with it's hands, a bit Michel Gondry, I look at the pages and the spine is too stiff, and I'm suddenly back in the room, can't remember my word my point my problem.
What's stopping me, is not an easy answer. I came up with idle chat, not being surrounded by active people and work. It's closer to bad spirits, low motivation, a lack of being able to see the point in things. Oh woe is me what a very old problem. The point in things! I am usually fine for the first couple of hours of a day, and then reason sets in and I get heavy. I want to be light and full of potential, but seem to weigh it down with my creating of things not being that essential really. If I don't make an idea, no-one cares! Me, make something! For the past year or so it's been more than enough thank you to merely have an idea, never mind execute it! That brings so many more problems.
I don't know if I will make the show. I don't want to flake out, but seeing the blog I feel like I don't have things to formally present yet. I'm holding torches for old post-trendy ideas, and sadly will have to let them go. I'm sparking with new thoughts when I'm free and full of potential, then weighing them down with sandbags withing my seven day rolling repetition, always waiting for the elation of Saturday post-shift, then sad again at the close of Sunday, another week of the same ahead, a dull dread. You need to cultivate an environment for change.
Writing has been difficult for this past week. I realised the blog is only really interesting when I am. Interested. Disatisfied, bored, confused, sad does not make a good story. I need to go back to my ideas. I don't feel strong to create and be new. I don't feel refreshing. I feel flat and stale again. The School was a miracle cure, a zesty upturn to things. I wanted a revolution but guess what, I'm still me. No running from that. I wanted to be able to answer his question, sat in the present of the past, like normal, but a new version. I felt sad and stuck, and didn't think the answer was looking backwards, but I can't see forwards either. Feeling the need to personify my motivation again, not a good feeling.
What's stopping me, is not an easy answer. I came up with idle chat, not being surrounded by active people and work. It's closer to bad spirits, low motivation, a lack of being able to see the point in things. Oh woe is me what a very old problem. The point in things! I am usually fine for the first couple of hours of a day, and then reason sets in and I get heavy. I want to be light and full of potential, but seem to weigh it down with my creating of things not being that essential really. If I don't make an idea, no-one cares! Me, make something! For the past year or so it's been more than enough thank you to merely have an idea, never mind execute it! That brings so many more problems.
I don't know if I will make the show. I don't want to flake out, but seeing the blog I feel like I don't have things to formally present yet. I'm holding torches for old post-trendy ideas, and sadly will have to let them go. I'm sparking with new thoughts when I'm free and full of potential, then weighing them down with sandbags withing my seven day rolling repetition, always waiting for the elation of Saturday post-shift, then sad again at the close of Sunday, another week of the same ahead, a dull dread. You need to cultivate an environment for change.
Writing has been difficult for this past week. I realised the blog is only really interesting when I am. Interested. Disatisfied, bored, confused, sad does not make a good story. I need to go back to my ideas. I don't feel strong to create and be new. I don't feel refreshing. I feel flat and stale again. The School was a miracle cure, a zesty upturn to things. I wanted a revolution but guess what, I'm still me. No running from that. I wanted to be able to answer his question, sat in the present of the past, like normal, but a new version. I felt sad and stuck, and didn't think the answer was looking backwards, but I can't see forwards either. Feeling the need to personify my motivation again, not a good feeling.
Sunday 11 April 2010
Pleasure and pain
Going to bed with one de-haired leg and one full haired leg. Hoping I don't get rushed into hospital. I don't even have any matching underwear right now. What would my mother think. Ugh finding it difficult to post. Feeling heavily laden under a literary guilt trip this last week, surrounded by books of self-improvement, barely able to find the time to read a chapter of Graham Greene. It's quite difficult reading, language-wise, quite stolen and British and puts me in a Brief Encounter frame of mind. Doesn't really fit with the tube.
I was thinking about the pain threshold with the epilating. I was thinking about the pain being on my leg, following this electronic instrument around, rather than beginning in my head, or my gut. It went from my leg, to my brain, to my mouth into yelps with the occasional giggle. The pain expressed as a laugh. It reminded me of what I said to her yesterday, kind of surprising myself, that I tie up emotional feelings with a complete gut reaction. Turning bowels. It happened so much last year, a flicker of memory, a churning in my middle. Now I hold tension when I feel angry and frustrated, I feel it in my stomach. Solar plexus is a real thing remember.
A woman had a go at me in the shop yesterday. I don't know if it was because I was tired and off-guard, but suddenly there was blood in my veins and I wanted to swear and throw and scream and run and I was fizzing angry and wanted to cry with a churning, moving middle. A few sentences, a physical reaction. I didn't cry, I felt like it was bad that I swallowed the motivation, it should've come out, but it was too busy and would've been plain melodrama. I made bad coffees and imagined turning on her good leg. It just echoed this same conversation we keep having about moderating oneself in different places. Out of the shop door, in real life, a battled would've ensued to fire my day, but within the shop I bit my tongue, swallowed the salt, acknowledged and ignored the belly. (When will I get to be myself?)
A couple of times in recent months I have been subject to such warm unexpected kindness from strangers that I have had to go and cry. This worries me. It seems a displaced version of pleasure, like I am unable to distinguish pleasure and pain. Anger and elation. Crying is quite a waste. Remember when the guy smashed into the back of the Mini, and I went absolutely fucking mental, like he had broken my child, and I just felt so goddam free. Elated. The anger came right back through all the stages into almost laughter. I feel like now I need to work out the right directions and intentions of my feelings, and keep them resolutely out of my abdomen. Kind of nice to start with the legs. Seems it was even funny.
I was thinking about the pain threshold with the epilating. I was thinking about the pain being on my leg, following this electronic instrument around, rather than beginning in my head, or my gut. It went from my leg, to my brain, to my mouth into yelps with the occasional giggle. The pain expressed as a laugh. It reminded me of what I said to her yesterday, kind of surprising myself, that I tie up emotional feelings with a complete gut reaction. Turning bowels. It happened so much last year, a flicker of memory, a churning in my middle. Now I hold tension when I feel angry and frustrated, I feel it in my stomach. Solar plexus is a real thing remember.
A woman had a go at me in the shop yesterday. I don't know if it was because I was tired and off-guard, but suddenly there was blood in my veins and I wanted to swear and throw and scream and run and I was fizzing angry and wanted to cry with a churning, moving middle. A few sentences, a physical reaction. I didn't cry, I felt like it was bad that I swallowed the motivation, it should've come out, but it was too busy and would've been plain melodrama. I made bad coffees and imagined turning on her good leg. It just echoed this same conversation we keep having about moderating oneself in different places. Out of the shop door, in real life, a battled would've ensued to fire my day, but within the shop I bit my tongue, swallowed the salt, acknowledged and ignored the belly. (When will I get to be myself?)
A couple of times in recent months I have been subject to such warm unexpected kindness from strangers that I have had to go and cry. This worries me. It seems a displaced version of pleasure, like I am unable to distinguish pleasure and pain. Anger and elation. Crying is quite a waste. Remember when the guy smashed into the back of the Mini, and I went absolutely fucking mental, like he had broken my child, and I just felt so goddam free. Elated. The anger came right back through all the stages into almost laughter. I feel like now I need to work out the right directions and intentions of my feelings, and keep them resolutely out of my abdomen. Kind of nice to start with the legs. Seems it was even funny.
Friday 9 April 2010
Jumble (sale)
No internet still, so I battled with the idea of turning the computer on v/s sitting in bed with a red book. I just felt my arms filled with words, ready to pour out of fingers, nothing to do with the tension of a pen on paper. It's a weird attention-seeking thing that writing onto a public forum let's call it the internet, feels, I don't know, somehow more hopeful than writing in a book using scrawl barely legible to even my own eyes. Worthy, useful. A record. Something that isn't immediately dead. Which is why it feels so strange here in Text Edit, one weird held up hinterland. I know, with a Muji, Parker, any other pen, the word hinterland almost certainly wouldn't have come.
Who's voice is it here? What is my means of communication? A conversation with myself it feels, an unknotting of daily, quotidian, concerns. At ease. We were just talking after an immense fish dinner, no small fish dinners here Georgio's, about socially acceptable moderation, the reigning in of one's true thoughts. I consistently feel I am watching myself act like an employee at Monmouth. I here my voice, a kind of mine, saying things that aren't me, wasting energy communicating over repeated issues that are no bigger than the moment. I am operating, but I'm bizarrely not doing anything. And I really want to say, your beard is the craziest thing that's been in the shop all day, and funny, you're the cutest couple, your noses appear to be able to tesselate in the most complex concave/convex manner when kissing! And I'm nearly saying this to your faces, because I almost forgot myself. Or should that be remembered myself?
It felt weird swapping between these two personalities, the School and Monmouth. I got a total Argos work experience '98 feeling yesterday, that inept newness. It makes me feel so nervous and awkward and generates it's own mistakes. I mellowed out so much in the class after the day at 'work', allowed my own responses and idiosyncrasies to out. Things I can't say out loud in the day, because I get looks of over-quirky and inappropriate, a bad case of moderation. I watched him give the talk, amazed at someone so whole and driven and purposeful and entirely appropriate. I wondered if I want to be working somewhere like the School, or whether I really want to be one of the Experts. She asked me why I was there, and I wanted to say to allow me time to think, be surrounded by thinking, a place where dialogue is worthy and thinking about thinking is actually a good wild thing. Not something that gets a funny look and a poke back behind the line, because, like, there's washing up to do and jolly to be looking.
I was looking forward to the comfy chair of coffee again today, but instead I just felt agitated and unused. I kept getting holiday flashes, sparks of possibility and achievement, the signs being not quite so jumbled. London is heavy, I even got stressed reading Time Out this morning, so much shit happening and no chance of seeing everything and being able able to enjoy it. One off double bills? Sample sales? New cafes? Dancing nights? Why suddenly do I feel so flaky and unconnected and bombarded by choice? I felt so weird, SO weird, last weekend, dancing 40s swing one night and 70s gay disco the next. I calmed myself with the fact of postmodernism, it's ok. But that feeling remains, I must choose a scene. I can't play two roles. Can I? Do I make my own scene?
We were discussing the virtues of solitude at the class last night. It was probably the most interesting part to me. I didn't speak as I hadn't yet found my feet, but I liked the idea of the solitude of traveling, and how I just feel so alive and unquestionable when I do these trips. However emotional I feel, I'm not a stone, at no point did I feel things were spinning out of control. Not once. I was reveling the whole time. But why is it, solitude in the everyday can meld into loneliness, an inability to see the right direction, a bombardment of choice, and a feeling of spinning.
POSTED BY ZOE LANGDELL AT 1:04am
Who's voice is it here? What is my means of communication? A conversation with myself it feels, an unknotting of daily, quotidian, concerns. At ease. We were just talking after an immense fish dinner, no small fish dinners here Georgio's, about socially acceptable moderation, the reigning in of one's true thoughts. I consistently feel I am watching myself act like an employee at Monmouth. I here my voice, a kind of mine, saying things that aren't me, wasting energy communicating over repeated issues that are no bigger than the moment. I am operating, but I'm bizarrely not doing anything. And I really want to say, your beard is the craziest thing that's been in the shop all day, and funny, you're the cutest couple, your noses appear to be able to tesselate in the most complex concave/convex manner when kissing! And I'm nearly saying this to your faces, because I almost forgot myself. Or should that be remembered myself?
It felt weird swapping between these two personalities, the School and Monmouth. I got a total Argos work experience '98 feeling yesterday, that inept newness. It makes me feel so nervous and awkward and generates it's own mistakes. I mellowed out so much in the class after the day at 'work', allowed my own responses and idiosyncrasies to out. Things I can't say out loud in the day, because I get looks of over-quirky and inappropriate, a bad case of moderation. I watched him give the talk, amazed at someone so whole and driven and purposeful and entirely appropriate. I wondered if I want to be working somewhere like the School, or whether I really want to be one of the Experts. She asked me why I was there, and I wanted to say to allow me time to think, be surrounded by thinking, a place where dialogue is worthy and thinking about thinking is actually a good wild thing. Not something that gets a funny look and a poke back behind the line, because, like, there's washing up to do and jolly to be looking.
I was looking forward to the comfy chair of coffee again today, but instead I just felt agitated and unused. I kept getting holiday flashes, sparks of possibility and achievement, the signs being not quite so jumbled. London is heavy, I even got stressed reading Time Out this morning, so much shit happening and no chance of seeing everything and being able able to enjoy it. One off double bills? Sample sales? New cafes? Dancing nights? Why suddenly do I feel so flaky and unconnected and bombarded by choice? I felt so weird, SO weird, last weekend, dancing 40s swing one night and 70s gay disco the next. I calmed myself with the fact of postmodernism, it's ok. But that feeling remains, I must choose a scene. I can't play two roles. Can I? Do I make my own scene?
We were discussing the virtues of solitude at the class last night. It was probably the most interesting part to me. I didn't speak as I hadn't yet found my feet, but I liked the idea of the solitude of traveling, and how I just feel so alive and unquestionable when I do these trips. However emotional I feel, I'm not a stone, at no point did I feel things were spinning out of control. Not once. I was reveling the whole time. But why is it, solitude in the everyday can meld into loneliness, an inability to see the right direction, a bombardment of choice, and a feeling of spinning.
POSTED BY ZOE LANGDELL AT 1:04am
Later, not striving
I enjoyed work today. Despite making a bit of a twat of myself within the first 15 minutes. Double ristretto macchiato in ceramic? Fuck I've forgotten your usual after a year and a half. Nice red bag, I said, but oh, I don't fucking know you, and I just sound like a lunatic now, and I'm all hot, but I'm not hot for you, not anymore, it's just I've been battling the condensation to not look like I've never cleaned a window before at 7.30am. Shit now he's talking to me like I'm trying to make a conversation and be cute, but I just daydreamed out of the building and slipped up, like when I charged Colin Farell for the 2000 pain au chocolates just cause I'm an idiot, and he's all flattered by my apparent celebrity mistake which just wast at all!
Apart from that, I just felt immensely calm, collected and focused today. Like I knew where the money was and where I was heading. I know what I'm doing here, but I know it's not the only thing I'm doing here. From now on, if you start talking to me as a stranger, I'm gonna have something new to say for the first time in almost a year, and doesn't that feel pretty great. Yes. Something that isn't tinged with pity or sadness or injustice or confusion or want, but something that might go forward into something else. And simply by talking now we are thinking things neither of us has ever thought before. Onwards.
Fate had me again today, with two minutes to spare. It's boring now actually, I don't think you can have an immovable crush on someone for four months and expect a good result. I see this guy daily and nothing is ever going to happen because he either doesn't have any interest in me or is plainly nervous, and the fact that I don't know which of those things it is is bad for a start. He seems to try and leave the building as quickly as possible after I try to chat. I'm not up for things being this hard. I'm not an idiot, and at coming up to twenty eight, I don't want the formation of my relationships to be based on asking a girl seven years younger than me whether her mate fancies me. It's got to get a bit better than that, surely.
It's kind of fun. It didn't cloud my day if I'm honest. Fully enjoying these 2-for-1 days now the light carries on, to be able to see a show after work twice in one week feels pretty successful actually. My mind is on and open, in a way I have not felt for such a very long time. I'm sure the dancing helped. Even if the 2 types did make me more postmodern than I feel comfortable with. And I'm thinking I might like to start some sort of art blog. Not dry reviews, but generous personality slanted art thoughts. And I think they'd be pretty uninformed to begin with, but it may set something in motion, because this blog certainly has. Maybe I agree with him that I am intelligent, I cant imagine people thinking of me that way. I wondered what he meant by intelligent? I meant books and ideas. I wonder what he meant. 2010 is my quest.
POSTED BY ZOE LANGDELL AT 23:46 TUESDAY 6 APRIL
Apart from that, I just felt immensely calm, collected and focused today. Like I knew where the money was and where I was heading. I know what I'm doing here, but I know it's not the only thing I'm doing here. From now on, if you start talking to me as a stranger, I'm gonna have something new to say for the first time in almost a year, and doesn't that feel pretty great. Yes. Something that isn't tinged with pity or sadness or injustice or confusion or want, but something that might go forward into something else. And simply by talking now we are thinking things neither of us has ever thought before. Onwards.
Fate had me again today, with two minutes to spare. It's boring now actually, I don't think you can have an immovable crush on someone for four months and expect a good result. I see this guy daily and nothing is ever going to happen because he either doesn't have any interest in me or is plainly nervous, and the fact that I don't know which of those things it is is bad for a start. He seems to try and leave the building as quickly as possible after I try to chat. I'm not up for things being this hard. I'm not an idiot, and at coming up to twenty eight, I don't want the formation of my relationships to be based on asking a girl seven years younger than me whether her mate fancies me. It's got to get a bit better than that, surely.
It's kind of fun. It didn't cloud my day if I'm honest. Fully enjoying these 2-for-1 days now the light carries on, to be able to see a show after work twice in one week feels pretty successful actually. My mind is on and open, in a way I have not felt for such a very long time. I'm sure the dancing helped. Even if the 2 types did make me more postmodern than I feel comfortable with. And I'm thinking I might like to start some sort of art blog. Not dry reviews, but generous personality slanted art thoughts. And I think they'd be pretty uninformed to begin with, but it may set something in motion, because this blog certainly has. Maybe I agree with him that I am intelligent, I cant imagine people thinking of me that way. I wondered what he meant by intelligent? I meant books and ideas. I wonder what he meant. 2010 is my quest.
POSTED BY ZOE LANGDELL AT 23:46 TUESDAY 6 APRIL
title goes here
It's been a while. And a while longer yet too as the internet's down and I'm typing in Text Edit. Somehow it needs to be in Courier to tap into the correct brain place. It doesn't feel right not typing in the blog box. I'll try, not strive...
Anyway. Talking about the writing a lot more than writing the writing for almost three weeks now, got to that stage again where you feel like you're running into your own cliche. It becomes circular, like when I was recording the diaries and then I was writing up to the day I was recording, aware of my own narrator. It dies at this point. I must read Barthes. I have been toying with the idea of Posthumous Posts Un, Dos and Tres, one for each country. And then toying with the idea that this would be contrived in itself, 'making a blog post', not true to the honesty I do. Question mark. The context I'm in here is plain and quotidian; a train trip for one, is most certainly not.
I didn't miss the blogging this time, I barely wrote much. Perhaps it was the ills but I felt quiet, rested and observant. Un-angry, though not un-moved. Just really pensive and melty and spongy and receptive. Un-knotted. Light. New. Available. Cool. Fresh. Senses. New again. I had a couple of what I might have thought were epiphanies, the sort you have when drunk, take away from the norm and things go wild. Then, in 'normality', whatever image that is, the ideas tarnish fast, and all of a sudden they're inside some sort of leather-bound prayer cushion, and I'm sitting on it, and, well it's just not breathing anymore is it. I'm actually sitting on it on purpose.
So what I've been trying (not striving) to do, is to let the future breathe. Make a space for it, like that triangle between belly button and hip bones, air happening, growth, calm, multiplying, onward! That holiday momentum, of the normal being only an image of now, based in nothing, susceptible to beautiful change. Today was a huge success. As was Saturday. As was Sunday. And yesterday. Art and thinking and dancing and baking and napping and dancing and meeting and meandering and making new meanings. The light is helping considerably, the day no longer stops at 5pm, things can come in two stages. I got up at half five, worked, collected my Nina Tolstrup lamp, saw and thought art, missed a train and didn't care because it was so pleasant, cooked an amazing frugal pasta, had some thoughts on hold. This could not have happened in the depths of winter.
I am heading into a new life! The school of life. I'm not quite sure that I'm ready, how I'm to behave. Things haven't changed (for good) for almost a year, I've been plodding with no purpose and no strength to see further than a few weeks. I'm now set till July. I feel itchy, but not worried. The world feels big and whole and available again. A show to think about. I'm growing my brain right now, I think this is what 2010 is about for me, simply allowing myself a freedom. Even now, almost a year on, I am noticing daily how open I am to my thoughts, when before I was so knotted I couldn't allow hardly anything to affect me. As for now, I feel pleasantly new, and am not letting this feeling go easily.
POSTED BY ZOE LANGDELL AT 20:56 TUESDAY 6 APRIL
Anyway. Talking about the writing a lot more than writing the writing for almost three weeks now, got to that stage again where you feel like you're running into your own cliche. It becomes circular, like when I was recording the diaries and then I was writing up to the day I was recording, aware of my own narrator. It dies at this point. I must read Barthes. I have been toying with the idea of Posthumous Posts Un, Dos and Tres, one for each country. And then toying with the idea that this would be contrived in itself, 'making a blog post', not true to the honesty I do. Question mark. The context I'm in here is plain and quotidian; a train trip for one, is most certainly not.
I didn't miss the blogging this time, I barely wrote much. Perhaps it was the ills but I felt quiet, rested and observant. Un-angry, though not un-moved. Just really pensive and melty and spongy and receptive. Un-knotted. Light. New. Available. Cool. Fresh. Senses. New again. I had a couple of what I might have thought were epiphanies, the sort you have when drunk, take away from the norm and things go wild. Then, in 'normality', whatever image that is, the ideas tarnish fast, and all of a sudden they're inside some sort of leather-bound prayer cushion, and I'm sitting on it, and, well it's just not breathing anymore is it. I'm actually sitting on it on purpose.
So what I've been trying (not striving) to do, is to let the future breathe. Make a space for it, like that triangle between belly button and hip bones, air happening, growth, calm, multiplying, onward! That holiday momentum, of the normal being only an image of now, based in nothing, susceptible to beautiful change. Today was a huge success. As was Saturday. As was Sunday. And yesterday. Art and thinking and dancing and baking and napping and dancing and meeting and meandering and making new meanings. The light is helping considerably, the day no longer stops at 5pm, things can come in two stages. I got up at half five, worked, collected my Nina Tolstrup lamp, saw and thought art, missed a train and didn't care because it was so pleasant, cooked an amazing frugal pasta, had some thoughts on hold. This could not have happened in the depths of winter.
I am heading into a new life! The school of life. I'm not quite sure that I'm ready, how I'm to behave. Things haven't changed (for good) for almost a year, I've been plodding with no purpose and no strength to see further than a few weeks. I'm now set till July. I feel itchy, but not worried. The world feels big and whole and available again. A show to think about. I'm growing my brain right now, I think this is what 2010 is about for me, simply allowing myself a freedom. Even now, almost a year on, I am noticing daily how open I am to my thoughts, when before I was so knotted I couldn't allow hardly anything to affect me. As for now, I feel pleasantly new, and am not letting this feeling go easily.
POSTED BY ZOE LANGDELL AT 20:56 TUESDAY 6 APRIL
Thursday 18 March 2010
Thinking about thinking about thinking.
I did say thank you for something the other day, and I wouldn't put my inability to remember down to a lack of care over a lack of memory cells. I do this sometimes. Something amazing just fits and feels right and I tip my head up and thank nothing and no-one but just want to show grace. I admit it feels a bit weird, like the Church tapping on my shoulder in a white robe, but I do immediately ignore any non-secular inklings. I'm thanking myself almost, or a cyclical something which reverts back to me. I think it was in the toilet at work. It was probably some crush that came in who I happened to serve with a sparkling moment. Suddenly I feel grossed out at myself.
A person who remembers to be grateful is more aware of the role of gifts and luck.
I fully decided last night that Alan at lindy hop is most definitely not Alain. There were striking resemblances, but he developed into a softer version of himself, able to project his mistakes as cute nuances. It was weird last night. I hadn't been at work so the trawl to Marble Arch was a slight mission, and once there, I didn't have the right mentality. I didn't have any anger to burn off, shake the day from my body with a kind of war-ethic this-is-the-shit-that-matters-in-amongst-all-the-atrocity. I know that theory is overarched but you get the feeling.
So I spent a lot of time watching, being just peaceful really. I did a bit of dancing and some sharp spins but part of me was too quiet, wanting to be at home, nesting for art. I had a bizarre day yesterday. I set up an Art Desk courtesy of Diane from Freecycle, and really enjoyed thinking about things in a literally different space. A mere 180 turn on the non-swivel chair takes me from Admin to Art, and my are those different places. The desk is a bit higher, longer and too narrow for two. It feels like a train table until someone wants to share and there's not enough room for a broadsheet.
I spent time at the desk going through some thoughts, trying to tap them out of this hard place. Some have been in there dormant for a few years. It's hard to know if old things are still any good, like sorting out your wardrobe to find dodgy jeans, that with a cuff roll soon turn into these compliment-attracting things the designer could never have imagined. But some things you find, and they're stuck, they can't change, they can't become new, they just look old and wrong, and however attached I am to them, well let's face it, I'm never going to wear them again. You can't be too cautious though. Some things only develop their worth over time.
Anyway, I got up late today. I slept for ten hours, which is indulgent, but I do have a full day ahead. Some times I wish a day would fold out into two, so I could fit in both a day of languorous thinking and writing, and do the one I have planned to begin at 2pm. I wanted to get some writing done before this, which I guess I am here, but I think I meant more of the brain digging stuff. The problem I have, is that I want to delve down into that sacred area, but I know I'm working at 7am the next two days, and any chance of spark will become dull and heavy in the light of reality. I think part of me knows things are going to change with the way I spend my time earning money. I need to just hold out for the change.
Until then, I am creating this new space where ideas can happen, where outputs change, the blog might splinter, I might make new ways of making. But to even begin these openings is an amazing starting point. It would be nice to think that I can just rustle something up again, cook(!) up a big pot of things going on, post them out to places that make sense. Thinking about thinking about thinking. It's not going to be easy but to start, well, that's kind of a triumph.
A person who remembers to be grateful is more aware of the role of gifts and luck.
I fully decided last night that Alan at lindy hop is most definitely not Alain. There were striking resemblances, but he developed into a softer version of himself, able to project his mistakes as cute nuances. It was weird last night. I hadn't been at work so the trawl to Marble Arch was a slight mission, and once there, I didn't have the right mentality. I didn't have any anger to burn off, shake the day from my body with a kind of war-ethic this-is-the-shit-that-matters-in-amongst-all-the-atrocity. I know that theory is overarched but you get the feeling.
So I spent a lot of time watching, being just peaceful really. I did a bit of dancing and some sharp spins but part of me was too quiet, wanting to be at home, nesting for art. I had a bizarre day yesterday. I set up an Art Desk courtesy of Diane from Freecycle, and really enjoyed thinking about things in a literally different space. A mere 180 turn on the non-swivel chair takes me from Admin to Art, and my are those different places. The desk is a bit higher, longer and too narrow for two. It feels like a train table until someone wants to share and there's not enough room for a broadsheet.
I spent time at the desk going through some thoughts, trying to tap them out of this hard place. Some have been in there dormant for a few years. It's hard to know if old things are still any good, like sorting out your wardrobe to find dodgy jeans, that with a cuff roll soon turn into these compliment-attracting things the designer could never have imagined. But some things you find, and they're stuck, they can't change, they can't become new, they just look old and wrong, and however attached I am to them, well let's face it, I'm never going to wear them again. You can't be too cautious though. Some things only develop their worth over time.
Anyway, I got up late today. I slept for ten hours, which is indulgent, but I do have a full day ahead. Some times I wish a day would fold out into two, so I could fit in both a day of languorous thinking and writing, and do the one I have planned to begin at 2pm. I wanted to get some writing done before this, which I guess I am here, but I think I meant more of the brain digging stuff. The problem I have, is that I want to delve down into that sacred area, but I know I'm working at 7am the next two days, and any chance of spark will become dull and heavy in the light of reality. I think part of me knows things are going to change with the way I spend my time earning money. I need to just hold out for the change.
Until then, I am creating this new space where ideas can happen, where outputs change, the blog might splinter, I might make new ways of making. But to even begin these openings is an amazing starting point. It would be nice to think that I can just rustle something up again, cook(!) up a big pot of things going on, post them out to places that make sense. Thinking about thinking about thinking. It's not going to be easy but to start, well, that's kind of a triumph.
Sunday 14 March 2010
Lazy Sunday
It just fires me up every time still, after being here over a year, seeing things that I can do, that feel right, even if I do have seventeen degrees of Right. Options. I applied for both things in December, got interviews, and only one came through. I chucked the spiky options onto the dirt track and they stuck and some got buried under mud and some stayed on top sticking out and I get to recover them as I pass over them and move forward. Do you need staff? I'd love to be here. Three months maybe? Let's picture change and keep me alive. It's ok to not have a plan. I like it better this way. Surely, actually, if I wanted a plan I'd just get one? I mean, I would? Yes. Let's float.
I am really starting to love Sundays in Dalston. Should get a flyer done for that. I don't know, floating and not knowing who or what is going to happen, and I'm expecting zero from this day except loveliness really, so what can go wrong? I'm starting to see that if I put myself in places I want to be, then it makes a simple, obvious kind of sense that people like me will happen there too. A smashing together. Don't go looking for ideas or people or examples or means. Just put yourself where you want, and then something amazing just happens. You feel alive for one, but then you are buffered by beings, the same but different, who silently console that it's ok, we're ok here, we're alive, you're alive, and isn't it just the best?
I am getting a lot better at chatting to boys. Not just aimlessly hanging around waiting, clueless, but being actually rather scheme-y and calculated about the whole thing. Seeing it as a game, having fun. Things you don't really have to think of or deal with if you are in a boring relationship. Ok, this Mr Maps is cute, yep. I'm looking at the maps, and I'm thinking, I want to buy a map from you Mr Maps. Ok, chat, I'll buy these two. See you later, he says, her voice ringing in my head as I read too much into it, this is a Good Thing. I walk around. You know what, I feel like 'buying another map', remember me Mr Maps, with my Sunday eyes and sportswear. I just have a penchant for washed-out Goo t-shirts, poking through his layers there, they're not original, they're just cool, fuck off Rosalind.
Researching, a different type this time, sat by myself on Ellie's old chair, next to my bike and the canal. A tea tray balanced with equivalent objects to my own, satisfied beyond impeccable belief, dirt blown into my milk. Alex is going out with the girl who's working today...(ok, cute boy, is that you?)...Alex, will you switch seats with me as we're sharing...(ok, he's switching, dammit, he's Alex). Tick. Or cross. God am I wiley. Will you watch my bike whilst I take my tray back, yes it's the Condor...desire me I'm so wiley. Nothing happens, but the experiment is concluded. I leave fueled for a two hour conversation with a pair of strangers in Tina which leaves me thinking it's not weird at all to switch numbers. I get a text later from the wrong one. It's all fun and games.
I am really starting to love Sundays in Dalston. Should get a flyer done for that. I don't know, floating and not knowing who or what is going to happen, and I'm expecting zero from this day except loveliness really, so what can go wrong? I'm starting to see that if I put myself in places I want to be, then it makes a simple, obvious kind of sense that people like me will happen there too. A smashing together. Don't go looking for ideas or people or examples or means. Just put yourself where you want, and then something amazing just happens. You feel alive for one, but then you are buffered by beings, the same but different, who silently console that it's ok, we're ok here, we're alive, you're alive, and isn't it just the best?
I am getting a lot better at chatting to boys. Not just aimlessly hanging around waiting, clueless, but being actually rather scheme-y and calculated about the whole thing. Seeing it as a game, having fun. Things you don't really have to think of or deal with if you are in a boring relationship. Ok, this Mr Maps is cute, yep. I'm looking at the maps, and I'm thinking, I want to buy a map from you Mr Maps. Ok, chat, I'll buy these two. See you later, he says, her voice ringing in my head as I read too much into it, this is a Good Thing. I walk around. You know what, I feel like 'buying another map', remember me Mr Maps, with my Sunday eyes and sportswear. I just have a penchant for washed-out Goo t-shirts, poking through his layers there, they're not original, they're just cool, fuck off Rosalind.
Researching, a different type this time, sat by myself on Ellie's old chair, next to my bike and the canal. A tea tray balanced with equivalent objects to my own, satisfied beyond impeccable belief, dirt blown into my milk. Alex is going out with the girl who's working today...(ok, cute boy, is that you?)...Alex, will you switch seats with me as we're sharing...(ok, he's switching, dammit, he's Alex). Tick. Or cross. God am I wiley. Will you watch my bike whilst I take my tray back, yes it's the Condor...desire me I'm so wiley. Nothing happens, but the experiment is concluded. I leave fueled for a two hour conversation with a pair of strangers in Tina which leaves me thinking it's not weird at all to switch numbers. I get a text later from the wrong one. It's all fun and games.
Wednesday 10 March 2010
Research
Ooh, ok, so I've had another Monday. That's alright. I was sitting in the cinema trying to conceptualise out loud what I had Done Today. For sure I hadn't spun out, wasted time, forgot myself, cried, panicked. None of the bad stuff. So I called what I had done 'research'. Yes. Not so much as a gathering of information to be presented, as a gathering of information for the sake of information gathering. Plainly, having things to talk about. I imagined earlier today my brain as a dry car washing sponge, dirty crispy dry, and this research I am doing is dampening it from it's solidity. It's turning into a soft shape again, yes it is, ready to soak up this amazing time I'm about to have.
So I did hardly nothing today. I think the week is so far aggregating nicely, a Tuesday of work, design museum, serious two-course cooking and fifteen miles of cycling on a 5.30 get up, sandwiched between two days of almost nothing. I think this is sensible, reckless and fine. I had a good listen to Iain Sinclair on Midweek, good breakfast (x2), some couch surfing research, trying to make a last.fm gig friend for Paris, some box and drawer tidying, trip show Googling, an hour of yoga. I loved watching Tom Dyckhoff present the Cuture Show from the exhibition I was in yesterday, having served him coffee last week. I love that, flattening, reality, nudge. Scares the shit out of me.
I knew I recognised the Nina Tolstrup furniture, very excited to soon have one of her lights hanging from my ceiling for £12.74. I enjoyed the design actually, regretted throwing away the Braun Aromatic coffee grinder box so much, just couldn't face him looking back at me everytime I looked at it. Dammit. I bought the Happy Hypocrite, which I've yet to look at, this weird thing I do where I'm waiting for an intelligence which is imaginary and cold, like I'm not ready or can't believe I can think or have the right constructed thoughts.
Anyway, I'm going to try harder next day off. I'm very happy with my room now, including this blogging bench I've got here. Wondering what feng shui says about 2 opposing mirrors. I'm waiting to get a table out back for some studio mentality (what you gonna make, I don't fucking know alright, just sssh, I'm reading). I'm very excited about compartmentalising my ideas and urges and sparkles. I have three desk drawers of
Art
Stories
Journalism
which I made a non drawing of too as it made me very happy to create this visual and mental hierarchy. I am enjoying the drip-down of art into stories, or the reach up of stories into art. I like the journalism at the bottom but it could ideally do with being a separate piece of furniture. But I like how it can be a net underneath the floaty, uncertain stuff.
What do I mean by Try Harder. I mean: think of new things, be scared by ideas, invent, wildness, looseness, boundaries pushed further, making mistakes, giggling at new things, being pure and untainted, having faith in making and thinking, being discursive, keeping informed by things within reach and out of reach, talking to people about things that aren't quite ready to talk about yet, not being scared of uncertainty. I am waffling. At the end it's just thinking/doing. Doing/making. Faire. And if I just make sure I keep dampening my brain down in between the monotony, then that's the best I can do for now. It's in fact more than good enough. It's moving forward.
So I did hardly nothing today. I think the week is so far aggregating nicely, a Tuesday of work, design museum, serious two-course cooking and fifteen miles of cycling on a 5.30 get up, sandwiched between two days of almost nothing. I think this is sensible, reckless and fine. I had a good listen to Iain Sinclair on Midweek, good breakfast (x2), some couch surfing research, trying to make a last.fm gig friend for Paris, some box and drawer tidying, trip show Googling, an hour of yoga. I loved watching Tom Dyckhoff present the Cuture Show from the exhibition I was in yesterday, having served him coffee last week. I love that, flattening, reality, nudge. Scares the shit out of me.
I knew I recognised the Nina Tolstrup furniture, very excited to soon have one of her lights hanging from my ceiling for £12.74. I enjoyed the design actually, regretted throwing away the Braun Aromatic coffee grinder box so much, just couldn't face him looking back at me everytime I looked at it. Dammit. I bought the Happy Hypocrite, which I've yet to look at, this weird thing I do where I'm waiting for an intelligence which is imaginary and cold, like I'm not ready or can't believe I can think or have the right constructed thoughts.
Anyway, I'm going to try harder next day off. I'm very happy with my room now, including this blogging bench I've got here. Wondering what feng shui says about 2 opposing mirrors. I'm waiting to get a table out back for some studio mentality (what you gonna make, I don't fucking know alright, just sssh, I'm reading). I'm very excited about compartmentalising my ideas and urges and sparkles. I have three desk drawers of
Art
Stories
Journalism
which I made a non drawing of too as it made me very happy to create this visual and mental hierarchy. I am enjoying the drip-down of art into stories, or the reach up of stories into art. I like the journalism at the bottom but it could ideally do with being a separate piece of furniture. But I like how it can be a net underneath the floaty, uncertain stuff.
What do I mean by Try Harder. I mean: think of new things, be scared by ideas, invent, wildness, looseness, boundaries pushed further, making mistakes, giggling at new things, being pure and untainted, having faith in making and thinking, being discursive, keeping informed by things within reach and out of reach, talking to people about things that aren't quite ready to talk about yet, not being scared of uncertainty. I am waffling. At the end it's just thinking/doing. Doing/making. Faire. And if I just make sure I keep dampening my brain down in between the monotony, then that's the best I can do for now. It's in fact more than good enough. It's moving forward.
Sunday 7 March 2010
Strength VIII
I'm in a murky pool, but I feel like I'm in the right pool. No livers in sight. I didn't mean that pun. I hardly like it. I'm lazy these days. I'm so tired. I'm boring! I found myself thinking that, after the flat viewing the other night. They didn't pick me immediately (that one's for you, N), and I didn't know what I felt. An email in under 2 hours to say thanks but it's not you. I lay on my floor, my face plain, puzzled and not sure. Hmmm.
Anyway, the theory was, am I bored or just boring? Am I running away from myself, looking for changes which aren't solutions, as actually, the problem is me? Oh, I need a bed frame, oh I need a window, oh I need white walls, oh I need a bag full of Glimma and hat stand. I need these physical things to mould me and my life into shape, please. Er, no. I need to poke myself nakedly and rectify the shit bits. I am wanting change but sick at the thought of it. I feel heavy and stuck and literally heavy and scared by any sparkles of idea of the non-chronic. It really is a mess. I used to be infinitely scared of things being the same forever, and now it's possible, I'm utterly scared to be different!
I have this huge mirror now. A piece of furniture, shelves with a reflector whacked on front. I enjoy gazing into it, seeing my exact room flipped, a world of opportunity in there, if I can just look at things slightly askew, anew from the way I know, maybe my eyes will light up again, believe themselves. I said this today, as I gazed around her room drooling, her objects so enthralling to me. Our possessions sadly become easy bedfellows, mine surviving the beautiful and/or useful test, to sadly meld together as a tapestry of existence and time. Her things were versions of my own, trinkets, momentos, examples, evidence, only mine dulled through habit and familiarity, becoming 2d like those in the mirror.
It's difficult to see overt familiars as refreshed and constantly exciting. I really don't know how to do this. Overcoming boredom, not letting it turn me dull too. Something has to change, and somethings resolutely can't, shouldn't even. These things will hopefully be stretched and sharpened by the effect of change elsewhere. I need to look at myself however painful it may be, see changes are possible and within reach, and make the right ones. Strength VIII. Ok I'll try.
Anyway, the theory was, am I bored or just boring? Am I running away from myself, looking for changes which aren't solutions, as actually, the problem is me? Oh, I need a bed frame, oh I need a window, oh I need white walls, oh I need a bag full of Glimma and hat stand. I need these physical things to mould me and my life into shape, please. Er, no. I need to poke myself nakedly and rectify the shit bits. I am wanting change but sick at the thought of it. I feel heavy and stuck and literally heavy and scared by any sparkles of idea of the non-chronic. It really is a mess. I used to be infinitely scared of things being the same forever, and now it's possible, I'm utterly scared to be different!
I have this huge mirror now. A piece of furniture, shelves with a reflector whacked on front. I enjoy gazing into it, seeing my exact room flipped, a world of opportunity in there, if I can just look at things slightly askew, anew from the way I know, maybe my eyes will light up again, believe themselves. I said this today, as I gazed around her room drooling, her objects so enthralling to me. Our possessions sadly become easy bedfellows, mine surviving the beautiful and/or useful test, to sadly meld together as a tapestry of existence and time. Her things were versions of my own, trinkets, momentos, examples, evidence, only mine dulled through habit and familiarity, becoming 2d like those in the mirror.
It's difficult to see overt familiars as refreshed and constantly exciting. I really don't know how to do this. Overcoming boredom, not letting it turn me dull too. Something has to change, and somethings resolutely can't, shouldn't even. These things will hopefully be stretched and sharpened by the effect of change elsewhere. I need to look at myself however painful it may be, see changes are possible and within reach, and make the right ones. Strength VIII. Ok I'll try.
Thursday 4 March 2010
Spring pt 2
Woosh I don't know why but I am spinny again. And I know spinny isn't a word but I seem to be inventing new ones with a complete lack of care, making mistakes in speech that are picked up by others, undetected by me. I seem not to care! I think my head is really processing something I can't see. I am feeling all summer oh nine.
I have been increasingly noticing a detachment between what my eyes are seeing, and how my head feels about this. At work. My eyes are seeing, my mouth is speaking, my brain is sitting on a dirctor's chair leaning back with it's brain nerve trailing out the back, saying, this is it? This is your present! This is dull. I'm sleeping back here, overseeing the section which carries out repetitive tasks conditioned by eighteen months of the same old. You are not even alive right now! You are making as much movement and change as you would be in sleep. We are very bored.
I am getting into a coma at work. I crave change and the new. I have a spring energy and I'm waiting for April. Been up to anything fun lately, he asked, no I said, forgetting the dancing, dinners, dates, chats, books, films. None of these things activities mattered and actively dissolved under my heavy apathy. I was rather disgusted by myself. We pondered on the possibility of a contented apathy yesterday, I didn't think I could have one. I just wanted to run out of the shop screaming, and spent another day making sure I did not do that.
It becomes dangerous to be sitting under such a weight, unable to shift either the cloud, or oneself from under it. I want change, though I don't know what I want. I want be as exciting as Patti Smith! I'm plainly looking at what I can do, what I can shift, as simply and crudely as one of those puzzle games where you slide the tile into the next available space. It really has a lack of care about it too, like binning the off cream without being arsed to wash and recycle the pot. It's a small piece of pointless indulgence. Perhaps thinking of moving is pointless indulgence. Christ everything feels a little pointless right now.
He came in and drank an out of order drink out of order hours. I couldn't converse never mind sparkle, my apathy poisoning me. I resented it even more as he disappeared, again, completely disgusted at this state I've got myself in, again. The more I am hammered down the less enticing I become. I've got the new energy of spring but I'm bored, it occurred to me last night that perhaps I'm not even bored, just boring. I'm still wondering about that. I got so used to this huge checklist of interests and why-you-should-get-to-know-me's, which when it boils down, means nothing if you are not happy with the situation. I'm not happy and the mood has been like this for eight days now.
I just fished out a half-flattened Carr's Water Biscuits box from the bin and put it in the recycling. I'm not dead yet.
I have been increasingly noticing a detachment between what my eyes are seeing, and how my head feels about this. At work. My eyes are seeing, my mouth is speaking, my brain is sitting on a dirctor's chair leaning back with it's brain nerve trailing out the back, saying, this is it? This is your present! This is dull. I'm sleeping back here, overseeing the section which carries out repetitive tasks conditioned by eighteen months of the same old. You are not even alive right now! You are making as much movement and change as you would be in sleep. We are very bored.
I am getting into a coma at work. I crave change and the new. I have a spring energy and I'm waiting for April. Been up to anything fun lately, he asked, no I said, forgetting the dancing, dinners, dates, chats, books, films. None of these things activities mattered and actively dissolved under my heavy apathy. I was rather disgusted by myself. We pondered on the possibility of a contented apathy yesterday, I didn't think I could have one. I just wanted to run out of the shop screaming, and spent another day making sure I did not do that.
It becomes dangerous to be sitting under such a weight, unable to shift either the cloud, or oneself from under it. I want change, though I don't know what I want. I want be as exciting as Patti Smith! I'm plainly looking at what I can do, what I can shift, as simply and crudely as one of those puzzle games where you slide the tile into the next available space. It really has a lack of care about it too, like binning the off cream without being arsed to wash and recycle the pot. It's a small piece of pointless indulgence. Perhaps thinking of moving is pointless indulgence. Christ everything feels a little pointless right now.
He came in and drank an out of order drink out of order hours. I couldn't converse never mind sparkle, my apathy poisoning me. I resented it even more as he disappeared, again, completely disgusted at this state I've got myself in, again. The more I am hammered down the less enticing I become. I've got the new energy of spring but I'm bored, it occurred to me last night that perhaps I'm not even bored, just boring. I'm still wondering about that. I got so used to this huge checklist of interests and why-you-should-get-to-know-me's, which when it boils down, means nothing if you are not happy with the situation. I'm not happy and the mood has been like this for eight days now.
I just fished out a half-flattened Carr's Water Biscuits box from the bin and put it in the recycling. I'm not dead yet.
Monday 1 March 2010
Spring
Ugh, discontent. I'm not sure why, but I'm messaging (ware)houses on Gumtree. I don't know what I'm looking for, don't know what I'm wanting. I guess I'm feeling stagnant, all-of-a-sudden like things haven't got any movement in them. Potential. She asked me what's the plan, and I really wanted to answer for the first time in a long time. I have a semi career ish looking plan, a four monther, a focus for my money earning and brain churning. The eternal problem. The coming together of the idea and the object.
My room is really pissing me off lately. I don't know why, but all-of-a-sudden, I'm annoyed that it's viewless and airless, and there are all my objects everywhere. I bought a new piece of furniture which operates well and will follow through. I'm thinking about a mezannine bed and a loft window. I'm thinking whether these arbitrary adjustments will do anything other than paste temporarily over a problem. I've got itchy feet.
I was trying to small talk the art types last night, as I said. Every time I look at these people's success shining from them, a dull mirror to my fails. I'm frustrated. What do you do, well I don't do anything! And I live in a warehouse but all I'm doing is chatting and making bread and dancing and making coffee. And I'm rebuilt actually! This me is new! I feel convalesced. Maybe that's the thing, I feel ready to be ejected back into a world which isn't two miles away from anywhere I care to be! Movement.
He was right when he said that I must be careful to change the correct thing. Treat the problem, don't run away from the cause. I wasnt lying when I said I'll always be running. One can't eradicate the past. If I could do the past ten years over, I'd believe myself that crying everyday because college wasn't what I wanted was a real reason for quitting. I'd believe myself and fail right there, learn that it's ok to fail. I'd go home and stay at my parents for the rest of 2003 and then head off to some new horizon that September. I'd graduate with an unknowable honesty in 2006, with a completely different life. I wouldn't be me.
On a more local level, I just want to answer that question of what's the plan. I still secretly want to study art so badly, find this route and track and do and try and maybe fail but not feel cheated at all. It's the only thing that truly makes me burn. I mean it's true now that I'm doing this internship with a potential to it 'leading to something', but I can't lay too heavy on that something, and forsake other things that may be. I can't become certain, then life dulls. These are unknowables for sure. I don't know if I could have ideas and make things and maybe I am too fucked to get anywhere now, but a tiny voice says I should try.
On a practical level, I am not using this warehouse to potential. Life can't hang on a pan hook and breakfast bar. I don't want to use the studio here, I need light and air and a total nest at all if anything was to conjure from this wreckage. If it was. It's all about ifs, my wants pictures of other people's nows. I suddenly realised that all I was paying for here was people, and that made me so sad. People are free and I'm having to pay over the odds. And I hate Hermitage Road. Anyway I'm chatting shit now, making no sense or fun. But I'm enlightened to be thinking about the concept of change. It must be a spring thing.
My room is really pissing me off lately. I don't know why, but all-of-a-sudden, I'm annoyed that it's viewless and airless, and there are all my objects everywhere. I bought a new piece of furniture which operates well and will follow through. I'm thinking about a mezannine bed and a loft window. I'm thinking whether these arbitrary adjustments will do anything other than paste temporarily over a problem. I've got itchy feet.
I was trying to small talk the art types last night, as I said. Every time I look at these people's success shining from them, a dull mirror to my fails. I'm frustrated. What do you do, well I don't do anything! And I live in a warehouse but all I'm doing is chatting and making bread and dancing and making coffee. And I'm rebuilt actually! This me is new! I feel convalesced. Maybe that's the thing, I feel ready to be ejected back into a world which isn't two miles away from anywhere I care to be! Movement.
He was right when he said that I must be careful to change the correct thing. Treat the problem, don't run away from the cause. I wasnt lying when I said I'll always be running. One can't eradicate the past. If I could do the past ten years over, I'd believe myself that crying everyday because college wasn't what I wanted was a real reason for quitting. I'd believe myself and fail right there, learn that it's ok to fail. I'd go home and stay at my parents for the rest of 2003 and then head off to some new horizon that September. I'd graduate with an unknowable honesty in 2006, with a completely different life. I wouldn't be me.
On a more local level, I just want to answer that question of what's the plan. I still secretly want to study art so badly, find this route and track and do and try and maybe fail but not feel cheated at all. It's the only thing that truly makes me burn. I mean it's true now that I'm doing this internship with a potential to it 'leading to something', but I can't lay too heavy on that something, and forsake other things that may be. I can't become certain, then life dulls. These are unknowables for sure. I don't know if I could have ideas and make things and maybe I am too fucked to get anywhere now, but a tiny voice says I should try.
On a practical level, I am not using this warehouse to potential. Life can't hang on a pan hook and breakfast bar. I don't want to use the studio here, I need light and air and a total nest at all if anything was to conjure from this wreckage. If it was. It's all about ifs, my wants pictures of other people's nows. I suddenly realised that all I was paying for here was people, and that made me so sad. People are free and I'm having to pay over the odds. And I hate Hermitage Road. Anyway I'm chatting shit now, making no sense or fun. But I'm enlightened to be thinking about the concept of change. It must be a spring thing.
Sunday 28 February 2010
Crying
I do get myself wound up sometimes. My oh my. So I got off the tube and just cried, I walked home and cried and thought of my ethical friendly organic (read shit) mascara making eyes around my eyes. I just felt hopeless. I missed the night out because I wasn't ready for it, wasn't dressed for it, hadn't built up the momentum for it throughout the day. We went for pretty good Mexican actually, but I was thrown off by having to small talk some art types after a day in the shit that is my knotty knotty place. The colours are turned down! But ah you don't care, because you're studying at Goldsmiths, your tech-ing at the gallery, are you at the Slade, no I'm fucking not alright, and I just don't fit here!
I needed to cry for about, hmm three days? I was grumpy at work all week, with some anger left over from Dentistgate on Monday. The hot lindy hopper became a dead end. Not even yesterday's tea dance broke it, paying a tenner to see octogenarians move suddenly felt off. Anyway, I have now kind of identified this emotional stasis thing that I get. I feel physically paralysed somehow, as though my energy is in hibernation. I feel slow and fragile, with shallow breath. I am disconnected from what my eyes are seeing, and how I am processing what I see before me. I am disbelieving that this is it. This notion scares me a little, but the disconnecting of a sense, for instance when you really smell something amazing and it transcends everything, is actually quite intense and interesting.
I feel better now. I like knowing crying is anger venting. I know I'm frustrated but sometimes the body holds it in. There's no-one to shout to, no-where to hide, it internalises and builds like the pile of ironing. It won't shift itself. I wanted to cry at work for days, but when asked 'what's wrong' I had no answer, hence I couldn't let it out. I hope I will feel better tomorrow! I'm sad I missed the night in Brixton. I even stood on the opposite platform for a minute before my second decision brought me back to origin. East/west. There will be other nights. I really like that analogy of asking oneself is this the last time you will ever have this chance? Is this the last brownie you will ever be offered? (No). Is this the last pair of size 38 1/2 sample sale Church's boots you will ever see? (YES).
Another week, now two, have passed, where I haven't tried very hard to think. I have been a hedonistic thing, cooking merely on a Sunday and Monday, living the week on pitta salads and pastry melanges, dancing here, cinema there, drinking here, dating there. Here there sleep work there sleep here work there. Thinking? I have become flat. It's taken three weeks to finish the Raymond Carver. Come on! That is the least I should aim for. I can't live the whole of March just working and dancing and waiting for April! I need some goals. I shall rearrange my room and start putting action into place, shift this stagnant energy round a little. My eyes smart and I look forward to opening them afresh tomorrow.
I needed to cry for about, hmm three days? I was grumpy at work all week, with some anger left over from Dentistgate on Monday. The hot lindy hopper became a dead end. Not even yesterday's tea dance broke it, paying a tenner to see octogenarians move suddenly felt off. Anyway, I have now kind of identified this emotional stasis thing that I get. I feel physically paralysed somehow, as though my energy is in hibernation. I feel slow and fragile, with shallow breath. I am disconnected from what my eyes are seeing, and how I am processing what I see before me. I am disbelieving that this is it. This notion scares me a little, but the disconnecting of a sense, for instance when you really smell something amazing and it transcends everything, is actually quite intense and interesting.
I feel better now. I like knowing crying is anger venting. I know I'm frustrated but sometimes the body holds it in. There's no-one to shout to, no-where to hide, it internalises and builds like the pile of ironing. It won't shift itself. I wanted to cry at work for days, but when asked 'what's wrong' I had no answer, hence I couldn't let it out. I hope I will feel better tomorrow! I'm sad I missed the night in Brixton. I even stood on the opposite platform for a minute before my second decision brought me back to origin. East/west. There will be other nights. I really like that analogy of asking oneself is this the last time you will ever have this chance? Is this the last brownie you will ever be offered? (No). Is this the last pair of size 38 1/2 sample sale Church's boots you will ever see? (YES).
Another week, now two, have passed, where I haven't tried very hard to think. I have been a hedonistic thing, cooking merely on a Sunday and Monday, living the week on pitta salads and pastry melanges, dancing here, cinema there, drinking here, dating there. Here there sleep work there sleep here work there. Thinking? I have become flat. It's taken three weeks to finish the Raymond Carver. Come on! That is the least I should aim for. I can't live the whole of March just working and dancing and waiting for April! I need some goals. I shall rearrange my room and start putting action into place, shift this stagnant energy round a little. My eyes smart and I look forward to opening them afresh tomorrow.
Monday 22 February 2010
SOS
Man did I have a cob on yesterday. And hell did it find a new outlet today. So I bought the Observer anyway, after meeting in Cafe Oto and eating some nice veg, later followed by stewed apple pancakes. I bought the Observer because I wanted a good feel for the new format, and I really enjoyed it today. A new quoted section of Seven Days, a delicious New Review with the art smacked right next up to the science (all over that), and a new poppy magazine with the lifestyle whacked straight at the front. Nigel 'sang', to quote the master.
So I had a most distressing day. It started off fine, with train and plane tickets committed to, cups of caffeine and a second breakfast. After the insurance osteopath it was lunch in the crypt cafe, shepherd's pie puy lentil-style with a side of Connie Francis, love that album. I'm happy, I'm browsing this god damn hot light range in the Conran shop, hot as hot hell. Then I'm asking Paul about their bread courses, comparing my Marc Jacobs knock-off to the real thing in Selfridges (do I feel bad, maybe) and getting a slight art fix in the basement. Then it's off to the tube.
I fell asleep slightly between Limehouse and South Quay. I was apprehensive. Edgy. Zoe please, yes that's me. Ee. Sequinned waistcoat in the dentist chair, nonchalant assistant making me uneasy. Three lots of spikes into that bit between your gum bone and the fleshy bit attaching it to your face. Ear screech pain ahhh. It's not numb yet. An hour of jostling and stress in the air, he asks the assistant if she's bored at one point and I'm thinking this isn't cool. Suddenly I'm tipped up and numb, talked at with blind eyes about failures and inlays and four hundred pound bills. It hasn't worked. I feel like ultimate shit and I'm covered in mascara tears and I want to spend that 130 quid on two more knock-off dresses not a failed attempt.
I cry most of the way home and wish I had someone to call to say I love you but shut up. I found myself browsing in Sports Direct. It was the anesthetic. I want my mum to take me for hot chocolate in Drucker's like she used to, put a human spin on this teeth drama, I can't even eat this chocolate cake I've got because my teeth smart, but the love is right here on my plate. Instead I get a plan together. I shop for French onion soup, rosemary bread, a side of roast sweet potatoes followed by a poached (in sherry) pear trifle. All of which posted through a tiny fragile gap in my mouth, taken successively and indulgently in the kitchen by myself over the last four hours. It was Nigel's soup recipe. Maybe I didn't need saving yesterday. I did today.
So I had a most distressing day. It started off fine, with train and plane tickets committed to, cups of caffeine and a second breakfast. After the insurance osteopath it was lunch in the crypt cafe, shepherd's pie puy lentil-style with a side of Connie Francis, love that album. I'm happy, I'm browsing this god damn hot light range in the Conran shop, hot as hot hell. Then I'm asking Paul about their bread courses, comparing my Marc Jacobs knock-off to the real thing in Selfridges (do I feel bad, maybe) and getting a slight art fix in the basement. Then it's off to the tube.
I fell asleep slightly between Limehouse and South Quay. I was apprehensive. Edgy. Zoe please, yes that's me. Ee. Sequinned waistcoat in the dentist chair, nonchalant assistant making me uneasy. Three lots of spikes into that bit between your gum bone and the fleshy bit attaching it to your face. Ear screech pain ahhh. It's not numb yet. An hour of jostling and stress in the air, he asks the assistant if she's bored at one point and I'm thinking this isn't cool. Suddenly I'm tipped up and numb, talked at with blind eyes about failures and inlays and four hundred pound bills. It hasn't worked. I feel like ultimate shit and I'm covered in mascara tears and I want to spend that 130 quid on two more knock-off dresses not a failed attempt.
I cry most of the way home and wish I had someone to call to say I love you but shut up. I found myself browsing in Sports Direct. It was the anesthetic. I want my mum to take me for hot chocolate in Drucker's like she used to, put a human spin on this teeth drama, I can't even eat this chocolate cake I've got because my teeth smart, but the love is right here on my plate. Instead I get a plan together. I shop for French onion soup, rosemary bread, a side of roast sweet potatoes followed by a poached (in sherry) pear trifle. All of which posted through a tiny fragile gap in my mouth, taken successively and indulgently in the kitchen by myself over the last four hours. It was Nigel's soup recipe. Maybe I didn't need saving yesterday. I did today.
Sunday 21 February 2010
Cynicism
Just reading Nigel, and feeling a bit, here we go again, cynical. Shocking. I know. How much longer can he go on writing a column from a pool of words that isn't the largest, the unctuous imagery and Nigel isms we have grown to love, but after a while, these words drawn like clouds around dishes of sustanance, begin to smart. Meagre, oh humble pan juices, eek, meagre, really, we're talking about one expensive beast of a bird here and you're all wanton over meagre pan juices? He bathes himself in vocab of his own creation, a language called Nigel Column if it was named. I wonder if he writes a dirty diary of swearing and Midlands colloquialisms. Perhaps I am just cynical and evil and not buying it today. Not buying that food can save my soul.
We can't all have the Nigel life. As much as I love both his passion and plainness, he for sure doesn't have to deal with this shit tip of a kitchen I've got here, when you can't put anything onto the surface without fear of contamination, no licking that spoon because it might have streptococcus. As much as I'm bitter now, there's no denying I was positively giddy on Wigmore Street last week after lindy hop, eyeing up the sexy Bulthaup kitchens from the lives of others. I am already picturing the perfect copper Mauviel saucepans for the next, successful chapter of my life that I'm not sure I'll ever get to.
We can't all have the Nigel life. As much as I love both his passion and plainness, he for sure doesn't have to deal with this shit tip of a kitchen I've got here, when you can't put anything onto the surface without fear of contamination, no licking that spoon because it might have streptococcus. As much as I'm bitter now, there's no denying I was positively giddy on Wigmore Street last week after lindy hop, eyeing up the sexy Bulthaup kitchens from the lives of others. I am already picturing the perfect copper Mauviel saucepans for the next, successful chapter of my life that I'm not sure I'll ever get to.
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