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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.