A New Type of Heat

I want to be hot, I wailed, when what I really meant was I want to turn back the clock to a time when I was quite beautiful and didn't know it, before my heart was swollen and exploded, before the weight of the world had truly come, before I knew the meaning of existential angst. A time when play ruled and work lay dormant, and I didn't quite appreciate it because I was all fizzy and suspended and the future beamed. When what looked like a tan from multiple holidays actually came from twice weekly post-Eastenders trips to the sunbed, before my upper arms started to sag, and my stomach knew it's next roll down like a trustworthy next door neighbour. Before life happened.

I'll go blonde, get thin, scale down my cycling calves to fit those jeans, carve out the tense curve between my ears and shoulders that could be lovingly deemed 'desk job neck'. How many sit ups did I used to do each night? But the fact is, you can't revisit an old heat. You can't re-light a fire once the embers have turned to ash. You can't copy spent formulas, though you can try out the methods and mindset that got those results, and see what you get now. A pack of cards shuffled will never read the same, but there are tendencies (if you trust in the tarot).

I spent the last few days spotting street cuts, for some reason there is a heavy link with the hair. I stared at a bleach blonde, saw her cheap dye job go yellow at the back, the bit they don't let her see with the mirror, the bit her boyfriend is too grossed out by to tell her about. A long blonde with locks but strands that looked dead compared to these soft lengths. A bob walked past the train window, all sweaty city lank, it wasn't right either, I pictured it working on sunny plains with bags and boots and true but temporary friends. No-one looked like the new me, of course.

I got excited by the least amount of effort being transformational. I was walking to the bank and I thought, yes, imagine, you do the smallest move and it makes the biggest impact. Simplicity. You don't enter into a peroxide contract, all that effort stretched out in front of you, forever chasing an ideal which crumbles the minute you walk of out the salon, because y'know what, hair grows. It's an expensive moment. My hair is costing the least it ever did. Am I being as honest as I hope? Or does her Chinese proverb ring true: 'There are no ugly women, just lazy ones'?

belonging

I wanted to have something to ask, I sat logging my adrenaline, wondering if sick guilt would drift over after if I didn't release my question into the wild auditorium. I couldn't place one, couldn't piece a something together out of bits of almost nothing. I was empty. I was just ears, I was no thoughts. I listened for entertainment rather than collaboration. I felt sad, or didn't feel sad, wanted to feel sad, or just felt want; I want to be involved, but I'm not. Figures of help available for free, my selfish questions bound not to be the most annoyingly time consuming. But nothing.

I walked away trying desperately to piece a something together, fully ready to double back once the motivation came. It didn't. I got to the station, left the station, got to the next station, pulling faces of too tired to cry, too late to turn back. She told me that sometimes things have to take a back seat, because you're focusing on something else. And that this is ok, because they won't disappear? I added the question mark. How can we be sure the submerged won't call our bluff? I felt as unconnected in the talk tonight as I did at the party last night. I neither belong in the world I'm devoting my time to, or the one I'd love to bask in. I'm not faithful to either. Neither felt like home. What I value most is truth, and I've stopped writing because my position within it feels compromised. I've stopped even writing to myself in case my self reads it. I mean that's a censorship too far.

Added 4 June

I have republished, because the fact of being unreadable also made me unwritable. Very odd. I removed myself after giving my name out to too many people and feeling too available, and then decided it's probably better to be available at all, rather than closed and stunted and stopped. I like this forum. It also makes me part of the online world that my objection of has turned into a theoretical prison. 'I will make myself unreadble because perma-availability is the death of creativity, originality, worth'. Shiny things still shine when they are surrounded by dullness. They probably shine even brighter. Besides, no-one is actually looking anyway. And my handwriting is becoming unreadable.