He was a relaxed enough guy I thought, but there was something that really riled him about last-minute changes. I delved. It didn't seem to be an anti-spontaneity thing, he was quick to roll with a new plan, as long as it somehow fitted into his bigger picture. It was more about a change which involved some loss of control, resulting in a kind of pre-ordered (or preordained) fun-factor. Let's not go home and box set, let's, have some beers and Find the Night! I hadn't quite figured out his issues, but it was something about someone else owning the right to his successful times. Perhaps.
I shared how I am absolutely driven by a spontaneous change of plan, as long as I had no hand in its instigation. Can you work tonight? Yes, money sounds great and I have nothing to do. Sorry I can't make our picnic date, am I utterly selfish and are you mortified? No that's fine, and I actually have a feeling of great lightness and upended freedom, so cancel away! Something excites me about the way things are, not being quite so. We plan our days, fill our weeks, organise our lives away, in fact. With my A6 Moleskine week-to-page, fortnights spread across the open book look worryingly brief. It makes me wonder whether my squandering achievement level isn't directly related to the size of my diary. Perhaps an A1 flip chart next year?
Despite my winsome crusade for the unknown, I recently suffered a countering wobble. Excitement disappears when actuality falls short of our ever-optimistic hopes. When face to face with THE WAY THINGS ARE IN MY HEAD NOT TURNING OUT THE WAY THINGS SHOULD BE. This isn't the way it was supposed to be! And far from being more impressive and liberated than what we'd expected, everything is just worse. I suppose you have to take all results with the knowledge that anything could have happened, but only this one thing could actually have happened. Take the light with the heavy.
So today I was to meet a friend late pm, which I swapped for a spontaneous waitress shift, that I was then beaten to, which resulted in lying out in late mosquito sun, and meant I could once again make the outdoor screening of Harold and Maude (perfect for this mood). Break plans for something better, call it Making Better Plans. But be prepared to change. Again. I certainly flourished in the rays of shifting options, my surfaces sufficiently prickled and whirled to create a larger area of seeping potential. Logical living is all well and good, but the unknown if where the good stuff (might) happen. Is it too paradoxical to cultivate a wildness?
Tuesday, 18 June 2013
Saturday, 18 May 2013
Authenticity
I've been gabbing on about authenticity, not to anyone other than myself or anywhere else other than in my own head, but the gabbing has been considerable. It seems right that I should put it into practice rather than just standing on the kerb thinking, that looks like a smooth, inviting, freshly-laid idea. I got back from London over a week ago, and have not yet managed to shake the mood I returned with. Within 2 days of arrival I was calling a moody shop assistant a bitch, huffing and grumping all over the transport network, stepping on people, being stepped on. Rich West terraces, overheard cafe society, people putting on such a self-show of equity that I'm now unaccustomed to.
What I always identified London as still rings true; it's a place to take your wares to peddle, ideas to tout, meet benefactors, do deals. It's not a place to hang out, timelessly appreciating beauty and the universe, generally having a nice time. If you're not pushy, you won't squeeze on that train, if you don't run just a little bit, you won't get there till tomorrow, if you don't shout, no-one will even see you, never mind hear you. There's stuff to buy, the cream of the best of the next, capital promises of fulfillment to dull the missing. You earn your money, you buy your things, and if you fit and it fits, well done, it works. But if you find yourself working too many hours, seeing not enough people, and the patches become, patchier, it's time to move on.
Five months ago I followed a light to a better place, and I couldn't wait to retrace my steps. However, on returning, a disgruntlement has set in. Maybe it was the aunties at the party, maybe it was beaming friends looking to vicariously breathe in a projected exoticism. But each time I answered awe-expecting questions about how life is exclamation mark, I diluted my meaning slightly. Notions repeated detach from us, unclaimed, words turn back into letters, turn back into shapes, curls spikes forms with no definition. We're stood here, suddenly unlabelled. Surely the glow counts for something? Stay glamourous, she said, though I doubt it counts as an occupation.
Explain yourself. Pin your meaning. Let me place you. Situate yourself before you even decided where to drop anchor. The gap between leaving and arriving; why am I here, why did I leave? The stories we tell people. You can tell a plain tale with vigor, or talk down a dream; it's not what you do, but the way that you relate to it. When the floor is moving all we can really rely on is our own authenticity, hopping onto each slab and enjoying the freedom of not yet knowing where we'll land. Make mistakes, perhaps look a tiny bit ridiculous, and don't be afraid of truly being seen.
What I always identified London as still rings true; it's a place to take your wares to peddle, ideas to tout, meet benefactors, do deals. It's not a place to hang out, timelessly appreciating beauty and the universe, generally having a nice time. If you're not pushy, you won't squeeze on that train, if you don't run just a little bit, you won't get there till tomorrow, if you don't shout, no-one will even see you, never mind hear you. There's stuff to buy, the cream of the best of the next, capital promises of fulfillment to dull the missing. You earn your money, you buy your things, and if you fit and it fits, well done, it works. But if you find yourself working too many hours, seeing not enough people, and the patches become, patchier, it's time to move on.
Five months ago I followed a light to a better place, and I couldn't wait to retrace my steps. However, on returning, a disgruntlement has set in. Maybe it was the aunties at the party, maybe it was beaming friends looking to vicariously breathe in a projected exoticism. But each time I answered awe-expecting questions about how life is exclamation mark, I diluted my meaning slightly. Notions repeated detach from us, unclaimed, words turn back into letters, turn back into shapes, curls spikes forms with no definition. We're stood here, suddenly unlabelled. Surely the glow counts for something? Stay glamourous, she said, though I doubt it counts as an occupation.
Explain yourself. Pin your meaning. Let me place you. Situate yourself before you even decided where to drop anchor. The gap between leaving and arriving; why am I here, why did I leave? The stories we tell people. You can tell a plain tale with vigor, or talk down a dream; it's not what you do, but the way that you relate to it. When the floor is moving all we can really rely on is our own authenticity, hopping onto each slab and enjoying the freedom of not yet knowing where we'll land. Make mistakes, perhaps look a tiny bit ridiculous, and don't be afraid of truly being seen.
Thursday, 28 March 2013
Constraints
Who am I kidding, every artist loves a restriction. Bruce Nauman came straight to mind as I hopped around the flat in my high-waisted heel-holed tights, desperately trying to fix a bra strap hook into it's rightful place, managing one hook, deciding the gamble for both was just plain greedy. I laughed at the absurdity of such an everyday act made into a challenge of might and ridicule. I can do this. Like the time I was definitely going to fix the blender spindle, and definitely didn't need a boy in the vicinity. Once I'd decided, it was made; the physical result just lagged behind a few tools purchased on eBay, and gentle cajoling from a flatmate who ate couscous 80% of the time and probably couldn't see the point of the blender anyway.
Bruce paces his square, tick tock, restrictions. I bag my bandages up for another shower, quick now at the taping and tucking. I sit in the bath at the wrong end and rest the arm outside of the curtain, on the perfectly placed sink. The worker begins lathering and soon they're having a kind of conversation, a bothered caregiver being hassled by a helpless dependent: You alright? Yeah, I'm just working at the moment. Oh ok, I'll just wait over here. Yes you relax, are you ok? Yeah I'm ok, achy but you know. Yes, you have to be patient. I know. I bloody know. They become characters, an unlikely couple, one fixed and forward, one timid and prone.
Several moods come over the restricted party during the next week. Impatience figures quite prominently alongside fear, mistrust, frustration and confusion. Immense tiredness, who knew an arm needed so much sleep all to itself, 13 hours in 24 on some days. It develops a box set habit and luxuriates on pillows. It cancels social occasions, I'm sorry, the arm needs to go to sleep, so we can't make the talk/film/party. It becomes the physical object of my current obstructions. Almost nice to see it outside of my head, crooked equally helpful and bound by a gentle tattooed man at 1am last Friday.
Restraints or constraints. It reminded me of the Oulipo; if you don't know where to start, take something away and forced invention follows. A dancing hand types for two, sleep is interesting angles, forks work as knives, a t-shirt whips off in one, a cape snatched like a table cloth laid with china. Puzzles are solved. There's a whole Mary Poppins aspect to it, it becomes kind of fun. Embrace limitations and accept impossibilities. There's no way you can pin up a hairstyle with just one hand, but it consequently now flips the opposite (more pleasing) side for the first time, so a positive result.
Bruce paces his square, tick tock, restrictions. I bag my bandages up for another shower, quick now at the taping and tucking. I sit in the bath at the wrong end and rest the arm outside of the curtain, on the perfectly placed sink. The worker begins lathering and soon they're having a kind of conversation, a bothered caregiver being hassled by a helpless dependent: You alright? Yeah, I'm just working at the moment. Oh ok, I'll just wait over here. Yes you relax, are you ok? Yeah I'm ok, achy but you know. Yes, you have to be patient. I know. I bloody know. They become characters, an unlikely couple, one fixed and forward, one timid and prone.
Several moods come over the restricted party during the next week. Impatience figures quite prominently alongside fear, mistrust, frustration and confusion. Immense tiredness, who knew an arm needed so much sleep all to itself, 13 hours in 24 on some days. It develops a box set habit and luxuriates on pillows. It cancels social occasions, I'm sorry, the arm needs to go to sleep, so we can't make the talk/film/party. It becomes the physical object of my current obstructions. Almost nice to see it outside of my head, crooked equally helpful and bound by a gentle tattooed man at 1am last Friday.
Restraints or constraints. It reminded me of the Oulipo; if you don't know where to start, take something away and forced invention follows. A dancing hand types for two, sleep is interesting angles, forks work as knives, a t-shirt whips off in one, a cape snatched like a table cloth laid with china. Puzzles are solved. There's a whole Mary Poppins aspect to it, it becomes kind of fun. Embrace limitations and accept impossibilities. There's no way you can pin up a hairstyle with just one hand, but it consequently now flips the opposite (more pleasing) side for the first time, so a positive result.
Saturday, 19 January 2013
Who am I talking to?
At the moment, it's an intriguing confusion between many unestablished voices, multiplied by their potential destinations, and spread out across my limited experience. Endless possibility... some days exciting, sometimes soul freezing. I am putting myself through The Artist's Way, a method from the 90s for unlocking creativity, and building some faith in this wilderness. I'm actually getting into it, though the lightness does of course come back around and poke me on the shoulder, asks me to add a bit of cynicism to rationalise the experience, but I'm just saying no. For once I'm on the bandwagon, it's a pretty good view from up here, there's some softly worn fabric cushions of faded brights to sit on, and some pleasant maybes to pass the time. For the moment being, cynicism can hide under a rock, but it's no coincidence that the contemporary reprint of the book omits the old tagline of 'A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity'
Maybe it's just because I went to yoga three times this week. As much as I do it at home all the time, especially now as I am unemployed with boundless time, class makes me forget my body as well as my brain, and fully immerse in the philosophy. I don't know what it was yesterday, but I kept getting really profound flashes at the oddest moments, by the end I'd devised a menu of points to take away, starter,main, dessert, along with the word allow. Quite boring just there, but at the time, it glowed. The plans that made sense to me within that two hours, once I'd had a kebab and got to writing them down, it just dissipated. Revelations turned into plain English sounded watery and thin, like explaining a dream, it was so much more thrilling and involving at the time, I guess you had to be there.
So, I'm doing The Artist's Way, and glad I have centuries-old back-up to ward off the Americanism that my inner cynic bites on. I do skip paragraphs where intention is lost in language, cringe, and fill in my own gaps. Each day I'm writing 15 minutes of Morning Pages, designed to take off the cream, or the scum, and my classification of 'morning' can sometimes be lax. After just 2 weeks you can notice a pleasing attitude change to such practice, along with a change of results. As I write the 4 pages in an orange Rhodia A5 notepad with a medium blue Muji pen, I scribble loud ideas with a 2B Stadtler pencil onto a Muji B4 scrapbook, underneath. Two tracks. I have an on-the-go notebook which feels like an external brain, impartially capturing thoughts and potential leads as well as boring crap. Three. I've started expanding autobiographical shots which would here become too narrative somehow, into small descriptions of under 1000 words. These are not (yet?) stories, because no-one is sad, nowhere is surreal and nothing really happens. Fourth. A blog like this sometimes presents itself. I don't know if it should, what it does, or how it operates, only that it mixes the methods mentioned, and adds a whole other realm of broadcasting and qualitative issues.
So there is the writing as verb, the writing as philosophy, the writing as theory, the writing as illustration, the writing as noun. They happen on different timescales and crawl towards a variety of endpoints, as yet unexplored and undecided. Flashes of thought seeds, completed pictures that merely need writing up, words that happen as you make them, a variety of distances between you and the Work. Possible destination must be deciphered by me but belongs to the words - Poetry, short stories, novellas, novels, creative non-fiction, art writing, art critique, art theory, philosophy, and all this before you approach paid-for words and modes my naivety hasn't found yet. It makes the question 'What do you write' a difficult one to answer. On the spot, unpracticed, cold. People want empirical examples, but some things you can't put into words.
Maybe it's just because I went to yoga three times this week. As much as I do it at home all the time, especially now as I am unemployed with boundless time, class makes me forget my body as well as my brain, and fully immerse in the philosophy. I don't know what it was yesterday, but I kept getting really profound flashes at the oddest moments, by the end I'd devised a menu of points to take away, starter,main, dessert, along with the word allow. Quite boring just there, but at the time, it glowed. The plans that made sense to me within that two hours, once I'd had a kebab and got to writing them down, it just dissipated. Revelations turned into plain English sounded watery and thin, like explaining a dream, it was so much more thrilling and involving at the time, I guess you had to be there.
So, I'm doing The Artist's Way, and glad I have centuries-old back-up to ward off the Americanism that my inner cynic bites on. I do skip paragraphs where intention is lost in language, cringe, and fill in my own gaps. Each day I'm writing 15 minutes of Morning Pages, designed to take off the cream, or the scum, and my classification of 'morning' can sometimes be lax. After just 2 weeks you can notice a pleasing attitude change to such practice, along with a change of results. As I write the 4 pages in an orange Rhodia A5 notepad with a medium blue Muji pen, I scribble loud ideas with a 2B Stadtler pencil onto a Muji B4 scrapbook, underneath. Two tracks. I have an on-the-go notebook which feels like an external brain, impartially capturing thoughts and potential leads as well as boring crap. Three. I've started expanding autobiographical shots which would here become too narrative somehow, into small descriptions of under 1000 words. These are not (yet?) stories, because no-one is sad, nowhere is surreal and nothing really happens. Fourth. A blog like this sometimes presents itself. I don't know if it should, what it does, or how it operates, only that it mixes the methods mentioned, and adds a whole other realm of broadcasting and qualitative issues.
So there is the writing as verb, the writing as philosophy, the writing as theory, the writing as illustration, the writing as noun. They happen on different timescales and crawl towards a variety of endpoints, as yet unexplored and undecided. Flashes of thought seeds, completed pictures that merely need writing up, words that happen as you make them, a variety of distances between you and the Work. Possible destination must be deciphered by me but belongs to the words - Poetry, short stories, novellas, novels, creative non-fiction, art writing, art critique, art theory, philosophy, and all this before you approach paid-for words and modes my naivety hasn't found yet. It makes the question 'What do you write' a difficult one to answer. On the spot, unpracticed, cold. People want empirical examples, but some things you can't put into words.
Thursday, 10 January 2013
Resolution time
One of my new years resolutions was 'Be hot'. It was quite a loose list, more like nice motions, one of which was made up from a friend's chat typo ('No Ransom', I liked it, something about not being constrained within your self, reminded me of the letter Sol le Witt wrote to Eva Hesse). The list had a lot about freedom and youth, things I had quit my job and moved location to find in myself again. I was 29, I felt old, tired and bored, I didn't want to look back and have an empty mind, wasted body and absolutely nothing to talk about. I'll be someone who lies on their deathbed and if some young writer doing a piece about the regrets of the dying comes along to question me, they'll be sadly disappointed by my lack of material.
Be hot. What do I mean by that? People still now look at old photos of me from Before him and say, 'I looked hot/cute/etc when'. It was a mixture of untainted youth and chemically applied brightness, and of course we'll ignore the heavy editing involved with the coming of digital images. Anyway, I've moaned about wanting to get back to that Before stage for quite some time. It isn't just about getting a dye job or being a size ten, though these cheats would lead part way there if only by association. It's no longer about the cattle market of Going Out, hitting bars and dance floors with some idea of appropriated sex.
Now, I'm actually taking the focus away from them and putting it back onto me. What makes me worth it? Validation from the inside glows outwards. It follows on from the shunning of definition by the external factors of work or relationships. Those times I 'looked hot' were yes a time when someone was in love with me, but I added that extra layer. I admit it's often easier when someone else has proved you first, you're not starting from scratch, but if you can muster it all from within then that is some heat. I always remember him saying, that seeing a girl out dancing in a bar by herself, doing her own thing, is irrevocably cool (read, hot).
I lead a pretty bodily-praising lifestyle, yoga when warm enough to take socks off, dancing everywhere but the supermarket (big coats hide sneaky street moves). It's not that I'm afraid of letting the world see me. I've been carrying a layer a emotional insulation that I think will drop in time. Starting as physically close to the inside as possible, I've done a fair bit of underwear shopping this week. I've hung out in a variety of changing rooms with perspex walls, feature cut-out doors, or scant curtains, which when coupled with mirrors give outsiders the perfect perve. But I didn't fight it, didn't feel prudish or imperfect. I'm young, vibrant and exciting, and I let you see me. Such openness and candour belongs to everyone. That's hot.
Be hot. What do I mean by that? People still now look at old photos of me from Before him and say, 'I looked hot/cute/etc when'. It was a mixture of untainted youth and chemically applied brightness, and of course we'll ignore the heavy editing involved with the coming of digital images. Anyway, I've moaned about wanting to get back to that Before stage for quite some time. It isn't just about getting a dye job or being a size ten, though these cheats would lead part way there if only by association. It's no longer about the cattle market of Going Out, hitting bars and dance floors with some idea of appropriated sex.
Now, I'm actually taking the focus away from them and putting it back onto me. What makes me worth it? Validation from the inside glows outwards. It follows on from the shunning of definition by the external factors of work or relationships. Those times I 'looked hot' were yes a time when someone was in love with me, but I added that extra layer. I admit it's often easier when someone else has proved you first, you're not starting from scratch, but if you can muster it all from within then that is some heat. I always remember him saying, that seeing a girl out dancing in a bar by herself, doing her own thing, is irrevocably cool (read, hot).
I lead a pretty bodily-praising lifestyle, yoga when warm enough to take socks off, dancing everywhere but the supermarket (big coats hide sneaky street moves). It's not that I'm afraid of letting the world see me. I've been carrying a layer a emotional insulation that I think will drop in time. Starting as physically close to the inside as possible, I've done a fair bit of underwear shopping this week. I've hung out in a variety of changing rooms with perspex walls, feature cut-out doors, or scant curtains, which when coupled with mirrors give outsiders the perfect perve. But I didn't fight it, didn't feel prudish or imperfect. I'm young, vibrant and exciting, and I let you see me. Such openness and candour belongs to everyone. That's hot.
Monday, 10 December 2012
Reasons
I'm conscious that I've been here for five days and I haven't yet sat down to the reason I came in the first place. I'm not clawing at a reason, but see how the brain likes to recognise patterns and have things Make Sense. Anyway, it's funny how the order of importance shifts, but still places the most difficult things at the bottom. I will much rather shop snow boots, book festival tickets, weigh up sea versus air travel, marvel at DHL charges. This is procrastination on an open scale, without a deadline, no aim no product, no exterior force saying 'sit down and do some writing otherwise this is the consequence'. All I am is my decision to be here. It was enough. It is enough. You know all the mantras but they annoyingly peel off when most needed. Shorten the recovery period. Make it even shorter.
'There is nothing more certain than uncertainty'. You're following a feeling, a right, a truth, a kind of devotion by other description, animating the hand of God, as Patti Smith put it. A need a want a lack a divine truth. It gets a bit hazy. Of course we all want a nice life, to not face up to our whys, doubts, pounding existential weight. They say it's nice to know what you don't want, but once you eradicate things, perhaps exhausting work or a draining relationship, you're left bare, honest and vulnerable. On cold days a little pointless. I'm having trouble deciding what matters, she once said quite plainly in conversation at the bar. I loved that one, we laughed.
You moved for love, he asked me later. He'd already asked if I'd moved for work. Our society seems to place the biggest emphasis on our job, our money-earning capacity, our worth as sacrifices made in order to pay for things. I imagine I wouldn't have minded such classification in trading days. I grow this thing and I swap it for that thing to add a little variety to dinner tonight. I make this thing and I swap it for that thing as I do need to darn the holes in my socks (I actually do). The directness wholly makes sense and is instantly gratifying.
I didn't move to Berlin for either of his reasons, I moved for me. He stepped away slightly and creased his face, muttered something in squints and I'd only just met him so I didn't know if this exclamation was a good thing or a bad thing. What, I puzzled, searching my eyes over him to confirm my absolute craziness, fully expecting to instantly lose the respect of each near-stranger as they uncover my fraudulence whilst my back's turned. Amazing, he smiled. I keep hearing it. I haven't yet worked out if it's a polite euphemism, but this time I'll take it as the truth.
'There is nothing more certain than uncertainty'. You're following a feeling, a right, a truth, a kind of devotion by other description, animating the hand of God, as Patti Smith put it. A need a want a lack a divine truth. It gets a bit hazy. Of course we all want a nice life, to not face up to our whys, doubts, pounding existential weight. They say it's nice to know what you don't want, but once you eradicate things, perhaps exhausting work or a draining relationship, you're left bare, honest and vulnerable. On cold days a little pointless. I'm having trouble deciding what matters, she once said quite plainly in conversation at the bar. I loved that one, we laughed.
You moved for love, he asked me later. He'd already asked if I'd moved for work. Our society seems to place the biggest emphasis on our job, our money-earning capacity, our worth as sacrifices made in order to pay for things. I imagine I wouldn't have minded such classification in trading days. I grow this thing and I swap it for that thing to add a little variety to dinner tonight. I make this thing and I swap it for that thing as I do need to darn the holes in my socks (I actually do). The directness wholly makes sense and is instantly gratifying.
I didn't move to Berlin for either of his reasons, I moved for me. He stepped away slightly and creased his face, muttered something in squints and I'd only just met him so I didn't know if this exclamation was a good thing or a bad thing. What, I puzzled, searching my eyes over him to confirm my absolute craziness, fully expecting to instantly lose the respect of each near-stranger as they uncover my fraudulence whilst my back's turned. Amazing, he smiled. I keep hearing it. I haven't yet worked out if it's a polite euphemism, but this time I'll take it as the truth.
Wednesday, 31 October 2012
Vital signs
I keep telling people, that's exciting, they say, wow good for you, they beam, I'm jealous, they confess. There seems to be a pattern forming. I carry it on and continue with my own chain, it's scary, I say, hopefully good for me, I confess, yeah, I agree with whatever personal statement they've shared. I pull a who-knows face and shrug my shoulders towards the unknown, dragging down some force I'm trusting in, a weak, shaky trust. Though I've now started to cut short my doubting replies and dive to the end point - everyone is saying the same things, but what they really mean is that's crazy, why would anyone quit their job without another and move to a country where you speak no language and don't yet have a bed. I shrug and I'm free. It seems like a kind of virtue.
I moaned a few months ago how I'd like to become more wild. Not that I am any shade of wild at present. So I'd like to become wild. I'm quite interested in cliches at the moment, and 'throw caution to the wind' 'comes to mind'. Any slice of wariness is thrown into air, given over to natural forces, nurture gives up, lays back, waits. I keep having this image of throwing balls up into the air like those John Baldessari prints, I'm not looking for a line but waiting to see what else forms, I'm able to zoom round the balls in CGI style to watch from all sides, I'm intrigued, but I have no fucking clue what's gonna happen when these balls land.
About five years ago I had a vision. It was a small, darkened notion of low hues and warm tint, a peek no bigger than a postage stamp, actually more like the size of a hole punch. A flicker in what was such a terrible terrible darkness, to think now how I kept such a light makes me feel strong. Anyway, this vision was like the 'little lift' she mentioned, which I may or may not have spoken about before. It glimmered in my heart whenever I was turned to it, like a penny fresh out of a glass of Coke, yes it was definitely fizzy and astronomically exciting and potential-filled-to-the-brim. It was a glimpse into how things could be so much more alive.
To list these things will be like explaining a dream, it just dies as soon as you turn it into language, but suffice to say I was single and free and I lived in London and I had friends and went dancing and lost my cynicism and wore dresses and lipstick without occasion. There was a lot more to it than that, because that sounds like a pretty shit dream. And it came true. My inkling was right, and wow am I glad I went with it. And now I have a new one. The difference between here and there is like the life of another character out of a completely different book, a huge absurdity gap, twisted and flipped and re-imagined in a utterly different materials. It's exotic and a bit wild, and it might be me.
I moaned a few months ago how I'd like to become more wild. Not that I am any shade of wild at present. So I'd like to become wild. I'm quite interested in cliches at the moment, and 'throw caution to the wind' 'comes to mind'. Any slice of wariness is thrown into air, given over to natural forces, nurture gives up, lays back, waits. I keep having this image of throwing balls up into the air like those John Baldessari prints, I'm not looking for a line but waiting to see what else forms, I'm able to zoom round the balls in CGI style to watch from all sides, I'm intrigued, but I have no fucking clue what's gonna happen when these balls land.
About five years ago I had a vision. It was a small, darkened notion of low hues and warm tint, a peek no bigger than a postage stamp, actually more like the size of a hole punch. A flicker in what was such a terrible terrible darkness, to think now how I kept such a light makes me feel strong. Anyway, this vision was like the 'little lift' she mentioned, which I may or may not have spoken about before. It glimmered in my heart whenever I was turned to it, like a penny fresh out of a glass of Coke, yes it was definitely fizzy and astronomically exciting and potential-filled-to-the-brim. It was a glimpse into how things could be so much more alive.
To list these things will be like explaining a dream, it just dies as soon as you turn it into language, but suffice to say I was single and free and I lived in London and I had friends and went dancing and lost my cynicism and wore dresses and lipstick without occasion. There was a lot more to it than that, because that sounds like a pretty shit dream. And it came true. My inkling was right, and wow am I glad I went with it. And now I have a new one. The difference between here and there is like the life of another character out of a completely different book, a huge absurdity gap, twisted and flipped and re-imagined in a utterly different materials. It's exotic and a bit wild, and it might be me.
Wednesday, 6 June 2012
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'?
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'?
Monday, 4 June 2012
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.
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.
Friday, 11 May 2012
I came back
Oh it's all changed! Oh I left it and came back and Blogger is upgraded! I stopped writing because keyboards and screens are work, and real life comes in pizza nights and bad films, in weird secular meeting halls, in bowls of velvety soup and unusual ice cream mixtures served by a charming Lothario, in yoga classes stretched 2 hours long which melt me into some bliss that leaves me unable to function. I was just short of slapping myself yesterday, I swear after that class, you miss the last train, you drink a smoothie a week out of date that cost £2.20, and you don't care! Normally those things make me care in a rather wasteful post-rationalising (thanks Rory) way that sees the good the bad and all in between, but that class. Mellowed like butter mistakenly left out on an unusually hot day. Knife laid on it and falling into it. Dangerous. You can't make a cake with butter that's no longer solid. You can't Work in these times without a little adrenaline driving the insane load.
Three days later I can't decide if I'm sick or tired or sick-and-tired.
Thursday, 15 March 2012
The Ripe Brain
I didn't want to go to work this morning. I really wanted a duvet day. I felt ready and excited by ideas and I wanted to fulfill them. I wanted to agree to the urge and follow it. I wanted to let things flow, open a tap, let the natural thing happen. Forget yourself, he shouted, the only way to write the thing is to write the bloody thing. Or something like that. I was so rapt I forgot to minute-ise these wisdoms. Forget you, he said, it was all about Forgetting You, putting the tiny percentage aside, There, Tiny Percentage, sit, and opening up a flood of you-have-no-idea (yet). You. The conscious knows only part of the story. The conscious is trendy, post, after, over. The unconscious, that's where the cool new lies.
The problem is, it takes the conscious You to make the effort to sit down and begin. Stop checking the roast veg, stop researching doctors' surgeries and foreign flights, stop moaning that your back hurts, your shoulder hurts, there's not enough lemon in my water. Oh look, there's a pile of stuff that needs washing. No, boring conscious, boring You, take control and Just Write The Bloody Thing. He talked of momentum. Start, and it breeds, runs, blazes, catches, travels, goes bloody wild. You have the key, and these secrets just pour out. The You can't help it, because by then it's sitting back, removed, and barely even watching what's happened until it's done.
More research is needed here, if my brain can bend enough to get determinism. You have to take the (conscious) initiative to sit and place you hands above keys, or have pen hovering over paper. Put yourself in the potential position. Then, something catches. The unconscious sparks mix with the conscious and somehow get catapulted out as a thought. The unconscious sets alight, and it blazes a trail that feels a bit like fate. Stuff you knew 'needed' to be said is so. And when you don't take action to sit and do this, it kind of builds up and constipates itself. The natural course of events is faulting, moments overlapping and building up and driving each other deeper down, though never actually dissolving, but becoming knotted and dangerous.
So, the problem is time. When (stirs roast veg and does twelve sun salutations, ok, not the sun salutations, because White Heat starts in 11 minutes and they take at least fifteen) there's so much to do, and the largest chunk of one's day is given over to something not conducive to anything personally productive, this leaves little time to work out what's important. I want to read my new book, knit my cardi, cook a meal, watch a serial while I still pay for cable, and all this before even beginning to think of socialising and leaving the house. I want to write OF COURSE but it somehow falls to the bottom quite quickly because you can't eat it or wear it or talk about in at work tomorrow, and it's frigging terrifying.
(Boils rice, watches White Heat, reads some Philip Larkin, sleeps nine hours, does fifteen minutes of yoga, reads last weekend's paper, has a shower, eats a Basics fromage frais) (writes paragraph, becomes mildly late for work...)
I never could answer the question of what I wanted to be when I grew up, because I only just realised the answer is 'retired'.
The problem is, it takes the conscious You to make the effort to sit down and begin. Stop checking the roast veg, stop researching doctors' surgeries and foreign flights, stop moaning that your back hurts, your shoulder hurts, there's not enough lemon in my water. Oh look, there's a pile of stuff that needs washing. No, boring conscious, boring You, take control and Just Write The Bloody Thing. He talked of momentum. Start, and it breeds, runs, blazes, catches, travels, goes bloody wild. You have the key, and these secrets just pour out. The You can't help it, because by then it's sitting back, removed, and barely even watching what's happened until it's done.
More research is needed here, if my brain can bend enough to get determinism. You have to take the (conscious) initiative to sit and place you hands above keys, or have pen hovering over paper. Put yourself in the potential position. Then, something catches. The unconscious sparks mix with the conscious and somehow get catapulted out as a thought. The unconscious sets alight, and it blazes a trail that feels a bit like fate. Stuff you knew 'needed' to be said is so. And when you don't take action to sit and do this, it kind of builds up and constipates itself. The natural course of events is faulting, moments overlapping and building up and driving each other deeper down, though never actually dissolving, but becoming knotted and dangerous.
So, the problem is time. When (stirs roast veg and does twelve sun salutations, ok, not the sun salutations, because White Heat starts in 11 minutes and they take at least fifteen) there's so much to do, and the largest chunk of one's day is given over to something not conducive to anything personally productive, this leaves little time to work out what's important. I want to read my new book, knit my cardi, cook a meal, watch a serial while I still pay for cable, and all this before even beginning to think of socialising and leaving the house. I want to write OF COURSE but it somehow falls to the bottom quite quickly because you can't eat it or wear it or talk about in at work tomorrow, and it's frigging terrifying.
(Boils rice, watches White Heat, reads some Philip Larkin, sleeps nine hours, does fifteen minutes of yoga, reads last weekend's paper, has a shower, eats a Basics fromage frais) (writes paragraph, becomes mildly late for work...)
I never could answer the question of what I wanted to be when I grew up, because I only just realised the answer is 'retired'.
Sunday, 1 January 2012
Day 1
Indian philosophy says that what you do on the first of January sets the tone for your year ahead. As last year went, that seems quite apt. A 6 mile walk and yoga; 2011 saw me become a real yogi and solo Sunday walks fulfilled me wonderfully. The year before sits true, and the one before it. The year before that I have no recollection of, perhaps on thinking it was the year's eve I got the most drunk I ever have and will, passed out and was sick on myself, spent the next day just surviving. If it's the year I'm thinking of, I did spend that year just surviving.
So, I had grand plans for today naturally. I'm setting my tone I'm setting my tone, got to get all those flavours in to make the taste of my year a success. I mean I wasn't too stressed about it. I knew there'd be dancing at 3, I wanted to do my housekeeping duties, and the usual bracket of *writing* *knitting* *sewing that bloody duvet cover that is totally haunting me (just sew that frigging duvet cover will you for Christ's sake?!*. I'm now aware it's 9:22 and hoping I melded a good flavour...
Woke up early not hungover (quite usual but worth stating), did some research on buying a phono stage for my poor abandoned record player (poking actively into a challenging 'I don't know enough about this to make it happen so I'll leave it' area - good work), watched Charlie Brooker's review of the year (three-fold: 1 - iPlayer in bed = relaxation and nurturing actually and TV is the new no-TV 2 - I am laughing more this year. I am laughing everyday. Really laughing from the heart. I'm putting comedy on if I have to, or watch the George Dawes Baked Potato sketch 3 - I want to engage with the world's affairs and get out of mine), mild yoga, a lovely brunch (smoked salmon, eggs, soda bread mmm), did my washing and attacked the ironing guilt pile, arrived at dancing in good time, danced (bring on the ballroom, take off the girlfriends), had an enforced comfort break and read my book in the members bit with the sofas, ate a great dinner, writing/cheese/wine (and some Ben & Jerry's in a non-desperate manner), Clare Teal on Radio 2 (woo!).
I don't want to think the revelation of the year will be directly proportional to the amount of time assigned to said activities. Like I wrote intermittently for only an hour or so (in between George Dawes, Ab Fab, more Smooth Criminal) probably less time than I spent watching telly, and less time that I spent on the bus. I want me doing *things* to be a large part of this year. Making Thing Happen in reality. I was at dancing for 5 hours in the end, but I don't want that to be the majority of my tang for the year. Imagine if I attacked every day with this same fervour; must get things done! Must perpetuate calm, truth and greatness as far as possible. Would it be too intense, or would it be the best approach to life one could take?
So, I had grand plans for today naturally. I'm setting my tone I'm setting my tone, got to get all those flavours in to make the taste of my year a success. I mean I wasn't too stressed about it. I knew there'd be dancing at 3, I wanted to do my housekeeping duties, and the usual
Woke up early not hungover (quite usual but worth stating), did some research on buying a phono stage for my poor abandoned record player (poking actively into a challenging 'I don't know enough about this to make it happen so I'll leave it' area - good work), watched Charlie Brooker's review of the year (three-fold: 1 - iPlayer in bed = relaxation and nurturing actually and TV is the new no-TV 2 - I am laughing more this year. I am laughing everyday. Really laughing from the heart. I'm putting comedy on if I have to, or watch the George Dawes Baked Potato sketch 3 - I want to engage with the world's affairs and get out of mine), mild yoga, a lovely brunch (smoked salmon, eggs, soda bread mmm), did my washing and attacked the ironing guilt pile, arrived at dancing in good time, danced (bring on the ballroom, take off the girlfriends), had an enforced comfort break and read my book in the members bit with the sofas, ate a great dinner, writing/cheese/wine (and some Ben & Jerry's in a non-desperate manner), Clare Teal on Radio 2 (woo!).
I don't want to think the revelation of the year will be directly proportional to the amount of time assigned to said activities. Like I wrote intermittently for only an hour or so (in between George Dawes, Ab Fab, more Smooth Criminal) probably less time than I spent watching telly, and less time that I spent on the bus. I want me doing *things* to be a large part of this year. Making Thing Happen in reality. I was at dancing for 5 hours in the end, but I don't want that to be the majority of my tang for the year. Imagine if I attacked every day with this same fervour; must get things done! Must perpetuate calm, truth and greatness as far as possible. Would it be too intense, or would it be the best approach to life one could take?
Friday, 23 December 2011
A People Week
Well, once you extrapolate it, you're of the same demographic, and it is the busiest shopping day of the year. He flattened it slightly, one of those days where it seems like a Generation Game conveyor belt brings a string of tenuously-linked ex-people. Or now people, Or next people. Once is nice, twice is refreshing, third you begin to analyse. You're in a soap, and in any given episode, everyone that lives on the Square Street Close seems to come into the shop for a card gift book. My, today of all days, of all 365 days today is the one we all needa card book gift in order for us to gather like swarming beasts as though something is going to happen, or some force whirls us together. With them it's the writers, with us, the world.
Why do these people come into our lives? Our habitual or best friends seem to colour our pages on a permanent if patchy basis. The tone is kept sweet, topped up intermittenty, some times very internittmently (work, ills, geography). The guests of yesterday seem to drop dabs of pigment on a previously wet space, drips blotting and filtering, adding extra intention, diversity, and sometimes tangential brightness. You don't fit, you don't mean the sky or the earth, the birds or the picnic, but you add to my picture.
Why do these people come into our lives? Our habitual or best friends seem to colour our pages on a permanent if patchy basis. The tone is kept sweet, topped up intermittenty, some times very internittmently (work, ills, geography). The guests of yesterday seem to drop dabs of pigment on a previously wet space, drips blotting and filtering, adding extra intention, diversity, and sometimes tangential brightness. You don't fit, you don't mean the sky or the earth, the birds or the picnic, but you add to my picture.
Sunday, 27 November 2011
One of those days
It's when the objects you usually love look flat and cold. It's like closing one eye and only seeing in two dimensions, flattened shapes, rendered forms, where there used to be physical and emotional abundance. I don't want to put on an oufit. I don't care for quenching combinations, I don't want to paint my face in shades of normal with accents of the look, because I don't feel normal and I can't see the look. I want to draw a cartoon bag and cut some holes in it and put it on. I might tie a woolly belt around the middle, or I might not. I'll make a similar head covering, not too itchy, made a rough cool linen, with enough gap for vision, breathing and ingestion, but hidden enough from the world to suggest cowering, and caves.
I can't go to the canal side cafe because I am not carrying the plumage of display and flaunting a casual perfection. I am raw and open, seeping cleansing fluids, melding, meshing, nature happening. I'm shocking. I would cause questions. I don't want to put on a fine face when I don't feel fine. Think of how many people all over the city aren't letting themselves out into the world today, how many people are paralized by a lack of time, direction, desperation. One day before I give myself back to my definition. One perfect day is happening now, only I'm swollen and puffy and behind and just fucking tired actually.
"If you don't like your job, find another one. Stop looking for the love of your life, they'll be there when you start doing the things that you love." So much pressure to make everything perfect, and once you've made everything perfect, you'll be some sort of supreme being.
I can't go to the canal side cafe because I am not carrying the plumage of display and flaunting a casual perfection. I am raw and open, seeping cleansing fluids, melding, meshing, nature happening. I'm shocking. I would cause questions. I don't want to put on a fine face when I don't feel fine. Think of how many people all over the city aren't letting themselves out into the world today, how many people are paralized by a lack of time, direction, desperation. One day before I give myself back to my definition. One perfect day is happening now, only I'm swollen and puffy and behind and just fucking tired actually.
"If you don't like your job, find another one. Stop looking for the love of your life, they'll be there when you start doing the things that you love." So much pressure to make everything perfect, and once you've made everything perfect, you'll be some sort of supreme being.
Thursday, 17 November 2011
Illness
There's a filter which comes off when illness sets in. Interaction with the world softens, edges become candy floss fuzzy, delicate, porous, possibly sweet possibly salty, depending on the stage of illness (salty at the start, jagged attack at the gullet, sweet at the end as the juices start to caramelise and hang out in gaps in your face). Maybe it's more like popcorn, you're a walking popped kernel, all gaps and crags and places for the world to nest in. Ideas are free to roam, thoughts too, you feel like a child exploring a man-made bedroom underworld, all chairs and sheets and secrets.
When you're ill, logic falls by the wayside. Logic is in the gutter, kicking leaves and butts like an excluded year 10, bored and aware that no-one really cares that it's not at school today. Unemployed, impotent, excess. Logical left brain, is seemingly useless. Raucous right brain, is having a lovely fun time. It's as though the logical side of your self is absolutely involved with the operating of the body, Tom Hanks all serious as the captain of the ship, leaving the fun side to just play out. I walk past the school and see the mini people in glee, utter freedom, I'm jealous.
When you're ill, your ego, Ahamkara, takes it the worst. The part which normally acts as your super-shell, an annoying parent holding you back from both things that are actually bad for you (insert socially unacceptable situation) as well as things that would actually be very character forming (learning by doing/falling etc). The ego sits in bed, coughing and spluttering and moaning for pity, the intellect wants to play out in the sunshine like a 5 year old who really does not know what's happenning next, the mind admits that bed and iPlayer is the only option. With biscuits.
I was reading my book yesterday, aware of my fluffy outer layer, corroborating with my imagina4tion, pooling their resources for a ticket to good times. That part of my head which usually resists your meaning, other people's pictures and possibilities, today I take it on. Today I realise there's enough room in this brain for the two of us, and more, there's enough room for ideas ad infinitum, and so sweet they are too, they make a sundae with my own sweet ill juices. I'm cosy in all my coat layers, heading back to work prematurely, and I'm making a new little world. I'm reshaping my brain over here on the last but one seat on the drivers side on the top deck of the 73. I smile smugly around, I'm still ill, and I like it.
The downside, as one gets to work, back to rational life, well everything is so much harder. I seem to have both gone dyslexic and dropped several sets in maths and English I can't add up my two Cash v/s Card figures without the aid of Excel's dumb tools, I can't seem to transcribe telephone conversations onto Post-its, I cannot make hierarchical decisions with the Outlook flags and their shades of importance in red. But there's a cake downstairs I made, look how good my outfit is today, I really want to know how to curl my hair like yours, and can I please open the cardboard pinhole camera and give it a go? The screen hurts my face but life seems so alive right now.
When you're ill, logic falls by the wayside. Logic is in the gutter, kicking leaves and butts like an excluded year 10, bored and aware that no-one really cares that it's not at school today. Unemployed, impotent, excess. Logical left brain, is seemingly useless. Raucous right brain, is having a lovely fun time. It's as though the logical side of your self is absolutely involved with the operating of the body, Tom Hanks all serious as the captain of the ship, leaving the fun side to just play out. I walk past the school and see the mini people in glee, utter freedom, I'm jealous.
When you're ill, your ego, Ahamkara, takes it the worst. The part which normally acts as your super-shell, an annoying parent holding you back from both things that are actually bad for you (insert socially unacceptable situation) as well as things that would actually be very character forming (learning by doing/falling etc). The ego sits in bed, coughing and spluttering and moaning for pity, the intellect wants to play out in the sunshine like a 5 year old who really does not know what's happenning next, the mind admits that bed and iPlayer is the only option. With biscuits.
I was reading my book yesterday, aware of my fluffy outer layer, corroborating with my imagina4tion, pooling their resources for a ticket to good times. That part of my head which usually resists your meaning, other people's pictures and possibilities, today I take it on. Today I realise there's enough room in this brain for the two of us, and more, there's enough room for ideas ad infinitum, and so sweet they are too, they make a sundae with my own sweet ill juices. I'm cosy in all my coat layers, heading back to work prematurely, and I'm making a new little world. I'm reshaping my brain over here on the last but one seat on the drivers side on the top deck of the 73. I smile smugly around, I'm still ill, and I like it.
The downside, as one gets to work, back to rational life, well everything is so much harder. I seem to have both gone dyslexic and dropped several sets in maths and English I can't add up my two Cash v/s Card figures without the aid of Excel's dumb tools, I can't seem to transcribe telephone conversations onto Post-its, I cannot make hierarchical decisions with the Outlook flags and their shades of importance in red. But there's a cake downstairs I made, look how good my outfit is today, I really want to know how to curl my hair like yours, and can I please open the cardboard pinhole camera and give it a go? The screen hurts my face but life seems so alive right now.
Thursday, 10 November 2011
Constellations
Starting is like joining the motorway; you see a gap in the traffic, and you just have to go for it and get in there. There's no stopping, no reversing, no options except ahead. There will never be an ideal time when the motorway is completely empty, and you can career on in any fashion you please. And faster. If you thought you were going fast enough, well you're not, go at least half as fast again. Also, you will never be master of it; it's dangerous, precarious, it waits to receive you, it allows you, it exists for you. Start, join, get involved, as they say.
I got home an hour ago after a thoroughly enjoyable morning of walking, swimming, a haircut, and a stroll around the often-too-lovely locale looking for posh stock cubes. The swimming was free by some trick of my out-of-date working tax credit still being loaded onto my membership card (a heavy repayment burden, but hey, free swimming!), and when things are free you both enjoy them more and expect less. I skipped to my haircut and am quite pleased with her skill and our chat, we talked figs, philosophies and visual intelligences, there was free cake as it was Thursday, and I found a kind of kin I wouldn't have predicted from the outset.
I got some satisfactory stock cubes and headed back, eating the scraps of rye bread piled with salmon and reduced avocado, as the French onions caramelised. There's a gap here, I felt. A constellation. Magical timing when things feel exciting and open and daunting and possible. Where everything's in line, you're in the car, you can see the sign for the motorway, you can see that there's going to be a chance to make things happen. It's one of those oft-parodied blue motorway signs, chunky white writing and smooth arrows directing you to The Zone, 300 yards. Oh, but hang on, I just need to watch my onions so they caramelise and don't burn, for a bit longer, so I'll just read Stylist and listen to Radio 3 raging war for a bit. Notice the non specified time of said 'bit'.
A little (?) later, the flow has ebbed, the potential got wet it seems, the baton floats in the foam, you didn't catch it then? Didn't keep it dry and honor it? Is the gap so small that it commands me? In fragile times, it seems so. The Zone is a delicate offering, sitting on a velvet cushion edged in gems, wafting around the room on a posh tray like a pile of not-for-you-madam Forerro Rocher. Look, people will point and Ladies will giggle, the Zone! How special if feels when it brushes past you, look how close it came, did you see how close it came to me, it was like this close!!
Not quite sure where this is going. Yes I am that's a lie. Where am I going I said last night, as he shoved me into a move I didn't recognise, Nowhere, he said, our feet hovered, shuffled. Yes I am, I countered, I'm going everywhere! Everywhere and nowhere. I was kind of still, not twirling it was true, but my feet were gentle and preparing to be everywhere, unfurling grossly like a pearl in a tea cup. So here I am again. I don't know where I'm going but I'm going to really try and give this time because not doing it is really choking me up. I'm going to honor it.
I got home an hour ago after a thoroughly enjoyable morning of walking, swimming, a haircut, and a stroll around the often-too-lovely locale looking for posh stock cubes. The swimming was free by some trick of my out-of-date working tax credit still being loaded onto my membership card (a heavy repayment burden, but hey, free swimming!), and when things are free you both enjoy them more and expect less. I skipped to my haircut and am quite pleased with her skill and our chat, we talked figs, philosophies and visual intelligences, there was free cake as it was Thursday, and I found a kind of kin I wouldn't have predicted from the outset.
I got some satisfactory stock cubes and headed back, eating the scraps of rye bread piled with salmon and reduced avocado, as the French onions caramelised. There's a gap here, I felt. A constellation. Magical timing when things feel exciting and open and daunting and possible. Where everything's in line, you're in the car, you can see the sign for the motorway, you can see that there's going to be a chance to make things happen. It's one of those oft-parodied blue motorway signs, chunky white writing and smooth arrows directing you to The Zone, 300 yards. Oh, but hang on, I just need to watch my onions so they caramelise and don't burn, for a bit longer, so I'll just read Stylist and listen to Radio 3 raging war for a bit. Notice the non specified time of said 'bit'.
A little (?) later, the flow has ebbed, the potential got wet it seems, the baton floats in the foam, you didn't catch it then? Didn't keep it dry and honor it? Is the gap so small that it commands me? In fragile times, it seems so. The Zone is a delicate offering, sitting on a velvet cushion edged in gems, wafting around the room on a posh tray like a pile of not-for-you-madam Forerro Rocher. Look, people will point and Ladies will giggle, the Zone! How special if feels when it brushes past you, look how close it came, did you see how close it came to me, it was like this close!!
Not quite sure where this is going. Yes I am that's a lie. Where am I going I said last night, as he shoved me into a move I didn't recognise, Nowhere, he said, our feet hovered, shuffled. Yes I am, I countered, I'm going everywhere! Everywhere and nowhere. I was kind of still, not twirling it was true, but my feet were gentle and preparing to be everywhere, unfurling grossly like a pearl in a tea cup. So here I am again. I don't know where I'm going but I'm going to really try and give this time because not doing it is really choking me up. I'm going to honor it.
Thursday, 29 September 2011
I hung on the side, quietly contented, a warmth of laughter still resonating. I drew to the door to see her familiar blond flash, watched it slope to the bar, and wondered whether to make contact. It seems it's now commonplace to be jealous of people who were not yet alive by one's first conscious favourite year of the eighties. Or any year of the eighties. He stood vaguely in front of me, all hair and t-shirts, reminding me of you again, again. Why are you everywhere lately? Everywhere and no-where.
Why was I so dry? Why did I have nothing to say to anyone? I bought this amazing Oulipo Compendium, I could've shared, Have you got anything exciting happening with the Design Festival, cool boy with compass? Instead I hung on the radiator cover, balancing achy femoral heads, feeling glad I was A Person again, not just A Job. I was warmed, like a bun under the grill on low, not yet toasty. Not yet ready, still quite an empty shell.
I hate these moments. You're so super aware of yourself that that awareness is all there is. The rest is on holiday. The rest is on the forbidden Cyprus beach holiday. On lunch. In the bath. Out in the back garden too far away to call. All there is is you being you. No references, no hung beliefs, just a naked idea, a framework less its weight, not yet bearing the guise of fact. I'm in hibernation, you can't shout, I've been internet shopping all afternoon (for money) and I've given my entire consideration to the screen. I'm not normally like this. I can be A Person. But right now I'm also slightly A Job.
I got the bus out of town to the chip shop.
Why was I so dry? Why did I have nothing to say to anyone? I bought this amazing Oulipo Compendium, I could've shared, Have you got anything exciting happening with the Design Festival, cool boy with compass? Instead I hung on the radiator cover, balancing achy femoral heads, feeling glad I was A Person again, not just A Job. I was warmed, like a bun under the grill on low, not yet toasty. Not yet ready, still quite an empty shell.
I hate these moments. You're so super aware of yourself that that awareness is all there is. The rest is on holiday. The rest is on the forbidden Cyprus beach holiday. On lunch. In the bath. Out in the back garden too far away to call. All there is is you being you. No references, no hung beliefs, just a naked idea, a framework less its weight, not yet bearing the guise of fact. I'm in hibernation, you can't shout, I've been internet shopping all afternoon (for money) and I've given my entire consideration to the screen. I'm not normally like this. I can be A Person. But right now I'm also slightly A Job.
I got the bus out of town to the chip shop.
Saturday, 17 September 2011
How Necessary Is A Relationship?
How necessary is a relationship? We're looking at the proposal in a severely limited, Hollywood rom-com kind of way, an internet dating kind of way, a mortgages and dogs kind of way, a him and her kind of way, a lead and a follow kind of way, a black and white kind of way. Coupled up or singled out, that's the way I went in, and I came away with a new set of potentials. Not either or. Not binary. Not this or that. It expanded my thoughts on the matter for the first time in months.
I walked back from the recycling bins, noticing the detritus on high balconies, the leaves on the trees, and just felt like I had a lot to be self-satisfied with. I sat in the kitchen with delicious soup heated by the new perfect porridge pan, a warm bowl of romance for one, and it's not sad actually, it's fucking perfect and if anyone else was here it would be actually slightly ruined. It's no fun when they're not enjoying the film as much as you are. It actually ruins it for you. Romance is not dead, and it's not just for two. At all.
You're lucky you caught us, she said, as I checked the sign and clock through the glass. I pretended I hadn't done this pre-check, fully believing the 'open' sign, (unlike the confusing sign earlier, 'Sorry we are open'). We shut at five but we've just been chatting, she said, and I could see how eight hours together wasn't enough for this pair, after we'd talked moth prevention for over fifteen minutes I didn't want to leave either. Eight years of dry cleaning, seven years of sale rail, twenty minutes of moth tips, six part-eaten admissions, two amazing friends. I wondered whether they talked dry cleaning all day, because with them, I certainly could've.
They said on Wednesday night that good friendships, like theirs, seem to continue way back before you literally knew each other, and continue to some infinite point long after death. I watched them watching each other read, a glow from both. To see two people in respect and awe of each other is quite voyeuristic heaven. Contrast this with overseeing a romantic couple merging into one; bodies and styles locked, a street pair that fuse into ultimate dullness, two separates amalgamate into a waste. Fit them one body with four limbs, rolling down the street, two wholes rendered new useless.
How necessary is a relationship? Necessary enough to connect with other humans but not lose yourself. Necessary to support and nurture but not hold up or drag down. Necessary to inspire and spur on, help fill in the gaps, not fill them with selfish glue. The romance is all about you. Not yous. Relationship does not mean sex. They don't have a class called How Necessary Is Sex, but maybe they should. Relationships are free and all over the place, and you can make them in the dry cleaners at 5.29 on a Saturday. Or indeed take up the 84 year old's offer of the role as his part-time girlfriend.
I walked back from the recycling bins, noticing the detritus on high balconies, the leaves on the trees, and just felt like I had a lot to be self-satisfied with. I sat in the kitchen with delicious soup heated by the new perfect porridge pan, a warm bowl of romance for one, and it's not sad actually, it's fucking perfect and if anyone else was here it would be actually slightly ruined. It's no fun when they're not enjoying the film as much as you are. It actually ruins it for you. Romance is not dead, and it's not just for two. At all.
You're lucky you caught us, she said, as I checked the sign and clock through the glass. I pretended I hadn't done this pre-check, fully believing the 'open' sign, (unlike the confusing sign earlier, 'Sorry we are open'). We shut at five but we've just been chatting, she said, and I could see how eight hours together wasn't enough for this pair, after we'd talked moth prevention for over fifteen minutes I didn't want to leave either. Eight years of dry cleaning, seven years of sale rail, twenty minutes of moth tips, six part-eaten admissions, two amazing friends. I wondered whether they talked dry cleaning all day, because with them, I certainly could've.
They said on Wednesday night that good friendships, like theirs, seem to continue way back before you literally knew each other, and continue to some infinite point long after death. I watched them watching each other read, a glow from both. To see two people in respect and awe of each other is quite voyeuristic heaven. Contrast this with overseeing a romantic couple merging into one; bodies and styles locked, a street pair that fuse into ultimate dullness, two separates amalgamate into a waste. Fit them one body with four limbs, rolling down the street, two wholes rendered new useless.
How necessary is a relationship? Necessary enough to connect with other humans but not lose yourself. Necessary to support and nurture but not hold up or drag down. Necessary to inspire and spur on, help fill in the gaps, not fill them with selfish glue. The romance is all about you. Not yous. Relationship does not mean sex. They don't have a class called How Necessary Is Sex, but maybe they should. Relationships are free and all over the place, and you can make them in the dry cleaners at 5.29 on a Saturday. Or indeed take up the 84 year old's offer of the role as his part-time girlfriend.
Wednesday, 14 September 2011
The new ego
Oh how I worship at my own altar since I know that she loves me! I didn't shout, at the point in the evening last night where it may have fitted, my thought in her 'conversation', well Goethe's thought in my moment in her conversation. My veins coursed with potential, there's a point that fits, and, you, don't take it. Where does that energy go? They were talking about soap operas and Mike Leigh films and I didn't feel it was appropriate to shout out, didn't know if my point was just to prove I had a point, to prove to myself I had a memory (a memory! A good one!) without choice.
The point, is I didn't shout it. Again I didn't say something I had formed in my head, didn't do something I could minute-momentarily see as correct, something kept me back, restrained me. The ego. The ego is not always out for your best interests, naughty, naughty ego. I don't like this trick it's playing on me at the moment. An over-arching sense of self-awareness, a person-proofer, a social filter hiked up to a million. No, I won't press if they speak mostly French in Antwerp, ask whether you're familiar with soaking pulses overnight, say that you look totally melt-worthy in that suit. I'll step back into my up tight self and keep all these wonderings in, because they're not worth anything.
Isn't it much more fun when you're under slept and hung over, saying things you didn't know you thought, let alone meant? The ego grumbles under a cold thin bed sheet and too much gin, and you're free to be as loose as you please! What's that? I'm fun today? I know I'm fun today, I feel a bit mental to be honest, but isn't it also, fun! Maybe I've been sleeping too much lately, my devotion to good dincharya perhaps a little too meticulous. It is perhaps odd that I was up before the light outside my window went off. This is an extreme version. Perhaps I also tricked the ego this morning, peeled open the sheets to the first birdsong before it even stirred.
She was talking about the mind, intellect and ego. I was glad this was around two thousand years ago and not just a modern Freudian thing. It started on the course, seeing this weird outside version of myself, just another comparison of paper and pens to bring to the sharing table. It poured out from creativity into the everyday (if at all discernible). I'm standing in my own way! I shouted last night as I spun round a corner at high speed to bedtime castigating my quotation refrain. The thing is I don't know if I said it, or thought it, was it in, or out, did I stop it, or did it pour out riotously while the ego wasn't looking? More of this please.
The point, is I didn't shout it. Again I didn't say something I had formed in my head, didn't do something I could minute-momentarily see as correct, something kept me back, restrained me. The ego. The ego is not always out for your best interests, naughty, naughty ego. I don't like this trick it's playing on me at the moment. An over-arching sense of self-awareness, a person-proofer, a social filter hiked up to a million. No, I won't press if they speak mostly French in Antwerp, ask whether you're familiar with soaking pulses overnight, say that you look totally melt-worthy in that suit. I'll step back into my up tight self and keep all these wonderings in, because they're not worth anything.
Isn't it much more fun when you're under slept and hung over, saying things you didn't know you thought, let alone meant? The ego grumbles under a cold thin bed sheet and too much gin, and you're free to be as loose as you please! What's that? I'm fun today? I know I'm fun today, I feel a bit mental to be honest, but isn't it also, fun! Maybe I've been sleeping too much lately, my devotion to good dincharya perhaps a little too meticulous. It is perhaps odd that I was up before the light outside my window went off. This is an extreme version. Perhaps I also tricked the ego this morning, peeled open the sheets to the first birdsong before it even stirred.
She was talking about the mind, intellect and ego. I was glad this was around two thousand years ago and not just a modern Freudian thing. It started on the course, seeing this weird outside version of myself, just another comparison of paper and pens to bring to the sharing table. It poured out from creativity into the everyday (if at all discernible). I'm standing in my own way! I shouted last night as I spun round a corner at high speed to bedtime castigating my quotation refrain. The thing is I don't know if I said it, or thought it, was it in, or out, did I stop it, or did it pour out riotously while the ego wasn't looking? More of this please.
Saturday, 6 August 2011
Going Out again
I honestly tried to go out. Twice or so a year I feel strong enough, weird enough, foreign enough to head out the door alone on a traditional Night Out, without so much as a bag or coat for props. I ran to the bus stop with bulging dress pockets, hopefully countering the bulge I made all by myself from the dress's seams. The deadline was 10pm free entry. I merged into the crowds, counting bus stops in minutes, gambled to get off at this stop and run, rather than wait for the next one which might catch the lights. I ran the last bit, sloped into the door, and got told not only was it three pounds all night, but the gig I'm looking for isn't on.
Now, I've done this before. I've been had by the Digital Age and it's virtual 'flyers', unless it's in print it's not in, print, and facebook events are 'subject to change' but most normal people can track this on a smart phone. Not me with my 2002 Nokia. Shit, I scolded, storming back down the high street toward the bus stop I ran from, picturing the piles of old Guardian Guides on the kitchen table, willing traps for getting the wrong week. I walked a mile before I realised I'd been at the wrong place. A venue prefixed with a The seems to be boxed off into one giant venue of The Definite Article, non-important non-places, aka The Place To Be. Shit! I scolded again. It's not the gin and lychee I just drank, it's foolishness.
Once at The correct venue, I pleaded stupidity to save 5 quid. I'm not proud, in the face of a twenty-two year old girl with clip board and parody John Waters mustache. She wafted the clip board at me, I saw the line up. The band weren't on it. I felt STUPID. I topped up my Oyster and bought a street Pimms. Something made me double check my error; were this band not on tonight? I asked, they canceled, she deadpanned. Triple reasons for failure but I was glad to not just be an idiot. I added baklava to my Pimms and got the bus to find some dancing.
Now, I've done this before. I've been had by the Digital Age and it's virtual 'flyers', unless it's in print it's not in, print, and facebook events are 'subject to change' but most normal people can track this on a smart phone. Not me with my 2002 Nokia. Shit, I scolded, storming back down the high street toward the bus stop I ran from, picturing the piles of old Guardian Guides on the kitchen table, willing traps for getting the wrong week. I walked a mile before I realised I'd been at the wrong place. A venue prefixed with a The seems to be boxed off into one giant venue of The Definite Article, non-important non-places, aka The Place To Be. Shit! I scolded again. It's not the gin and lychee I just drank, it's foolishness.
Once at The correct venue, I pleaded stupidity to save 5 quid. I'm not proud, in the face of a twenty-two year old girl with clip board and parody John Waters mustache. She wafted the clip board at me, I saw the line up. The band weren't on it. I felt STUPID. I topped up my Oyster and bought a street Pimms. Something made me double check my error; were this band not on tonight? I asked, they canceled, she deadpanned. Triple reasons for failure but I was glad to not just be an idiot. I added baklava to my Pimms and got the bus to find some dancing.
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