Pencils

We were boiling down my etymology. I poured out my lavender scented tea and missed my reflection in the mirror, smoothing jam onto doughy chunks. Her coffee split onto the saucer, she doesn't drink milk normally and this croissant wasn't good. The air was fresh and I was late, the sun dried my tetchiness. She questioned and landed on class. I told her how it wasn't cool to be clever, so I never tried any more than my straight-A default. I wanted to fit in, but from a late early age I attempted a curve at different. I didn't tell her this. I spent the day trying to pinpoint my causality.

Later in the week, his friend recommended her psychologist mum's book for the shop. They'd always talk about Life around the kitchen table, she reflected warmly, my discontent glowered slightly. They used to tell me to stop thinking, I blurted. Really? They used to tell me, you think too much, I corrected. An interesting slip, I thought. I dunked tea bag with finger tips and thought about this. I thought about this more throughout the day. I was congratulated on scholarly successes, encouraged outside them, but there was always this dark place named Too Much. What would there be if there wasn't life? If it was too much aged eight then what about now?

Today he mentioned the limbic system, again, nodding confirmation to his wife who mentioned it last. He attributed the early years to our later expulsions, how his affection for kinky sex was down to something (unsaid) in his childhood. Headscarves, rollers, who knows what, I don't care to imagine what. It made good sense, being able to call myself the almost absolute opposite of kinky, no, not even finding a bit o kink in near-celibacy. Him up there, getting off on his PVC dress with protruding pierced breasts that I'm now tempted to Google but know I don't want to go those net nethers he mention.

A purely happy upbringing as mine has nothing to process, no excretion to be made. In it's own context, my childhood was extremely rosy; attention, encouragement, time, love. All the good stuff. Still, she dug deeper. There has to be something, she pushed, can you think of anything. I spent the week thinking. Freud stroked my chin. I'm tempted to call her to tell her about the cessation of thinking, but there's no need as next remedy's destiny has been laid. Graphites 6c chimes nicely with my going to her fancy dress party as a Staedtler 2b pencil.

Really

I dont have a lot of faith in the world as it is at the moment, so something as small ish as a personal theft throws me like a lifestage breakdown. I fell against the churchyard railings, crumpled under stinging eyes and disbeleif, crying wildly like May 2009 on the kitchen floor. Passersby passed by and I realised how we don't really care about each other. Was it instinctive to feel this bad about being robbed of what was mine, or was it more instinctive in fact to hunt and procure goods to further oneself. In short, was I the more intelligent one here, or were they?

I walked out of Waitrose pretty smug, with a bag full of bargains. Then, a moment of incredulity where, is this real, am I in a film, am I outside Waitrose, am I in a dream, am I in my life, are my eyes broken, there's a bit missing from my bike? Silver Thomson 27.2 by 330 (swoon) seatpost and an inherited Brooks Honey Team Pro S Saddle. Did I leave them in the supermarket next to the deli counter with the friendly boy with a lisp, no he doesn't have a freezer full of meat because they're not allowed to buy anything before the end of the day! No. I didn't take it off. I popped in for some Seville oranges and popped out with discounted meat minus £180 worth of parts.

Shit? Fuck? What the fuck? God (heavy on the 'oh')? An unfamiliar exclamation. I noticed the Big Issue seller, noticed his collection of spent d-locks, felt suspicisous towards him, having seen his Search For the Forgotten Pound amonsgt the trolleys fifteen minutes earlier. Had I not given my last pound to Street Smart in Giant Robot, I would've given it to him, I'd thought. Perhaps then he would've 'kept an eye on' my transport. I never give to charity, and apparently today I gave to totally the wrong charity, double misplaced philanthropy. Damn Steven Fry.

I calmly asked Big Issue if he saw anything, spied his teeth, we conversed but I wasn't there, he hadn't seen. I needed humanity, compassion, generosity, that list. A guy with stripes and a St John bag unlocked his bike, it looked worthy of a survey, how long was yours here, I asked, playing petty detective. He was warm but I wasted time. A security guard took my enquiry as a woman on her way out confessed to seeing two guys with my goods walking That Way five minutes ago. A Hunt. I hoiked the heavy meat into my back, damning its misbalance, clipped in and tried not to topple backwards. Two rib steaks, two plaice fillets, oranges, apples and a whole duck (with giblets). Fucking meat. No longer winnings but a weighty reminder of loss.

Now, fixed, no saddle, plus meat, on ballet calves, and slight mania, equals difficult. I talked myself down as I found left foot, don't sit down, he'd said, don't sit down, I thought. I headed That Way. Then it turned into two. I took one and felt my chances halve. I shouted at strangers, amazed by my own power. Those days you really melt into a crowd? It's because you want to. The day you want to be heard they're listening before you've realised you're talking. I scanned bodies, those in twos, chose small roads, not the City, why would you go to the City if you had to steal? I got off at the graveyard, passed couples and a man, a woman with a dog. Jarred bars into bars and collapsed next to stones.

Serves me right for being a greedy middle class fucker who wants two batches of homemade organic thick cut marmalade, right? If only the woman hadn't wrestled her child into my way en route to the citrus section, perhaps I hadn't seen the half price birds? If I hadn't fondled the light, dry fruit, old objects dying in the crate, the last of the crop, wondering if I could get results from substandard ingredients (they're so fucking light! There can't be any juice in there!) If only I hadn't asked deli boy for the smaller piece of plaice, I like the light skin, not orange speckled, is it one half of the same fish? If only I'd have missed the 26day matured rib steaks, re-queued up for them behind a guy wanting 3 ribs that had to be chopped from a rack. Had I not checked the back of the chocolate packets for percentages and impurities, calculating their grams per pound, speculated on my strength for abstention when there's 400g of temptation in my baking cupboard.

I trekked my calves to Brick Lane on a fruitless mission. The carbon copies riled my anger, though it felt good to have a plain emotion for once, this equals that, rather than a boring story of why I'm this or why I'm that. You take my shit and I'm really upset actually. It's the way we get through days, making automatic decisions based on past evidences. If I do this, I'm safe, if I do that, I'm in danger. Growing up we build our morals and beliefs around us like chicken wire cages of papier mache, delicate structures we put in place to make our sense. Things once complicated become learned, and we nurture our basis of what is Good and True. My day was beautiful thus far. Why does it so often turn?

Moral implications aside, and despite involving the police, more to honor the existential role of the Waitrose security staff than anything, what makes the tears come is the attachment. Some things age and develop a patina of love, become a metaphor for time, merging with us to the point where (I am you, You are me etc etc). Money is merely figures, but miles of saddle time grow a personal history with which we exchange and merge. It's like your house being robbed, I told him, only not so bad obviously. A bike is a strange beast. If you really love it, really love it, it sits somewhere between family heirloom and blood relative. You hurt my bike, well I'd rather take a wound where red literally comes. It's like that.

I've slept on it. I'm not happy about the botched replacement, or troubling Islington police with a trifle occurrence (a hundred pounds, for a saddle, yes, sir). It doesn't 'serve me right', I'm not accepting your heartless attempt at empathy with a mirrored experience, I shalln't adjust my moral graph in totality. The images of the lost goods are burned on my brain, glowing stronger almost than their literalness. The Platonic ideal lifts them to a place they never quite touched in reality, where, after the shine wore off, these bits of machinery had become quite invisible. The replacement B17 S will be here by Friday. It's black with black rails and is going to look pretty cool, probably better. I wont replace the post, the frivolity is through. Three years is a good innings, and change is always best.

Hot chocolate at The Wolseley

On paper, today was a triumph. A morning of volunteering followed by Monday's glistening chicken (leeks) stew and some granny bread and butter. A quick blow dry and a late hop to the bus, for Blue Valentine at a Parisian-feeling basement screening. An indulgent friend's shoulder over a hot chocolate (Gourmand) at The Wolseley. A quick eyeshadow purchase in Selfridges on a stop-off enroute to dancing. A shotgun 73 seat with Lydia Davies. On paper, pretty amazing. As a glance into someone else's window of life, like the snippets you get on N1 streets into lush impossible basements of advertisement perfection, pretty envy-inducing self-indulgent loveliness. In reality, a bit of a jarring ran through it.

I lay in and threw on clothes below a messy head that I'm starting to grow into, just. A uncomfortable job at monster glove hands, an unsure partenership on a table of lovely children. A realisation that when she found my notebook, she probably read the blurb of me bitching about her (not that I've had stomach enough to retrace this bile past the first sentence), to recognise it as mine (fuck). I ate nearly half a local loaf, the butter, the marmalade, making it unstoppable. I washed my hair and put on my now-mono look, the red lipstick singing to my fringed eyes like a habit I don't want to become addicted to. Date, he asked, of course not, I derided. I left late, wondering why when I'm paid I make it but when I'm free I'm loose.

All became fine once she embraced me and I watched a film which showed some beautiful despair. She listened to my over-processed thoughts and indulged my dilemmas. I fell dangerously in love, mixing silver carafes of molten chocolate and hot milk in a tall glass, overhearing international conversations from people who lived this normality. I swanned to the toilet, sorry bathroom it's called here, spying on cake towers and cute waiters, smiling to myself, proud to be allowed and somehow look right here. I checked my phone, I found your painting behind the freezer, it's lovely, she said. I glowed.

London called and I prowled the rich ways, Piccadilly, Bond Street, Marylebone. I danced seriously, selecting my shots, picking partners by way of an absurd solipsism. It was hot. He wasn't there. Dharma pinned me back and I hardly needed it anyway. The day was closing. I played with my hair in the toilets and decided it was time. Returning to the hall, there he was. He asked me to dance, my lipstick faded and hair mussed, I was unready. His moved jarred, we didn't fit, my hair felt stiff and my lips dry. What to say, I thought, not too hard. I'm so excited about this band, he spoke for me, I just booked them for my wedding. A glee washed over me that bought our counts together. I didn't care. I longed for this freedom, but wondered if I am ultimately only looking for the opposite of a positive outcome. I took air and toasted the sky.

Today was ok. I've been worried about my right brain, logicalising it's glueyness, trying to work through it's inaction. Trying being the word. Trying not allowing. He left me asking if I was a Creative Type the other day, and this had been troubling me somewhat. Where's my frigging evidence, I started asking myself, the person doing a million things but having most trouble with the main event. Sometimes the version on paper doesn't tell the most exciting or true story. Either way The Wolesley broke me. A dangerous love affair began, on the reserve bench for dark days, an eat-in Tiffany's.

Stilling the ego

Despite being conscious of my desire to fall on an off-day, despite treading lightly through the vagrancies and maybes and itches, within a few hours there I was falling. Again. Though this time I was somehow a spectatator, chiming with what he said about the concept of allocentricism, the ability to empathise not just with others, but with your Self. I got in the shower and said no, even though it knocked. I put on moisturiser and felt dramatically sorry for myself, checking I was just this side of beautiful though watery eyes. I felt pressured and heavy to perform, an old problem with which I am both held up and bored.

I ate some of last night's stewed red cabbage, with chicken bits dipped into mayonnaise, and memories of warm holidays nineteen ninety eight. A colour came from the food, a reality. Still the ego and start a conscious conversation with the Sage, it said. I liked that bit. Why be so hard on yourself? Why must creativeness be put under historical pressure. Am I not Not Doing This Anymore? Despite the falling, aided by the watching, it shortened, with effort, to a little under four hours. I went to spy on the coal tits and their nest outside my window, learned their call, and felt a conversation begin.

I get overwhelmed. All the balancing that I do and am, when weak, becomes difficult to sustain. History and present and pleasure and reward and work and proper principles, all mixed up in bad quantities on a scale with a duff CR3032 battery. RESET. It won't reset. I'll just guess. I'll read the Review, I'll look at Vogue, I'll get lost looking up non-urgent shit on the internet. Hours will pass plus two breakfasts and no speech and I've inputted thoughts but not done any action. I'm in bed at half twelve because no-one needs me today. Today? And whence starts the next problem...

I liked what she said about not 'being' your feelings. Like on tired days at Monmouth I am almost living the memory of 2009. Like cleaning the bins on my first day back, the desire to fall tapped on my shoulder and I tried to shrug it off but instead it fell rattling into the steel receptacle, in turn making more non-intelligent work. I had spent weeks cultivating the proper principle, awakening the right brain, and here I was being paid to pretend I am all left. Every way has a right but only in the realm of the logical left. Remember that thing I said about we're only brains, she told me, well that really disturbed me. It did me too.

I'm picturing pine cone pineal glands. I'm picturing duvet-cover-dharma-corners. Snap. Come on, you know where you should be. But when I'm even logicalising this act of 'imagination', am I still pretty far away from it? I watched the kids relish in ridiculous plots and wished I could. I watched the puppeteer in anthropomorphic glee and countered my jealously with inspiration. I sifted through the aphorism posters with a too-close jarring. I'm not feeling creative at the moment, I told her. And at least I know this, and am boiling down the episodic spinning. All that's left is to start that conscious conversation.

Proper principles

My stomach still flipped. It was totally annoying actually, perpetrating this sea of calm that I seem to be floating on without any effort. My insides turned inside, like the sneeze-diaphragm-flip. Butterflies. It's almost like a sneeze that didn't happen and then turns into fizz and you get that incredible frustration with the way things should be. You get a grump on as you missed a sneeze just because you were serving a customer. I almost forgot about the Customer today, almost rising to his rile with some retort that would've been so so dangerous. It's funny how I'm paid to annul my humanness, my instincts for what is good and true.

He didn't want to share the eponymous table eight even though there was only four of them on there. He shifted uneasy, pretending to budge but not actually moving at all. Diffuse the situation I thought, but you're a cunt, I also thought, and you're fucking rude, and I'm a person here actually you fucking bastard, you think you have any right over me just because you're having a 'meeting' with a foolscap pad and I'm wearing an apron. But I didn't say any of these things I just moved away and went back to filters because I was as close to thinking as saying these things, a kind of triad of constraint where I could too easily have taken the other plane.

It fizzed down into me and bedded down. I had to internalise the problem because I was getting paid to ssh my humanness. Spend all this time adhering to proper principle, and then have to sit on it because the time so isn't right. My stomach flipped when he came in. I watched him meander along the counter, wishes to all, then he came to the front and before I realised I'd been ignored. My crest had well and truly fallen. Most disappointing. I found myself clawing onto the proper principles, unable to decode which one was the answer to this here question. Compassion remedies Judgment; Attachment requires Generosity. This time is was Resistance. I Let Go. It was two hours later, but as soon as I let go, told her, she's going to help me, I felt fueled for the rest of the day.

Problems are like knots. Sometimes several layers are in play, like a knot out of cotton, knotted over with embroidery thread, bound in tapestry yarn. Each layer has it's own problem. Some things we can only act on the problem in hand, to reveal the further issues underneath. He's not a straight case. I don't interpret that rudeness direct. Told as a story, it doesn't bode well, but we are more complicated than that. I cried in the shower last Monday. My legs were aching like five years ago and it hurt as a memory and as a reality. From then on I got better. Sometimes you have to work backwards, because it's still working.

Threes

I always think of you when I think of surface tension, I told her. She was pleased about this. So was I. I just iced the most beautiful pistachio cake, it's unrefined gloss just brimming, the example of a perfect sugar lemon ratio, button nuts like some square snowman, popped on a lid on top of the vegetarian flavour pie I made earlier. Next to the parsnip soup from a 25p bag of 'nips and an apple. Same colour as my blender. I'm a smug bastard right now.

I've been quite frustrated for a couple of days. My words aren't in place, and I miss them, but you can't call, they don't run. I can only busy myself with comforting domesticity, 50s and 60s radio shows buffered with various types of chopping and mixing and floor-based exercise. Oh, what it is, is that I didn't have any weekend. So I seem to have given myself one. At the same time as having a right stress about not doing anything. In truth I have been held up by the impending 7 days on/1day off/2 days on/xmas day thing.

The lack of production, if one suddenly becomes quite expectant of one's creative ability, can be a bit of a shocker. I even dreamt he brought out one of those Faber poetry pamphlets, overtook me again before I could even lay claim to it as an idea. I was weirdly calm when he came into the shop, a nod as my attention magnetised from the dishes corner, though he still made it into my dreams. How strange the other one would turn up on the same day, how annoying I would have to stare into those pale blue depths in the last three minutes of my shift wearing my most disgusting jumper. It swathed me in melancholy for at least two days. No-one likes a pointer towards non-success.

It seems things do come in threes. The next day, I had gladly forgotten he'd be there, scolded shit as I saw him roaming, chewing in leather. He embraced me awkwardly, after I'd ignored him on purpose, lolling on plastic chairs like some wanton dog. We had nothing to say to each other. Later I sat round the happy gift dinner table, watched their long-haired pictures, arms around girls, as for now they were the same person. Watched girls flick their hair and show their teeth appreciatively, one of those times I'm holding back some scornful face of pure cynicism. What was I thinking.

I found myself browsing profiles last night. I felt completely sick at myself. Like seeing these three in two days had alerted me to the fact that I seem to have abdicated from the game. I canceled a potential last Thursday so I could go ballroom dancing at the Wapping Project. For example. He'd rode past me on the street, our quickfire revealed I couldn't care for instant gratification. I contemplated this. I decided however good one night, one month, could be, is it worth feeling this rubbish three months later. Of course I'd rather go dancing. But I can't lie, it would be pretty nice to share this culinary serendipity.

Gemütlichkeit

Perhaps it would seem awfully indulgent and somewhat wasteful to sit in bed all of Saturday. I have been here since the sun came up over there, and will stay until it completes its low winter arc over there. Ten hours sleep wasn't enough, so I have stayed here through three rounds of snacks and hot drinks, and I still am not bored. I decided as soon as I am bored (read dissatisfied, edgy), this must mean my normal level of consciousness is restored, and I am no longer ill. As it is, I am trying to shift the glitch so I can go dancing tonight.

Always so much pressure to perform on a spare Saturday. When 3 miles away in the metropolis, the minions are at work under heavy crowds and shouts, mounting our performance rites, twists turns, sorrys, yes it's too early to buy it for Christmas, there's nine people waiting do you want to wait, when the minions are at work and one is not, well, there is usually a feeling of utter redundancy. Not today. I learnt of the Ministry of Stories at the same time as reading it, I watched The Beauty of Diagrams, I pictured cinnamon pear cake, thought saving is a waste and spent time researching boat living. I scribbled and thought and basked, because overachieving is overrated. Like he said yesterday, 'not pursing a career (anything) at the moment' didn't used to be a bad thing.

I know I have lost the art of contentment. It takes foreignness to jolt this into me. With such a bombardment of options and choice, it becomes difficult to know what one truly wants. London is heavy, I saw it when I left the station on Thursday, when I clock-watched yesterday to Big Ben over the river in the afternoon's arc. The denseness becomes a metaphor for the affects on a person. I love leaving, because I love the comparison on return. London is not a pretty city, at least not to my pocket. I am not allowed historical steeping, a visual warmth, you would never say the east is good-looking. There is something to be said about the visual not being something that needs blocking out. Whilst I live in the best British city for me right now, it's not necessarily the best city.

I didn't intend to miss the second day of the Tino Seghal workshop. I wasn't sad to miss it, only to deprive another of the chance. Had I felt itchy last night I would've given up my place there and then, but the ills came on quite sudden. Almost a year to the day, bizarrely. It has got very cold. Hibernating shouldn't be a guilty thing. That word came up, the Danish one, this time in Dutch. From the German Gemütlichkeit, comes the idea of 'cosiness' not just as an adjective, but as a verb. Being. Belonging, social warmth, and the key one, quality time. I am all about the Gemütlichkeit from now on. I wrote a list in Le Pain Quotidien at St Pancras, in the last half hour of my holiday. I like to think a trip incites learned moments, maybe 'being busy' is not at the top of that list.