A scam?

Her face is still burning into me, like the face from the horror movie poster by the Basak Supermarket (which incidently came into my dream last night, along with carbohydrate-based meals). It's been over an hour and a half and I'm stuck in a groove of weighing up whether I should trust her, whether she's a hugely talented faker, whether twenty five quid is a worthy price for being made into a fool, Googling her pieces for some sort of lead to the truth. I think truth is the one thing I aim for, and open ends keep me dangerously hanging, brain whirring, a torture continuum.

I gave a stranger twenty five quid like it was £2. After saying just two days ago that I hate charity, never having given a penny to a homeless person and never warming to leaflet pleas, there I was on the way home from the car boot, head in bargain cookbooks, when an honesty pulled at my arm. I connected with it's real desperation, wherever it came from, and sat her on the wall by Tesco. A broken-looking thing, all bruises and swollen ankles, mashed in nail varnish and smudged eyeshadow, she jarred on the sunny Sunday street. She told (stories) as I listened and conferred with myself, wading in my views which were far from straight-up.

Perhaps I went out to spend some money this morning, and the car boot didn't provide objects. Perhaps I bought a person today, like the adopted-granddaughter my nan has in Africa, who's handwritten letters are likely scrawled by a left-handed scammer. Whatever. It teaches me a separate lesson, that even after an activity has passed, I must continue to process it and run in through until ultimate truths are reached. What I need to do is sacrifice the search, and all the effort it takes. Sometimes truth doesn't deliver.

I just followed a piece to Homerton Hospital admissions department, her maybe-I-didn't-quite-catch-it name wasn't on the discharged list. Maybe she was an excellent fake. Maybe she took the notes back to her mates in Maccy's and got full breakfasts all round. She definitely needed it. Maybe true fakes are the most true of all. I wasn't pressured into giving her money, in the moment, on the wall there. My cynic sat back for once, as I saw us the same. I don't care if I got robbed of one purple and one blue. I don't, really. It makes my cookbooks non-bargains if anything, or covers the ballet-lindy-ballet I didn't do this week because of my shoulder. But the truth, hanging, hurts. And which column does it fit in my accounts?

The Sneeze

This might be a little ridiculous, but I felt there was, really, some sort of, block. For just over two weeks, I've felt angry, pent-up, wrong, wound, bound, bored, blocked. I've been living for the weekends, realing (sic) in the weeks, I am this now? I'm blocked, bored, bound wound wrong. I don't know why! I'm making up little excuses in my head, seeing outside of the situation at suitable points to 'tell myself,(pause), it's OK (capital letters)', but I feel like all I need is a good shake. Put me in a bin bag and raffle me off. What sentiment.

Well it turns out, all I needed was a good sneeze. I just sneezed, cheered, kicked shoes off / folded legs up, signed out of Google and into Mac, here I am. I sneezed and I just felt free. I really did. It surprised me, it came up without my noticing, atop a belly churning avocado feta egg breakfast with nettle, and there is was. It was a sneeze. And it felt like the most freeing thing in the world.

To contextualise, I haven't been able to sneeze since Tuesday 21 June. Every time I've welled up for perfection, something has reeled me in; refrained; tightened; refused. I've sat there underwhelmed, disappointed, angry, pent-up, wrong,wound,bound,etc,etc. Carried on with my day, but ever so slightly more, tense. Tension in the arms, the sneeze moved down perhaps. Why shouldn't the body sympathise with itself? As a massage moves a knot outwards and away, the sneeze seemed to hide in the wrists. The hands are where the words come out. The words are where the work happens.

I am communicating daily. I speak barely a word. I am best wishes and hopefully's and my apologies and looking forward to's. Still words are happening. I told her I would start again tonight, two days ago. To begin, begin, he said. Don't be scared of the unknown it said, dull the ego and align. Everything takes practice, from making the perfect cup of tea, puffing the perfect pillow, to writing things both substantial and (not). I am not practicing, hence I am not improving nor trying to improve. Making one's own blocks seems foolish. If I should need an ego-driven result, I'll think of the excitation of having something to say when I next see them, placing myself contemporarily.

Connections

There's a story in everything, you just have to be looking for it. The birds are always in the trees, but you only hear them call when you're listening out for it. There's an awareness to be taken in everything, if you let yourself feel it in your own hands. Smells are particularly overwhelming when ill, nearly choked in the chemical products section of the discount store. Funny how taste is absent. Salt is good.

I made it out of the house for the first time proper in five days. I managed to buy a paper and ingredients without exhausting myself too much. Economics student, she asked, it took me a while to realise she nodded at my pink paper. I just like the magazines, I told her half heartedly. Walking past F Cooke's I wondered is now the time? It was, I double backed by the community garden and sloped in, unsure how I'd be received with the FT and these glasses. It was fine. A girl in late teens slopped me out a small pie (meat flavour) and mash, with liquor, yes. What it was exactly I'm not sure, a kind of watery parsley sauce. Extra salt and it was amazing.

The girl chatted about some guys passing on the street, kids she'd grown up with, look who has a job, she prided herself. They dipped into the door and I admired her power. She was sure as hell breaking the Personality at Work Act, swearing away as she swept sawdust, why sawdust, you know it's the third time someone's asked that today. Sorry I said, no don't be, I should know why it's there but I don't. She sings exact lyrics to bad r'n'b, and I kind of enjoyed it. She was one of my longest conversations all week. The first was was my parents, oddly.

I love Hoxton Street. Even if there are six police hanging out south waiting for something to come up. Even if I do feel awkward that my hair is this flowing and straight without relaxer. Despite existing in the very throes of a certain middle, I know where I'm from, I know about working. Pie and mash for half the price of posh corned beef in town, ready meals and digestives in place of homemade lasagnes and organic puddings, a whole week of iPlayer and Streetmate re-runs instead of activities I usually call culture. They're all the same really. This bout has loosened me up a little.

Slipped context

Amazing how quickly your context falls out when you get ill. You don't have to be anywhere, don't have to see anyone, so I'm going nowhere and not seen a friend for days. Is that a ready meal, she accused, and was right to, and yes there are chocolate digestives in the orange-lipped jar, and yes I did have two types of 'sauce' on my roast potatoes last night. Blurry contexts indeed. I walked past the reformed meat and Italian packages, these things still didn't break sense, but the chicken dopiaza just called out from amongst the panoply of Express atrocities.

Not normally would I eat crumpets and biscuits for lunch, and something which came from a factory and tasted rather sugary for a curry supposedly 2-chili-rated for dinner, though I did make pilau from scratch. Not normally would I watch Candy Cabs, Birds Britannica, A History of Celtic Britain, The Crimson Petal and the White, Railway Walks, Masterchef and two episodes of Eastenders. Not normally would I feel best for not leaving the house (through the front door) for two days. Not normally would I not brush my teeth or wash my face. Some things just make more sense when you're struggling to forget your body. Distraction techniques. Bad food, bad television, bad grooming. I don't need to condition my existence. I feel like shit hence I'm alive.

Strangely these are some of the things which make less sense when trying to be mindful. I spent the class on Tuesday, wishing I could leave my body, un-notice aches in wrists(!) and other parts which are normally self-governing. It felt like a taste of being old, clearing away chairs and almost needing a sleep directly. The other people there, and I'm generalising here, are high speed achievers, who just need to chill out. How nice it is to stretch, thought one, how nice it is to, think one thing at a time, another. It seemed we didn't have the same angle. I'm merging my body and mind several times a day several activities a week, and my problem is a one track mind, eating it's own possibilities quicker than I'm getting down these digestives.

The busy rushing world in which those city people are rapt, the calls of work and tasks and hobbies and people, buffers of our being, take them all away and one makes less sense. We can't talk about my lipstick, your sandwich, that record player, this event. Take it all away and you're left with your self. The same self you find shooting warrior arms diagonally adjacent over plane trail on a path in Kent, reciting poetry in a field, lying on an incline basking as nothing else matters but now. The same self now coughs up yellow and cries old lover indulgences, a lonesome example of what results when you take the extras away. This touching base with the body results in a certain elation on wellness. It would just be nice to not have to resort to ready meals.

Let problems evolve pt 2

What a month. You'll never know. It was a blur. All the time I was totally conscious of following a higher truth, watching my ego tussle with the sage, forgetting I was real and wallowing in some dark place. Trying to find value in Those Years. Options suddenly overwhelmed. Nigel said change takes time and things are sticky whilst it's happening. I'm seeing a Graham Greene quote behind my eyelids: When we are unsure, we are alive. Another one, it's OK to not have it all figured out yet, as long as you're still figuring...

There's been no middle ground this month. There's been utter despair, confusion and fright, memory lapses, skin freaks. There's been fresh freedom over rolling hills and blue skies, big boots, no make up and an air of renewing. I consulted the sage three times. The first time took me to external help, totally placed right. The second told me of shocks, there were indeed shocks, a loosening of the self, I got lost for a couple of days. It was quite scary. I took a train and ten miles. The third and current told of my quiet revolution. It's changing, just look ahead and upwards, carry on, on, let the world reform around you. What could be more comforting that that? Let problems evolve, I kept thinking.

It's changing. Not You. You is a new kind of bundle, an untied thing, not a bunch. A handful of slightly disparate parts, hanging together, wafting through an expanse of time. I watched his talk glad of it's timing; I'm loose in my being, you're not only corroborating my crazy, you're actually making it into science. I asked Science next day at work. Science indeed understood. You isn't concrete. Result isn't singular. It's a rolling collection of maybes maynots fun fear and all the rest. Not this or that. This. Or. That. But things. Let problems evolve, I said. You're not dying, it should be fun.

So I quit my job. I was unemployed for twenty one hours. For some reason I had to sleep on each stage of this decision. Job offer, sleep, quit Monmouth, sleep, accept job, sleep. I woke up again satisfied and fine. Today brought old niggles I've no longer the authority to talk down, I just watched them. I sat in the cafe, unsure, made my alternative deal to which came a happy all round result. Three heavy potentials came to one offer, one refusal, one possibility. The problems seemed to tie themselves up. I will go and browse the determinism book tomorrow. Science carried my left through and the sage twirled the right. There's no longer just one way only the way.

My new unconscious

He constellated my matters, placing wine glasses in triadic opposition. Now move the person and issue to where you want them, he toyed, chin in hand I'm sure, and I didn't fully confide but moved the issue closer and the person well away. You need to find a place in your heart for this person, he corroborated. I was annoyed. Not banish him and laugh at his greyness? Anyway I was instantly addicted to the playfulness of it.

I don't rate Freud, I said, there in Freud's dining room, recalling Matthew Brannon's recommended book. I just don't think I have an unconscious, I don't think problems and their friendly solutions are just hanging out in there waiting to be discovered and applied. I wondered if he was the first person to talk of such solutions, or perhaps the first one to make news with it. I discovered later in the week that Patanjali was onto a similar thing in 200BC. There's a reason for the adjective Freudian and the non-adjective of Patanjalian. And the size of that house in Hampstead.

What repression is it to say 'I have no unconscious'? Just because I can arrange (quite clumsily) my problems in the conscious realm, doesn't mean that's all there is. Imagine if this was all there was? Not even This, as This in itself is an act of drawing from said unconscious. Would I be writing these words without a keyboard or pen? Would I hell. I'd not be talking to myself out loud either. I'd probably just be prancing round the kitchen to something tacky on Smooth FM waiting for my egg to poach.

To bite me back, perhaps the spirit of the doctor remained you know where, but I spent the rest of the week dreaming. Two plane crashes, some dying grandparents and some licentious affairs. And day-dreaming about Liverpool, ruining a couple of jugs of milk. On Liverpool! I thought you were supposed to push things away by trying to remember them, like that phone number or spot you holidayed at in 1987. Or perhaps it's that don't-think-of-a-polar-bear-and-it's-all-you-can-think? Or maybe it's just a strain of that Conscious Conversation?

There is some dichotomy here between the idea of mindfulness and said conversation. I see the former as a Westernised, pay-per-view version of the latter. You're almost doing it, but you're doing it by rote and a handy CD rather than being it. I don't want to be one of those People Who Write Lists and Still Get Fuck All Done. But if you don't make a list somewhere, physically, mentally, consciously, unconsciously, how do we know where we're going?

A while back I was quite concerned with my writing being mere catharsis, sitting back next to my eustachian tubes (damn things on my mind), waiting for keys and ink to help it out. What was this prophetic fallacy, something both hallowed and limited to me having an arbitrary hour late on weeknight to release? There's really no mystery. Whilst believing in Now, Being, all that, we must believe too in the now we don't yet know, brewing back up in some dark magical place we can't yet fathom. My new unconscious sits back there like a chicken oyster and I bathe it in best wishes.

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.